Lucy Newman recently joined Farleys for three days of work experience at our Accrington office. Here she gives an overview of what she got up to over the three days.
During my three days here, I have worked within the personal injury side of law alongside Jade Jump. During my experience I listened to cases where road traffic accidents had occurred or accidents within the workplace.
Day 1
My first day began on Tuesday 22nd October, when I arrived at the office at 9am. I was greeted by their lovely receptionist, who calmed my nerves and made me feel welcome before Jade came to meet me and show me the ropes. Once I was introduced to my own desk, I was given the task of calculating the special and general damages of a case, involving an individual who was unfortunately involved in a road traffic accident. Shortly after this, I was invited to sit in a meeting with a client who had an incident at work. This gave me detailed insight into what types of questions to ask your client and how to gather important information that would be needed within the case. After taking it all in, I was asked to write a letter of claims on that same case, which was challenging. However, I wasn’t completely thrown in the deep end since I had been given a template answer on a similar case to help me structure my answer and of course Jade was willing to help with any confusion or questions I had.
Day 2
My second day at Farleys entailed a morning out of the office. At around 8:30 AM Jade took me to Shout Network in Preston and allowed me to join her in her networking group meeting. I found this experience quite enjoyable, especially with my free sausage butty and drinks provided by Shout Network. Whilst we were there, I got to listen to all sorts of people with different job titles each explain who they were and what their business was and the purpose of coming to these types of meetings. I discovered that each week a different person must present a PowerPoint to the rest of the group about them and their business. This week was a woman named Lara Harrison, who founded Superstar PA’s and is currently the Managing Director for the company. It was a very informative and intriguing presentation, which I was surprised by as usually stuff like that can be monotonous. After this enjoyable morning, Jade and I left to go to Leyland for a home visit. This person we visited was still injured from her accident, hence the reason we went to them instead of them coming to the office. This individual had an awful accident in their workplace. Jade took down her detailed story of what had occurred, and we headed back to the office for lunch. Once I had refuelled, I carried on with the letter of claims I started the previous day and completed it to the best of my ability. Soon I was given the task of filing numerous sheets into over 200 case folders until it was time to go home at 5PM.
Day 3
The final day of my work experience began with tackling the filing task I had been given the previous day for about 20 minutes until I was given a casefile to go over to prepare myself for a meeting commencing at 10AM. This meeting was long but educational. It involved a client and the barrister along with Jade and I. The client had also had an accident at work and the barrister was helping to get their story straight, eliminating any weak points for a strong case ready for court. Once the meeting had ended, I went back to my filing job which was taking forever! Although, I love to organise things and make sure everything is in its right place, so this wasn’t a dull task for me. I carried on until I finally filed everything I could and now I am here writing this blog to complete my last day of work experience.
These 3 days have given me an educational insight into the realistic life of a solicitor and the many cases they are handling at a time. It has been enjoyable, and everyone has been pleasant to be around despite the heavy workloads they take on day in and day out. It also has given me more of an idea of what I would like to do after college. Overall, I would recommend completing work experience here as it is a hospitable environment, and you are given a realistic experience.
If you’re interested in completing a work experience placement at Farleys, please complete our application form and a member of the careers team will be in touch if we have a suitable placement available.
