An Evaluation of Professional Placement Activities - Research Paper Example

Working in Legal-World: An Evaluation of Professional Placement Activities This paper aims to narrate and, subsequently analyse from a multi-disciplinary perspective, with emphasis on industrial organisational psychology, my four-week long experience working as Assistant Legal Clerk in Legal-World Services. Specifically, the following will be discussed: (1) the organisational typology/system of Legal-World Company, Inc., (2) the specific functions I had exercised, and (3) my evaluation of the work vis-à-vis my expectations as regards the job. In the last part of this paper, Legal-World’s advertisement methods and accounting practices will be discussed briefly. Working in Legal-World: An Evaluation of Professional Placement Activities In evaluating one’s experience at work, or in any other formal organisational setting, for that matter, many factors can and should be taken into consideration in order to arrive at an informed analysis as regards the same. This analysis, in turn, will shed light on key concerns in matters such as rate of job performance, degree of career success, and extent of organisational success. In this paper, such factors as organisational structure and organisational culture of Legal-World Services (Legal World, for short) will be recounted and analysed, in line with the ultimate end of discussing my experience during my Professional Placement stint. A discussion of Legal-World’s advertising methods and accounting practices is also found at this paper’s end. Legal-World as an organisation: its aims, structure, culture, and productive activity Legal-World’s legal entity form follows that of a partnership which “is a business owned by more than one person, with its equity consisting of a separate capital account for each partner” (Walther, 2007).  It is co-owned by five lawyers who have contributed equal proportions to the firm’s capital account. Legal-World’s, aside from continuously developing and maintaining (1) an efficient, expedient, less costly, and adaptive system of delivering legal services, also strive in providing (2) a cultural- and nationality-specific system of extending legal services which accurately respond to the varying client concerns, specifically immigration personal injury concerns of its multinational pool of clients. With clients hailing from various countries (i.e. Pakistan, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore), Legal-World sees it as an must to tailor its services to suit the specific requirements of their different clients, especially as to legal considerations relevant to the respective home countries of their clients. Yet, although Legal-World strives for specificity in the services it provides, still as to its internal hiring practices, Legal-World seeks to attract, hire, and maintain, as it does hire and maintain, competent subject matter experts who have extensive general knowledge on all sorts of personal injury litigations. Legal-World does this knowing very well that although clients’ legal debacles may require ad hoc solutions, still, one client’s personal injury case cannot be as different to another client’s as to fall under a different practice area altogether. As to its specific type of productive activity, Legal-World is mainly part of the service sector catering to personal injury victims, representing them in court litigation and all that the court litigation entails – meetings with litigants, and even preliminary mediation, if possible. It is highly engaged in global service exchanges as its operations necessarily involve direct contribution from similarly-oriented service establishments and government agencies from different countries, specifically its clients’ respective country origins. Its organisational hierarchy, unlike in formal organisational settings, can be justifiably observed as flat. There is little vertical and, even less, horizontal differentiation among the different job positions resulting to (1) a very minimal degree of authority and (2) a situation wherein work roles overlap. The firm is comprised by a set of mere nine people, inclusive of me. Five of these nine are lawyers and the rest have the following roles: financial accountant, legal clerk, assistant legal clerk and government liaisons officer cum sanitation manager (maintenance). Among the five lawyers, only one is constantly present in the office for internal management. (This situation results to poor supervision, as will be later discussed.) As to its organisational structure, the organisational structure of Legal-World is pre-bureaucratic in the sense that it lacks the elements of a formal bureaucracy, as enunciated by Max Weber. Alexander Henderson and Talcott Parsons, in their 1947 translation of Weber’s work on organisational theory, summarise the pivotal qualities of a bureaucracy as having the following: (1) specification of work functions, complete with specified scope of authority, responsibilities, rights and obligations, (2) a comprehensive mechanism of supervision and a clear system of subordination, (3) the so-called unity of command, (4) usage of formal text documents, (5) training relevant to the demands of the job, (6) utilisation of predictable and stable company rules, and (7) delegation of tasks and hiring individuals