Posts Tagged ‘Work’
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 110 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
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Season’s Greetings — thought I’m a few days late for that. The holidays went by swimmingly. I dragged my New Year’s cohorts to The Mermaid Inn in the upper west side for dinner, and it was actually quite delicious. I recommend it, but the portions are on the smaller side. We did a champagne toast watching the ball drop on television, but we could see the fireworks going off in Times’ Square from the balcony, so that was funny. We never considered actually going, however, because apparently the area gets so full that they close it off by around 3:00-ish, so you’d have to wait outside for at least 9 hours (and it’s been snowing this whole weekend), so there was no way we were ever going to do that.
Christmas was spent doing hot pot at Bo’s apartment. I brought back the FIG-mas tree at work. It’s a small Christmas tree adorned with hand-drawn and colored logos of some of our main financial institutions clients. It’s also got some gold ornaments and in lieu of an angel, there’s a little lawyer finger puppet at the top. (It’s actually Franz Kafka, but it’s the closest I could get.) I would post a picture, but given our non-disclosure, I could theoretically get in trouble for disclosing who are clients are (even though it’s well known, but whatever).
Overall, it’s been a fun holiday season. Going to Panama helps, haha. I’m really glad I got law school apps out of the way before it started or else it would have been significantly less fun. 2010! w00t!
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The title is a joke, by the way. It’s 2:00 AM on Christmas Eve. I’m, of course, at the office, blogging. I’m too tired to come up with a coherent post, having spent the last 17 hours compiling a filing non-stop. My current desires are 1) to do laundry and 2) to go to bed — in that order. The laundry situation is a tricky one because it makes it increasingly difficult to get dressed for work when all your clothes are dirty, and “slumming it” is not really something people “do” in a white-shoe law firm.
Anyway, whatever. Despite spending the majority of my time at work, I have to say that I am glad to be in New York, and I’m pretty satisfied with how life is going in general, thankless as this job may be at times. Perhaps it’s because this is my first really “white Christmas” and it’s making me sappy. Maybe it’s because I’m just a workaholic, haha. Of course it helps that I like my officemate, I like my roommates and it’s nice that I have the most understanding friends anyone could hope for considering how I never have time to chat, e-mail back or call. I’m very sorry. I miss you guys a bunch. Even the ones who are in New York, but I never see, haha. Happy holidays, all.
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So, apparently I got what I wanted. I was miffed before that we didn’t have enough work, then came the financial meltdown, and now there’s plenty of work — considered good or bad news, depending on who you ask.
I don’t know if there’s something morally wrong with being glad there’s an economic crisis going on (my conscience says yes), but I have to say that it’s been a lot of fun — some would say stressful — doing and seeing some pretty interesting legal work as far as banking law goes. I also got sent on a day-trip to Bermuda, where I went to a historical museum and ate lunch at the Lobster Pot & Boat Bar, which was delicious. I had a mango and grilled chicken salad and lemon sorbet for dessert. Yum.
On a further upside, now that I’ve gotten plenty of overtime, I can finally pay my bills and put some cash toward my nice, new coat fund. w00t. (Again, my conscience would like to voice its disapproval.) So, things are going well, then, except it’s getting difficult to find time to do laundry.
On a random note, I found out recently one of the lawyers I work for who sits across the hall from me is an ex-Wheelie, and he was also sales manager at the Wheel back in the day. Color me amused.
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So, I should probably explain why I haven’t been writing much at all about work. We were told during training that the firm keeps pretty close tabs on any mentions of their name online. Additionally, we signed strict confidentiality agreements that set pretty harsh limits on what we can divulge. As illustrated by the last book review I posted and the subsequent comment from the author (sorry, man), despite having, like, no readership, it’s still very possible for people to find themselves on this blog if they’re looking for it.
