Monday, 15 October, 09.30Greetings all and welcome to my Blog (my friend Mr Paperclip on Microsoft Word tells we that I should be welcoming you to my "bog"; how uncouth). For the next 2 years I’ll take you through the nose-bleed
inducing highs and unfathomable lows of my legal traineeship at Raeburn Christie Clark & Wallace. Deep joy I hear you cry. But fear not my brethren, I will endeavour to make it as painless, and hopefully informative and entertaining, as my limited wit will allow.
So on September the 3rd I stumbled into the office for my first day as a proper person. Br
ight eyed and bushy tailed I was not for I had attended the Connect music festival in Inverary the day before. Thank god for induction days. However, my relief was short lived as soon my presence was requested by a man wielding a camera. "I don’t do posing", I told him but he didn’t listen and still had the cheek to snigger and tell me I had a cheesy grin after he made me contort into the most un-natural poses at various locations in and around the office. I was highly unimpressed.
After the paparazzi had left it was down to the serious business of becoming a Young Professional. Yay!
My first seat is in the Private Client department doing Residential Conveyancing, exactly what I didn't want to do while at Uni. However, thus far I've been pleasantly surprised. For the meantime at least it has been reasonably interesting. I’m getting to do a lot of hands on work which I'm pleased about; preferable to doing research as I hear several of my friends are doing in other firms. The department is immensely busy and I’m getting significantly more files dumped on my desk than I expected which, I suppose, is an advantage as I'll get more experience. I’m already wishing there were more hours in the day. Not a good sign I feel.
Two days later and I was off "Team Building" at an outdoor centre with my department. Some of the older members of staff didn’t seem too thrilled about the prospect of go-karting, shooting etc but I thought it an excellent means of connecting with the people I'll be working with for the next few months in a more laid back environment. (For those who care, I won the go-karting. Yes, I am Lewis Hamilton in disguise)
The first and only real predicament I've encountered was when I realised I hate people listening to me when I’m on the phone. Bearing in mind I sit in an open plan office with 6 other people and 7 people in offices well within ear-shot this soon became problem. I couldn't avoid making call for two years; or could I? On my travels round the office I noticed no one appeared to use the library. The library has a phone. Problem solved!! Although it wasn't was it. A few days passed and my ingenious scheme was working perfectly; but then someone had the cheek to use the library to read a book. But I needed to use the phone, didn’t they understand?! They can read books anywhere; I needed to use the phone here, how rude! This was when I decided to "man up" and made my first call at my desk. Turns out that I’m not the centre of the attention in the Private Client Department and everyone isn’t hanging on my every word. Who'd have thought it?!
After another couple of days of attempting and failing to use the fax machine and struggling to figure out where all my answer phone messages appear to be hiding (apparently I should have read the manual) the lovely people at the Law Society invited me to Glasgow for the Law Awards. It was a really good experience, not least because Donald Findlay QC was presenting the awards. Hilarious, outrageous and highly entertaining, go to court and see him; NOW! What's more, it was good to see one of my old lecturers, David Lessels, up for Law teacher of the year. He didn't win, but he should have. The votes were rigged I tell you!
Sadly I have no more out of office jaunts lined up in the near future so the next few weeks will actually entail doing some Conveyancing. ohoh…