based on merit and practical skills.1 As regards the firm in question, it suffers from the absence of two of the factors abovementioned. First, Legal-World leaves much to be desired for when it comes to having a mechanism by which effective supervision of employees can be effected. Although an electronic attendance record system assists in tracking an employee’s time of arrival to and departure from the office, the actual time spent working and that spent engaging in unproductive preoccupations (activities not related to work or not contributing to work output), are far from being monitored. This is so due mainly to two factors --- (1) the physical lay-out of the office and (2) the lack of middle managers and/or supervisors checking on the activities of the firm’s employees. The physical lay-out of the office was characterized by separated cubicles or work areas which were detached from one another with tall partitions such that each employee enjoys a semi-private space, away from the view of his/her colleagues. This set-up of having an enclosed work “islet”, beyond the view of the rest of the office, seemed to make an employee feel as though he/she is licensed to not work. Since the bulk of the work was documentation of information and preparation of draft pleadings using a computer, employees tended to surf the internet, chat with friends through instant messengers, and check their personal e-mails while working on their tasks. As to the lack of middle managers and supervisors monitoring employee activities and output, this greatly contributed to the employees feeling of being at liberty to leave their working areas at anytime they pleased. Coffee breaks, cigarette breaks, and calls of nature were frequent throughout a typical work day. And when talking about these habits of theirs, they would banter around justifying their actions with the cliché, “When the cat is away, the mouse will play.” Second, there similarly is an absence of a written compilation of company policies. As a result, employees and even the lawyers-co-owner (the partners) themselves have difficulty creating a working degree of predictability as to intra-organisational concerns and relations, such as number of paid leaves, allowed absences, mode of computing absences, and so on and so forth. There is no standard operating procedure for grievances nor is there an established system with which to effect consultations on specific matters. In other words, intra-organisational communications and operations are poorly planned and unclear, resulting to various delays and misunderstandings. This ultimately affects the quality of service provided to end clients. This lack of codified company rules and policies, coupled with the sparse number of employees handling voluminous work load, confusion as to what to do, when to do it, and how to do the same is not an uncommon scenario in Legal-World. For instance, what is supposedly included as a government liaison’s proper work function – i.e. delivering mail matters – winds up being delegated to a legal clerk whose work description does not include doing such leg work. My own contribution When briefing me as to what my job functions were to be, the lawyer-firm overseer explained that as I was to be an Assistant Legal Clerk, my main focus would be on researching for and drafting pleadings pertinent to all types of court litigations which the firm’s lawyers were involved in. However, because of the small number of employees and the overlapping of roles, I was made to work on any task to which attention needed to be paid. As to the specific department under which I worked, I, myself, cannot specify any particular department probably since, in fact, there were no formal separate departments delineated by any formally laid down organisational structure. Although, bulk of my work constituted doing clerical work such as typing and revising documents, still, substantial work time was also used doing things outside that sphere of activity, like liaising with clients as regards their immigration personal injury concerns, updating Legal-World’s records of clients’ personal information, answering telephone queries regarding lawyers’ appointments, conducting external communications by means of e-mail, fax, and telephone, attending to preparations for the lawyers’ personal travel requirements, and so on and so forth. With regards to the significance of my contributions to the organisation, I can reasonably say that my active presence in the firm hastened the processing of numerous pending tasks which the legal clerk was having difficulty accomplishing due to the sheer volume of work to do. Because of work-sharing, the legal clerk was able to attend to matters that required attention from a more experienced clerk since they necessitated in-depth legal clerical and legalese know-how. Activities such as placing client calls, following up on litigation requirements, coordinating with other concerned offices and agencies, assisting the lawyers with their meeting requirements (i.e. preparing documents that need to be brought to meetings and making reservations with food establishments were meetings were held) – activities that did not require a substantial degree of specialised knowledge as regards legalese and legal clerk work were delegated to me. Job study: responsibilities and