What is LINK
LINK is a three week internship experience for all juniors. For my three week internship I interned with an attorney that mainly practices family law in Mexico, Missouri. Through this experience I learned a lot about myself and about family law.
Business Description
Melissa Buckman Young practices many different types of law including: estate planning, wills, trusts, real estate, divorce, family law, guardian ad litem work, alternative dispute resolution and traffic (DWI, DUI, License Reinstatement). Some of these things are more common than others.
Website Link: https://www.buckmanyounglaw.com/
Project Description
For my project I wrote a paper on the different types of a adoption and how they work from the lawyers point of view. Writing this paper involved a lot of research, conversations with my mentor and six rough drafts of the paper until it was polished and finished.
Project
Reflection
Before LINK I had many skills that I ended up finding very useful. These skills include organization, technical skills, filling, responsible, hardworking, presentation and public speaking. My organization and filling skills come from working for Colorado Title and Closing Services. During LINK my mentor had me filing digital and paper documents. Already having this skill allowed to finish the filing efficiently and quickly. My responsibility helped me get things done in a timely manner without getting off task. My hard work made it possible for me to have time to work on my project while also getting the things that my mentor wanted me to do. My presentation and public speaking skills were useful when answering phones and talking to people at the courthouse.
The skill that I developed during my internship was observation. I developed this skill through the observation of court and meetings. I learned how to persuade people by observing my mentor persuade people in court. I strengthened my communication skills through talking to and introducing myself to people I do not know such as the judge and the people in the meetings I observed. I furthered my technical skills by using new software systems and computer programs to work on things. The computer program that I learned the most about was Microsoft Word since I had never used it before.
The biggest challenge during my internship was not showing emotions or letting emotions get in the way of clear thinking during my internship. This was a challenge because a lot of the work my mentor does is with children. In many cases, these children have been abused and are in foster care. This messed with my emotions a lot because it was a chance for me to reflect on how good my life is compared to many other kid’s lives. The worst part of the emotions came when there was a baby who was very sick due to the mothers drug usage and had to have a do not resuscitate placed on it and died hours later. This was super difficult for me knowing that the baby was going to die due to someone else's negligence. The other biggest challenge I had was the day to day being constantly the same. This is not something I can do. I have learned through working for my dad and through this internship that I can not have a full time office job where the only thing that you are constantly doing is paperwork. While I was at my internship I had to overcome this challenge so that I did not mess up any of the paperwork.
My importance was mainly filing paperwork the office interned for had a stack of paper about a foot and a half tall waiting for me to file it. This does not feel super important to me because they waited for a month until I got there for paperwork filing. I would advocate for my mentor to take another intern because I got to observe court and this was super interesting. The only reason I got to do this was because I was not local and did not know anyone in any of the cases.
This experience made me realize that I do not want to go to law school and be an attorney. I do not want to do this because the day to day is constantly the same and I need something where some aspects of the day to day are the same but there is also a difference or curve ball here and there. I think some jobs that would allow me to have my needs met are forensics or fire fighting. Forensics still provides the court side but the day to day will not always be consistent. Fire fighting does not have the court side, but there would never be a day that was the same as the last and there will always be some sort of curve ball in this career.
Resume
Photos