Work Experience at Maguire Family Law

Each year Maguire Family Law offer work experience to year 10 students interested in learning more about what what we do. Here is a day by day account written by two of our students this year:

Day 1

At first we both were apprehensive, but excited, to start the week and find out which roles we were playing in the office. As we entered the office we were introduced to Jennifer who told us a little bit about the basics of the files and IT system and talked to us about what the job entails. We both found it thoroughly interesting to see how the office environment worked and how each individual played a different role in each case.

It was exciting to have a feel for the different cases and we really enjoyed working with spreadsheets as we had never done so before and found it intriguing to explore different scenarios and see the situations that different families and individuals experience. We really enjoyed the first day and looked forward to having the opportunity to spend the rest of the week here to develop our understanding of family law and the office environment further.

Day 2

On day 2 we explored a case on divorce and were exposed to a more technical side of law. We were told to look at the case from both perspectives (husband and wife) to see what each party experienced and how they each told their story of events that had occurred. We found it interesting to look at a specific case and discuss it not only between ourselves but also with some of the solicitors as we collectively came up with different arguments for each party.

Day 3

WANDA!!

On Wednesday we had the office junior as our little helper! It was definitely the biggest office distraction as we could not leave Wanda alone, but she was certainly a highlight of the day!

Day 4

Day 4 was filled with a mixture of tasks ranging from taking parcels to the office; sorting and organising multiple marriage certificates and updating the firm’s safe database. We found it fascinating to look through the various legal documents which we then transferred onto the database. By looking through the marriage documents in Proclaim and the original copies, it gave us a deeper insight into why marriages break down and the end result of a divorce. At this point in the week, we had more understanding of the office environment and of the divorce process as a whole.

Day 5

On Friday sadly our week at Maguire Family Law came to an end. The week had been extremely helpful in not only enhancing our knowledge of divorce law, but also our understanding of the running of an office and working in an office environment. We were able to fully appreciate how much work and effort really goes into each individual client and how important customer satisfaction is. The skills we have learnt during our time at Maguire Family Law will be extremely valuable in the future and we are extremely grateful to have been given such a fantastic opportunity.