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How things can change in such a short space of time. The days are currently going a lot faster and I am learning so much as nearly everything is new territory.

I have to admit that when I started out as a Paralegal I had no idea of the level of work in which I would be involved in! It has taken a while to find my way around the various reference books and websites available but I think I am getting there. 

Of course your main source of reference as a Paralegal is the qualified solicitors for whom you are doing the work for – I seem to be constantly making notes and I am sure that this process will continue for my entire career.

As explained above the cases we are involved in have all become far more complicated than initially expected when the clients were taken on – there are several Inheritance Act claims going through which I am finding particularly interesting as your gut feeling “the way things should happen” are not always the way in which the law will view the situation. 

I have been involved with the preparation of Witness Statements and the detail in which we have had to go into the make the claim is unbelievable – if there is ever a reason for not throwing anything away then this is it!! You never know what you might have to try and prove in the future. 

It has been very interesting to see how different departments run a file also – what different departments view as important documents. It just goes to show that you have to review cases from so many different angles to uncover what is relevant for the task you are dealing with – again it goes back to what I mentioned above – documents that you think surely this must be relevant but when it comes down to financial settlement then all the “human aspect” takes a back seat and the hard facts and figures is all that matters. 

So my tip for this month is to ensure that your file is organised!  This is a lot easier said than done – especially when there are numerous fee earners dealing with the same file.  Help yourself by not letting the files get too big and stuffing loads of documents in the back of a file without sorting them and having some form of system. 

This was definitely highlighted to me when I was making the Trial Bundles up earlier this month – some documents were not as easy to find as they should have been (especially when you are going back through files which are over 3 years old and there are lots of them!).  I have found that it is good practice to always carry the important documents over to any new sub file you make therefore you should not need to end up with 3 years worth of files all open on your desk trying to find one document.  (Rant over – can you tell this is what I had to do!)