Week 5:
Making the Transition

June 28, 2019

     This week my role working at Octavia Legal Associates changed. Formerly I had been working with a law school student from Madison Law on various legal tasks. However, this week, I transitioned to the administrative side of working in a small law firm. On one of my very first days at the firm 4 weeks ago, I had been asked by my boss what I would like to experience during my eight-week internship. Eagerly I told him I wanted to learn about two different sides of workings at a law firm 1) the legal side and 2) the ins-and-outs of running a law firm. While the circumstances surrounding my transition are unfortunate, I am glad I get to see the administrative side of running a law firm for the next few weeks. 

     I say the circumstances for my transition are unfortunate because the two people who used to work the administrative details recently left Octavia Legal. One of the employees moved out of the Madison area, and the other was too ill to work for the next few weeks. While I know it will be hard to replace the great work those two did, I am hoping to show I can also work in this position.  

     My new role will require me to review the internal status of immigration, business, and family law cases, including the status of applications, court hearings, and deadlines, clients, contracts, invoices, and payments Octavia Legal is currently handling. I also have to ensure all our cases are correctly tracking their required deadlines. Even more, I am responsible for the in/out correspondence of the law office and case follow-ups. I also have to help our other support staff with the translation of documents, calling clients to inform them of any materials they may have to pick up, mail and email correspondence out as needed (which includes serving the opposing counsel), and making sure all documents get sent to the courts on time.

     One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of this new position so far is getting to work a little closer with some of our clients. This past week, I have had to make phone calls to clients, set up appointments, and help our clients with payment plans. I say this aspect of the job is challenging because the majority of our clients are non-native English speakers. The majority of the clients I worked with this week prefer to speak to me in Spanish. At first, I was nervous about breaking out of my shell and speaking Spanish with native Spanish speakers. However, my boss jokingly told me “Speaking Spanish is not like speaking French — when you mess up speaking French they all get upset — on the other hand, when you mess up speaking Spanish Latinos are just happy you are giving it an honest effort.” This stuck with me and helped give me the confidence I needed to get off on the right foot and start the week off strong.     

     On a completely different note, I have had more trouble living in the big city this week. The entire summer, I have struggled with parking in Madison. My current parking situation has me parking two miles away from where I live and then moving my car twice a week for street cleaning. This week went by so fast that when Thursday (one of the days I need to move my car) came around, I had forgotten entirely. The meter maids are pretty strict, so by the time I remembered I had already received a 50 dollar ticket. It is just so different moving from a town of 4,000 where I can park just about anywhere to a city packed with drivers. Anyhow, I have already looked into the parking enforcement fines and found the 50 dollar ticket is on a graded scale — meaning the 50 dollars is the maximum fine. Hopefully, this will never happen again. Now I will have to schedule a traffic court date to try and see if a city prosecutor is willing to lower the ticket amount. Stay tuned.