What were your main duties and responsibilities during the course of your internship?

My main roles during the internship were researching key terms or case precedents for associates, translating legal documents (which played a major role in my responsibilities), proofreading, preparing presentations, red-lining and doing business development research. Doing a business research was the one project that I was involved in during the whole course of my internship there, it meant that I had to research possible clients in Latin-America, but primarily focused in Brazilian clients in the beverages and food industry. My role was solely researching on that task.

What would you say was your biggest achievement over the course of your internship?

I would say that my biggest achievement was overcoming the fear of working in a city law firm, being able to set that fear aside and expose myself in terms of networking, going out after work, allowing myself to risk making mistakes in order to get harder tasks, being able to start to understand commercial law terms, which was something that I had had no contact with before.

What benefits did your internship bring to your employer?

Seeing that it was a smaller office with fewer people, I had contact with Senior Associates and at times had to do work that was junior trainee level, which was an amazing opportunity and in a way it profited them since I was doing a trainee’s job for free. I also did simpler tasks, which meant that people being paid could focus on the main jobs, saving them profitable time. Plus, I was able to complete successfully most of the tasks I was given.

Did you encounter any problems during the course of your internship and if so, how did you overcome them?

The main problems I faced was when an associate would give me a harder task and would not be aware of the fact that I had no previous experience. Since I did not want to decline any work and wanted to make a good impression on the firm, I accepted every single piece of work handed to me. Which at times meant that I had no idea where to start. Fortunately, the office has a team of amazing approachable people who at times I sought help from, or turned to their online training, their data base or even google or academic articles, and was able to perform the majority of the tasks, even if that meant spending extra time at the office.