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.
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