Week 3:
Fitting Together

June 14, 2019

This week I feel like things have finally begun to fall into place. Two things make me say this 1) I finally feel like I know what my role is going to be this summer 2) I feel like I have begun to understand the mechanics of the office. Starting with the first point, I feel like my role in the office will mostly be 1) shadowing my boss to court, client intake, meetings, etc. 2) drafting any forms my boss requests and 3) research for client-related matters. The first two weeks were filled with plenty of form preparation and job shadowing, but this week was filled with research for clients.

The majority of my week was spent finding the right venue for a client seeking to adopt a child and drafting up an informational pamphlet for clients on the difference between physical and legal custody of a child. The family seeking to adopt a child received a full four-page report from me that detailed all the different types of adoption options. This job was pretty straightforward to complete. The majority of the work that I needed to put into the task revolved around talking to people — and talking is a forte of mine. Unlike Harvard Medical School Fellow, Margret Turner (the lab junkie), I enjoy talking with people, not rats. 🙂

Anyhow, given the family’s specific needs, we recommended an adoption avenue best fit for the family to take. We recommended the family move forward with an adoption from a foster care agency — which they agreed to. Now, moving forward, Octavia Legal will help the family through the complicated adoption process.

The custody pamphlet was a little more complicated. I had to research Wisconsin’s laws about child custody. The job aimed to complete a pamphlet explaining the difference between legal and physical custody of a minor child in both English and Spanish. The translation portion of the job took me quite a bit of time. It had been a while since I had written in Spanish, but eventually, everything started slowly trickling back. The final product was submitted for my boss and printed to be given to our clients seeking Octavia Legal’s help within the area of family law.

Beyond the work week, I had a fun time this weekend. As I said in last week’s post, two of my buddies and I went on a 50-mile bike ride this weekend. The city of Madison and the surrounding metro area maintains an enormous labyrinth of trails for bikers. We stopped at a few breweries and got back home right before a rainstorm. The trip was so much fun we plan on making it at least one more time!  Five of us have also started going to trivia night and recently won 50 dollars this week — I will keep you updated on the success of our team. Cheers!