Anyway, so this is going to be a pretty vague description of my work, but whatever. Basically, I work in Financial Institutions (“FIG”), which is a practice group within the law firm that focuses on banking law. This means we only work with banks and on deals that solely involve banks. It sounds limiting, but it actually allows the lawyers to do a wider variety of different types of deals for one specific industry whereas most other groups focus on a specific type of deal for a variety of industries.
For us, as legal assistants, it just means that we need to familiarize ourselves with where to get information about banks, bank filings, various Fed opinions, SEC-related information, bank deposits, etc. It also means we often take field trips to various banking institutions to deliver filings, etc. We also do a lot of copy-checking, indexing things, researching-type activities, sending things to be reproduced (we go through mind-boggling amounts of paper), making binders ‘o stuff — though these things aren’t really FIG-specific. Oh, one big thing about FIG is that it is VERY male-heavy, as I have yet to work with a single female lawyer. I am told this is because women don’t want to do it because they think it will involve a lot of numbers (it doesn’t). However, I sort of resent this assertion, so I am going to assume that it is caused by something else entirely.
In addition to myself, there are only two other legal assistants for FIG. I spend all my time with them, especially my officemate, Christina. Luckily, we get along well otherwise we’d be pretty miserable, haha. Christina and I giggle a lot in our office, take personality quizzes, read news, online shop and gossip, etc. This all sounds good and well, but honestly, we’d rather be doing work cause there’s only so much of this stuff you can do in a week without going crazy and feeling like you’re getting a little stupid (with the economy going south, things are seriously dragging). We study for LSATs a lot, too. Patrick, the other legal assistant, is in the office next to us, is a year older than us and seems to find us somewhat annoying/bewildering at times, but is very nice nonetheless.
As for the lawyers, it’s a small practice group with around 35 or so lawyers that mainly do FIG stuff, including, notably, the chairman of our firm. He is sort of a big deal and, according to the Wall Street Journal, “arguably the country’s leading banking lawyer.” So course, as paralegals, we don’t see him very often as he is Very Important, and we are painfully low on the legal hierarchy, haha.
In general, we work with (read: for) the newer associates, about 15 or so of them, and then maybe 5-7 or so more seasoned lawyers depending on needs (maybe we’ll eventually work with all the FIG lawyers, I’m not really sure yet). The first- and second-years are obviously closer to us in age (generally 26-ish), but unless there’s work to be done, they don’t really talk to us because they are very focused on Impressing the Partners, which I have only now discovered is the main priority for any associate at a law firm. I suppose I should have realized this earlier, but I guess I didn’t realize how serious people are about it. (Of course, they’re still really nice, just busy/focused, too.)
By the time they become third- and fourth-years, they’re more relaxed and willing to take time to chat with you and whatnot, so we actually tend to know those lawyers better. (The fifth- and sixth-year lawyers are generally a bit too old for us to really socialize with and the only ones who are left — there’s a culling process within most large law firms where most associates only stay 3 or 4 years — are now focused on Becoming Partner and probably fail to see how chatting with paralegals will help them to accomplish that end.)
All in all, Christina and I are very fond of those that we consider “our lawyers,” though I don’t think they really feel the same about us, haha. I like working here, but I really wish we were busier, as I am not really used to/comfortable with having all this free time. Anyway, this pretty much summarizes my Life at the Law Firm. Another book review to come, soon. Ciao, lovelies.
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Alright, I am officially determined to finished jotting down my notes on the past month if for no other reason than the knowledge that a) I will finally be done with it and b) I can move on to blogging about other things without feeling like I’m jumping back-and-forth time-wise. So, picking up from where I left off in the post before last –
Working It
After starting to work under essentially a new supervisor, things got busy really, really quickly. Also, about a week afterwards we were assigned our team projects which, for a lot of interns, is the main thing that they do all summer. Between work and intern stuff, things have been pretty hectic, but essentially a lot of fun. I have to say, I don’t have too many more questions about how advertising agencies work anymore. Also, I’ve gotten to know the mailroom people and the late-night security guards pretty well, haha.