required qualities As earlier stated, there is an absence of a company or an employee handbook in the firm, hence, the main tasks, activities and responsibilities entailed by the Assistant Legal Clerk job designation are deduced actual experience rather than being expressly laid down by any documented company policy. However and fortunately, the lack of such written material was addressed by the presence of files that served as classified ads made for the purpose of recruiting personnel for a previous job vacancy for the position of Assistant Legal Clerk. These files enumerated what exactly are the required qualifications for the job. With regards the functions of the position, the said file included as the main tasks, activities and responsibilities of a person occupying the position of Assistant Legal Clerk the following: assisting in (1) the preparation and revision of draft pleadings and other legal documents, (2) the organisation of all communications documents, case files, client records, and the like, (3) the procurement and reproduction of documents pertinent to a client’s case, (4) the creation and maintenance of a comprehensive archives of past cases handled, and (5) other similar activities. The same file shed light on what exactly Legal-World looks for in an applicant for the said position. Required qualities can be categorised into two – general qualities required and skills required. Legal-World included the following general qualities as part of its requirements: (1) a college graduate with a degree in any field of study, (2) willingness to work long hours, at times even during weekends and holidays, (3) has at least one year experience working within a legal environment, and (4) willingness to be trained in handling and preparing legal documents. A candidate’s lack of one or two of the said requirements may be compensated by his/her skill falling under any of those mentioned below. Concerning the specific skills required, they included: (1) computer literacy (mainly, usage of Microsoft Office applications), (2) typing speed of at least forty words per minute, (3) excellent command of the English language, both in writing and in speaking, and (4) tenacity in working under pressure and in a fast-paced environment. Selection process The selection process for the position was comprised by a series of written personality tests and logic tests, an initial interview, and when the same is successfully passed, a panel interview. Personality tests included the Insights Discovery Test based on Carl Jungs psychiatry, the Keirsey Temperament Sorter, and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). In the interviews, in order to probe into the work-related competencies of the candidate, standard questions such as stating what the candidate considers as his/her most prized achievement and why, describing a particular past conflict at work and how the candidate resolved it, narrating a past event when the candidate had to prioritize a personal responsibility over a work task, and stating what the candidate deems to be his/her strengths and weakness, were asked. Also, as expected, scholastic and previous work performances were inquired into. Lastly, during both the initial and the panel interviews, the candidate was encouraged to raise points for clarification if there were any. Actual experience vis-à-vis personal expectations, needs and aspirations I joined Legal-World with this main objective in mind: to familiarize myself with how a typical day at a relatively small law firm would be like, my end purpose being to gauge whether or not I am capable of committing my own productive work life in such a work environment. Admittedly, before my first day at work, I already had preconceived notions of how a law firm operates, much of which was derived from fiction – i.e. John Grisham novels, NBC’s Law & Order, ABC’s Boston Legal, UPN’s Kevin Hill, and, yes, even Fox’s Ally McBeal. My quest was to compare and contrast my preconceived notions of legal offices and work environments from actual ones, starting with Legal-World. As expected, there is a huge gap between fiction and reality. While fictional lawyers, aside from having thoroughly executed oral arguments in court, seem to also possess impeccable managerial skills insomuch as their law firms run systematically, thanks to them intentionally and deliberately leaving no room for staff incompetence and/or mediocrity, the same is simply not the case in reality. It seems to me now that legal brilliance does not automatically promise best management practices. In the firm in question, Legal-World, although commendable in the sense that it had exerted efforts in tailoring its services to suit the individualized and varying needs of its clients, still, as earlier stated, left much to be desired for in terms of efficiency in intra-organizational communications, of clear delineation of job functions, of systematic monitoring of employees, of codification of company policies and company vision, mission, and objectives (VMO), and of clear organisational hierarchy. In sum, my actual work experience fell short of satisfying my ideals and expectations. I believe that this chasm between the actual and the normative can be closed if only Legal-World would initiate, establish, and maintain better hiring, management, and organisational