My Summer Work Experience — Making The Best of a Tough Situation
This summer was an interesting one, to say the least. Like so many others, the unprecedented times brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic really disrupted my summer plans and forced me to think on my toes and become resourceful in order to have a productive summer. In this article I am going to share my summer work experience, to highlight how I made the best of a bad situation and what I did to have a productive summer despite complications from the global pandemic.
In January 2020, I participated in the recruitment process for first year law students facilitated by the Law Society of Ontario for the Toronto based law firms. In February 2020, I was fortunate enough to be offered a summer position with a law firm in Toronto and I happily accepted the offer. I was so excited to start working for a law firm to see what law is like from a working perspective and to apply what I had learned in my first year of law school.
Unfortunately, COVID-19 had other plans for me. When May was approaching, the law firm informed me that they would have to push my start date back due to complications from the pandemic, although, by the end of May they had to rescind my job offer. I was very disappointed as I was really looking forward to starting this job and now had no prospects for any opportunities for relevant work experience for the remaining three months of summer. By this time of the summer (beginning of June), almost all summer jobs would have already been filled in normal circumstances, so I knew that during a global pandemic it would be next to impossible to find work since many companies were unable to fund student programs in these times. With this in mind, I was devastated to lose out on valuable experience.
I did a few searches on LinkedIn and other job search websites to see if any positions were being posted at that point, to little avail. I applied for some volunteer positions that friends had shared with me but had no luck with those either. In the meantime, I decided to reach out to any and all of the contacts I had in my network of professionals in law, letting them know that I was available to work and willing to work for free.
Most of them respectfully informed me they had no work during these times, but to my surprise one of my contacts took me up on my offer, followed by another a couple weeks later and then one more a month later. I was ecstatic to receive this type of response, since I was so sure I would be unable to find any work. I accepted each of these three opportunities as they arose. I was slightly worried that I had biten off more than I could chew by taking on all this work, however, I was eager to learn and wanted as much exposure to different areas of law as I could get. At times it proved to be challenging to balance all the work being given to me, but this forced me to keep myself organized and efficient in my work on a daily basis and these were good skills to develop for my future career as a lawyer.
The roles I held were with (1) a small full-service law firm as a summer student, (2) a Western Law professor as a research assistant, and (3) a sole practitioner as a student hired solely to assist in preparing for an upcoming mediation. In these roles I got exposure to a many areas of law, more so than I would have had I worked at one law firm or had I held only one of these roles, since each of the lawyers I worked for specialized in a different area of law. The areas of law I worked in include family, aboriginal, immigration and refugee, criminal, commercial and civil law, thus affording me a broad array of experiences.
As I reflect back on my experiences, I am very happy with how my summer turned out. Had I worked at the firm I was originally hired at I would have been working in one specific area of law that I’m not sure I would have loved. However, through my opportunities this summer I was able to tailor my experience so that it fit better with my interests. As a result, I found interests that I didn’t know I had and otherwise would not have been able to explore. I now have a better understanding of the type of career I want to strive for and have a better idea of what practice area I am interested in pursuing. This helped me when I was selecting courses for this academic year and will greatly help me in choosing law firms to apply to during the upcoming recruitment for summer 2021.
Overall, I learned a lot about myself during this experience and proved to myself that I could be resourceful and persevere through a tough situation. I also learned the importance of networking and building strong connections. These are important lessons and skills that will remain with me through law school and into my career.
