Hello, I’m Fortunate. I am a first-year paralegal apprentice, transitioning in to my second year in Michelmores’ Bristol office. I have previously sat in the HR team and am now in the Knowledge & Information Services team, known as “Knowledge” internally. My time in the Business Services team has taught me the immeasurable value to the structure and daily working of the Firm and its people. Whilst Knowledge is a seat that is only available for our paralegal apprentices, it is an incredibly varied team where you can get involved in our enquiry line, our precedent and know-how operations and more.
08:50 – I open up my to-do list and update it based on the emails I have received the evening before. If there are any urgent tasks, these will be prioritised first. For me, it is essential that I update my to do list throughout the day. It’s one less thing out of my mind and means that I continue to be organised because I can always refer back to it. I also check the shared Knowledge inbox for any emails that are marked for me. There are none.
09:00 – I grab a glass of water and continue to work on my part of creating our company packs, a project that will enable another team to understand their client’s business. This requires attention to detail, gathering financials and recent press and news on the company. I use multiple authoritative sources to collect this information to ensure the research is comprehensive and reliable.
10:30 – Being an apprentice also means I have the opportunity to help with work experience students. I deliver a session on Equality, Fairness and Justice with another colleague, and we answer any questions they may have about routes into law or general study advice.
11:45 – I’m back at my desk and once again check our shared Knowledge inbox for any enquiries that have been marked for me. Today, it’s tracking down an article for someone and providing them with the link. I also assist with a login issue into one of our resources. The response times for these types of queries should be quite rapid. This is why it’s important to continuously check the shared inbox.
12:15 – I am also responsible for sending out communications of our resources to specific Communities of Practice and updating our area of the intranet. This is so we can share knowledge firm-wide.
13:00 – It’s a hot summer’s day so a few colleagues and I sit and have lunch in a park a few minutes away from the office.
14:00 – Back in the office, I grab another glass of water and join our weekly Knowledge team meeting where we discuss our priorities for the upcoming week, projects we’re working on and share updates. This is a good opportunity to co-ordinate on various projects and discuss work capacity.
15:00 – I continue to work on building the company packs. I also have a couple of check-ins with my supervisor, who answers any questions I may have and steers me in the right direction of how to write up this company research.
16:00 – Later in the day, I work on non-urgent tasks such as updating our search filters on our cataloguing platform, enabling our resources to be found easier by our users.
16:30 – 17:00 – I flip through both these tasks, and finally complete the company research. I send the completed company packs to my supervisor, and let my team know I now have more capacity. I work on my task list for tomorrow and log off.