On the bright side of leaving late, there’s a restaurant across the street that sells prepackaged salads and mini-meals from an auxiliary shop next to it. The food is really quite delicious, and after a certain time the salads and stuff are half off, so I can get a lovely Waldorf salad and some frozen yogurt for less than 6 bucks. Not too shabby considering it’s New York where everything costs an arm, leg and firstborn.
I’m not really sure how much I can say about work without running into problems, so I’ll keep it general. People in advertising are a lot more laid-back than I thought they’d be. There’s too much work to get done to be all superficial and whatever like those ad execs in the movies, thank goodness, though I’m told those people exist. At the same time, a lot of the work is a lot more inane than I had originally imagined. While doing design work at the newspaper requires the same attention to detail, here, you have to discuss everything with a client and then do research and testing on it instead of just making a decision.
I’ve been told by a lot of people to get out of the industry while I still have a chance – it’s no coincidence these statements usually come out as people are faced with an impending deadline, but I’m glad to say they haven’t scared me off quite yet. Also, I rather like how having deadlines makes really quite mundane work seem much more dramatic, haha.
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Okay, so, it’s proven exceedingly difficult to find time to chronicle my time in New York, but I’ll finish eventually. Let’s see, where did I leave off? Oh right, so after my first few day…
Agency Life
So, right before I started work, I got together with the two other Ogilvy interns from my school, Jeff and Vanessa, as well as some other random people. That was a blast, we spent most the night at Off the Wagon over by Washington Park. I made the decision to wear heels, which showcases my lack of good judgment – so I ended up asking to sit down at a table with some random people because everywhere else was full. They ended up being, like, the nicest couple ever – they were out celebrating her brother’s birthday – and we chatted for a while, and they bought me a gin and tonic. Later, back with my group, we ended the night by going to a Papaya Dog and heading home. Yay for delicious hot dogs.
I gotta say, I was pretty freaked out about starting work. I guess I figure you only have one chance to do a post-junior-year internship which is “the big one” so you better make it the best thing ever. Additionally, I knew I’d decided on this internship pretty early (probably about 2 years earlier than necessary), so maybe I’d limited my options by having my mind set on working here. Maybe.
I left super early and ended up reading at the nearby Starbucks for almost an hour before going into the lobby. I waited along with the rest of the earlybirds for an additional half-hour at least while being asked to move repeatedly (apparently we were in the way no matter what). There was a lot of small talk. A lot.
By the end of the first day, I still felt somewhat unsure. We were supposed to have gone to lunch with our supervisors but mine was out. Instead, I sat an read a competitive analysis during my lunch hour. The other interns seemed okay, but I accidentally asked the same guy what school he went to — three times. We also did a city-wide scavenger hunt, which turned out to be a lot more competitive than I thought it would be. Odd.
The rest of the week plodded along as I got to know the team I was working with. I started to feel better as I saw how friendly and helpful they were, but I wasn’t sure about what I’d really be doing around here. I spent a lot of time worry about what clothes I’d wear instead. Hmm. I remember sitting around in Starbucks, sometimes with the other Emory people, for long streches of time after work that week. To be honest, things looked a little grey. I was having fun and learning some, but essentially it looked like it would be a pretty long summer.
Tips and Hints
So, on all those advice sites for college students, there’s a few pieces of advice that tend to be pretty standard. Among them, a) handwritten notes are best in order to get through the corporate clutter and b) you have to take the initiative in internships if you want to get anything out of it.
Fine. So, after getting the okay from my supervisor, I started to offer out my services to other people on the team. Having read heard the benefits of a handwritten note being extolled repeatedly, I scribbled a message offering to provide any sort of assistance and left it on someone’s desk. Later that day, the lady gave me the option of helping her out, but only if I didn’t mind staying a little later for a couple days. I obviously wasn’t going to turn the offer down, and – to steal a line from Kurt Vonnegut – so it goes. To be continued.
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