practices. Career Choice The period of professional placement indeed helped me to fine tune my agenda of choosing a career. Insofar as it underlined the need to have more realistic goals, it pushed me to introspect and question myself as to whether or not a career in the legal profession is something that I would love to engage in for the whole duration of my work life. In line with this question, thoughts, random and not necessarily logically coherent, raced in my mind – “How do I reconcile my passion for practicing law and my distaste for a disorganised legal work environment?” “Isn’t it true that the practice of law and the management of a law firm are two separate and distinct areas which should not be confused with each other, in the sense that a negative impression with regards one need not taint one’s passion for the other?” “Everybody can work on being organised and establish a system with which to make daily operational processes at work streamlined and convenient, right?” At the end of the day, regardless of my unmet expectations, specifically with regards to the low degree of systematised organisation at Legal-World, my passion for engaging in a profession involving the application of the law still, nevertheless, overpowers any negative impressions brought about by this specific professional placement experience with Legal-World. Despite the less pleasant factors attending my experience, still the realization that not all legal institutions, law firms, and other providers of legal services necessarily suffer from the same organisational and management deficiencies, keep me enthusiastic about the prospect of legal service. And supposing that I do wind up working in an organisation similarly situated as Legal-World, being assured that I am enamored enough with the whole concept and practice of legal service will surely fuel me into patching whatever managerial and/or operational loopholes that might be prove taxing on my part. Legal-World promotions As it is a general custom to not treat the profession of providing legal services as a mercantilist endeavor (in the sense that the act is viewed primarily as a profit-oriented endeavor rather than an act of public service), advertising one’s legal services does not and should not be done in a manner as commercial establishments and other professionals do This is the reason why there are no direct TV, radio, and even newspaper advertisements promoting law firms and similar groups/entities. As for Legal-World, it advertises its immigration personal injury services mainly through distribution of printed materials and establishment of help-desks and service booths in various community events, fairs, seminars, conferences, and lectures where participants are comprised mainly of its target clientele – immigrants, their families and even, their friends. In addition to the aforementioned modes of spreading word about the firm, Legal-World is also currently working with information technology subject matter experts on developing its own website. It is also planning to engage the services of SEO experts as it anticipates the need to be ahead of the competition in terms of visibility in the World Wide Web. Modes of recording accounts At Legal-World, the cash basis method of recording transactions is used. The University of Northern Iowa Regional Business Center (RBC) defines this method as recording “income when the money is actually received… Expenses are recorded when they are paid, not when they occur.” This implies that although the firm has actually signed a contract of legal services with a certain client, the said transaction would be not be recorded until the client’s payment is actually deposited in the firm’s bank account, for instance. Once received, the revenues of the firm are separated from the income of the lawyers insofar as the lawyers can allocate directly what they earn as professional fees from court appearances, meetings, and pleadings, to their personal use. In addition to these sources of professional fees, the firm’s lawyers also have a share in what is termed as an acceptance fee. Acceptance fees are paid to the firm mainly for its acquiescence in representing a client in virtually any situation necessitating the assistance and advice of a counsel. Legal-World’s Financial Accountant is chiefly responsible for categorising and recording incoming money and assets as being either in the name of the firm or under the lawyers’ respective accounts. Aside from the specific task of delineating between what goes to the firm and what properly belongs to the different lawyers’ accounts, Legal-World’s accountant is also directly responsible for recording the expenses, accounts payable, and accounts receivables of the firm. Finally, in preparing Legal-World’s income statement, its Financial Accountant uses the multi-step approach. REFERENCES Henderson A.M. and Talcott Parsons (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. New York: Oxford University Press. University of Northern Iowa Regional Business Center (RBC). Bookkeeping. Retrieved March 18, 2001, from http://www.uni.edu/rbc/basics/bookkeeping.html. Walther, Larry. (2007). The Fundamental Accounting Equation. In Chapter Four of Principles of Accounting. Retrieved March 18, 2001, from http://www.principlesofaccounting.com/default.htm Read More