Externship day 1

As of today I am gainfully employed! Today was the official start of my city attorney externship. Because I haven't had Evidence yet, I can't be "certified" and thus am not able to do anything in court (which is the reason why I couldn't work for the moot court judge this summer). Bummer. The good news, however, is that the city attorney has several divisions (including a civil and a criminal division) and I will be assisting ALL the attorneys. Hopefully this will help me in my search for a career path - if nothing else, I should be able to determine the things I particularly like/don't like about day-to-day attorney work!

So... this morning I did the little kid first-day-of-school thing and woke up about 2 hours earlier than I needed to. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to drive to work either, so I ended up getting there about half an hour too early (so I called C who is in DC for three days for work). When 8:00 am finally rolled around I went in, much to the surprise of the attorneys who were not expecting interns until June 1st (my school designated May 27th as the official start of the externships. Apparently the other externs arranged their start dates for June 1st and no one told me). 

They were very friendly and accommodating, though, and I was set up at my own desk with my own computer. One attorney was more than happy to outsource some legal research to me as well, so I spent most of today reading an extremely interesting criminal case and researching on Lexis (a search engine for all things law - good thing the office uses Lexis too - I much prefer Lexis over its competitor, Westlaw).

I also ended up going to lunch with three of the attorneys today as well - three very boisterous and extroverted people who told some very amusing stories and gave me some good in-the-field advice (e.g. be extremely nice to your clerks who can make your life very easy or VERY difficult). 

All in all a successful first day!

ALSO I didn't get lost either on my way to work or on my way home = double plus!

Off to work again tomorrow

K