More excitement

This week had a lot of action.  Much more than any other week thus far.  To start I was in court every day this week except Friday.  Monday I went to court first thing in the morning for a default judgment hearing and a trial.  I got to talk to the client before the attorney arrived at court and prep them a little bit.  Also I dealt with the balliff because the attorney actually ended up being late.  The trial went as we actually expected, which wasn't good but the facts weren't in our favor anyway.

Tuesday I went to bankruptcy court with Don and actually went on the record during a 341 hearing.  That was a new experience and the US Trustie even gave me a hard time jokingly because he knew I was new.  Wednesday I was also with Don and we went to the judicial court to enter 14 default judgments.  This was the highlight of the week definitely because not only did we see weddings, we saw 69 evictions get callled and hear ridiculous excuses for not paying rent.  We saw a few other civil hearings, including the judge telling a mother she was unfit because her 15 year old was in toruble.  The best though was a trial over insufficient contract work on a home and the plaintiff was pro se and quite the character.  He even was yelling at the judge at one point and I was shoked he wasn't thrown out of court.  We were the last thing on the judge's docket and we actaully ended up just chatting with the judge for 30 minutes or so.  He even told me about some fishing spots I should try.  Since he is a judicial judge he is not required to be an attorney and I believe he is not, but he definitely knows his stuff.  Good guy to know.

Thursday was the hearing for our big AT&T case that I wrote the response for.  The opposing counsel really mopped the floor with us because we didn't really have an argument anyway.  This being the 5th hearing for this trial the judge was fed up and sanctioned both attorneys and required them to write letters of apology to each other, and copy the court by Friday afternoon.   The judge also asked for briefs based on liquidated damages and attorney's fees as a basis for a new trial so thats what I'll be working on starting this morning. 

I think that's about all that happened last week.  Learning a lot just being around the attorney's and going to court is just a bonus.

Getting started

Sorry this entry will be a little long because it covers the first two weeks.  I have actually been here for three weeks because I started the week before classes began at Cooley.

Just a quick background of the firm I work for and what I'm doing or have been doing so far.  I am at Dickman Law Offices in Dallas, TX, they deal with insurance subrogation and are on retainer with several different insurance companies.  The case load is 95% State Farm Insurance with a few from Nationwide, Mercury, and Allstate peppered in.  My direct supervisor is named Natelie, she is a paralegal here and pretty much runs the whole office, everything goes through her.  I work a lot directly with Jessica who is also a Cooley grad, and is awaiting her license since she took the bar this past July.  I am working a 40 hour schedule even though my externship is only 16.

Getting started the first few weeks were all very similar.  I spent the first week entering default judgements to be sent to the court, mostly for non-answers.  I did not realize how difficult it is to find defendants at times.  I have worked directly with our process server already trying to find defendants and speaking with State Farm to try to approve further tracking services that are then billed back to State Farm.  I have found that often the tasks we are assigned to do in research and writing and advanced writing basically reinventing the wheel, are all automated at this point.  Judgements, motions, petitions, they are all automated in a computer system and are mostly fill in the blank.  So the first week and half of the second week were very uneventful because the firm was just in the midst of eliminating their back log of new files from State Farm so it was pushing a lot of paper.  However, those days we learning opportunities.  I have already learned from creating these documents as well as just being involved in conversations around the office, how things go on "behind the scenes" of a trial or a claim.  Conversations between opposing counsel, the insurance companies, clients, its all things to learn. 

Last week is when I began to do a few other tasks.  The firm has a claim from a car crash last year that was initially given a default judgement against us for failure to answer.  It actaully was one of our attorney's fault but we filed a motion to reinstate because of accident and it was granted.  Opposing counsel filed a response to that motion and we needed to file a response to her response.  This was my first "attorney" task given.  I wrote the response and filed it with the court and I have become very familiar with the Craddock factors and learned not to ignore opposing councels words when they tell you they are going to get a default jedgement against you because they aren't lying.  Trial was set for this past Friday but was cancelled and rescheduled for this Thursday so I will be attending that.

Also this past Friday I went with the attorney to a few DWOP hearings.  This was more important to see the interactions with the judge than the actual claims. They were both pro se defendants who did not even show.  But this judge was a tough one, I saw him undress a young attorney for not answering his questions directly, another attorney for not standing when addressing the court, and just his general demeanour while going from case to case.  Luckly I got to watch about 10 before ours was called. 

On to today, I just got back form court first thing this morning.  First one was a pro se defendant who we actually expected to lose to, which we did, and the next the defendant was a no show so after we showed our proofs for the record we recieved our judgment. 

I'm tyring my best to soak in as much information as I can on a daily basis, I have talked to police officers, defentants, opposing councel, the subrogee usually State Farm, and definitely stay busy.  I have just started working on my Texas Bar exam application which is already late and the final deadline is next month so that will be going out soon. 

I'll update every weekend for the prior week, sorry I'm a little late this week.