 I am going to be passing around or I will allow you to pass around sign-in sheets. So make sure you sign it before you leave. And Veronica is going to introduce our guests and enjoy it. Thank you so much for coming today. We know that this is the last day before spring break, so we really appreciate your smiling faces. The first thing I'd like to say is if you have your laptops open, please close them and shut them down. If you have your cell phones on you, please silence them and put them away. This is a professionalism panel and so we want to set the expectations that you're going to give your undivided attention to our panelists this morning. So first I wanted to start with just a couple of notes. I know a number of you are seeking opportunities for the summer. There are still plenty of opportunities out there, so do not panic. I actually have a handout here that I put at the desk before you leave. Rhode Island Legal Services is actually looking for six interns this summer and one of our panelists is from Rhode Island Legal Services and she's happy to talk to you about the opportunity. So if you're looking to have direct contact with clients this summer, it would be a great way for you to do that. And I have a posting at the front. It's posted on simplicity as well. For those of you who are seeking a summer stipend for public interest position this summer, that deadline is March 18th. So I know you have a couple more weeks to do that, but I just wanted to remind you that that is out there. And if you need any assistance with your application, please let me know. And we're happy to work with you to make it the best possible application you can make. And in terms of Alternative Spring Break, I know a number of you are going on Alternative Spring Break next week, so pay close attention to what the panelists have to say today because it may be your first exposure to attorneys, to judges, to clients, and we want to make sure that you're making the best possible impression you can make to those individuals. So can you all hear me okay? So we're very excited that you're doing Alternative Spring Break and we're here to help you support you. The reason we do this panel is because we hear stories every year from employers and from students who make poor decisions, poor judgment calls while they're in the office, whether it's based on what they wore to work one day, what they said to a client, or how they approached an assignment. And we want to make sure you don't make those same mistakes. We want to make sure that you're in an environment where you are learning as much as you can, that you ask all the right questions and that you proceed in a way that reflects positively on your professionalism. And a lot of students think, oh, this doesn't apply to me, I would never do that, but unfortunately it happens every year. And we're seeing more of that. So just make sure that you do not do anything from your job on social media. Do not say anything about your job, do not post any pictures from your job. I cannot say that strongly enough. So without any further ado, I'm going to briefly introduce our panel and I will let them speak for the rest of the time here. We're very fortunate that we have three attorneys here who have very diverse backgrounds and who have had a lot of experience working with law students and new attorneys. So they've seen from the trenches some common mistakes that people have made through the years. So the first panelist we have is Judge Bernard and she is from Rhode Island and she's been practicing for a number of years and goes way back in terms of attorneys here in the state and working with attorneys in the courtroom behind the bench but also in front of the bench before she was elected or promoted. Appointed, thank you. Sandra Dotha is a partner at Hinshaw and Culbertson which is a firm in Boston and they have a summer program. We've done interviews with both our students as well as our alumni for hiring into his firm. So he's got the private sector perspective in terms of what are those employers looking for, what stands out and what they look for in candidates and in attorneys. And Janet Gilligan is a deputy director of Rhode Island Legal Services and that is a direct legal services organization in Rhode Island. A number of our students and our graduates go on to work at Rhode Island Legal Services. They do amazing work on behalf of the citizens of Rhode Island and they have a lot of programs like I mentioned. They're looking to hire six interns this summer. So without any further ado, I'll just go ahead and let them give a brief background in terms of their backgrounds and then we'll go on to some questions. Go ahead. My name is Karen Bernard. I am presently a judge in the family court coming on six years I've been on the bench. I practiced with my father and other members of my family in private practice for about 22 years before that. I know you're all shocked because I'm like 30, but I started when I was eight. No, so I have, how many of you are from Rhode Island, born and raised? Wow, wow, great. Welcome to my world. So I, like I said, I worked with my dad from the time I got out of law school. When I was in college, I used to hang with him in the summers and when I was home from school, I would hang with him. So I kind of got a kind of a lay of the land. So I learned a lot and I think doing the internships and the clerkships are a great opportunity for all of you to kind of see what you're in for once you get there to learn what to do and what not to do. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So I look forward to answering any questions you guys have. I have a very high regard for all the interns that they send to family court. We've had a bunch of great, great students that have come and worked with us, many of whom are in front of me every day that work with legal services and Janet runs that office. And there's definitely a trend of the interns that come from here. And I have very few complaints about the interns that come from here. I think they do a great job picking them and getting the cream of the crop. So I look forward to talking a little bit about that. My name is Sam Padurtha. I'm a partner at Hinshaw and Culbertson. I spend a significant amount of time recruiting and hiring lateral associates, lateral partners. And now summer clerks. I'm not a Rhode Islander, but I did move here right after law school. My first job was a clerkship with Judge Savage in the Superior Court. And then I worked for a small Rhode Island firm before moving to Hinshaw. I married a Rhode Islander to get some legitimacy. But I am from Ohio. And I hope that I can give you all some perspective on what we value in our candidates and what we look for in interviews and also hopefully some things not to do so you can shape this process. Good morning, everyone. I'm Jana Gilligan as predicted. I am from Legal Services. I have been practicing. I was just figuring it out, driving down. I've been at Legal Services for 38 years this year. So for a long time. For most of that, I've been at Legal Services or the public defender's office. He about here and in New Hampshire. I have worked with hundreds of law students over those years and new lawyers. And many of those law students end up being hired. You know, it's not unusual to go back and get your first job somewhere that you have interned. So it's particularly important, I think, for you guys to just have a little background and a little preparedness before you go out to your first legal jobs. Those of you working in Rhode Island will discover, if you don't already know it, what a small state it is. How reputations are made very, very quickly. And how a bad reputation can follow you around. So that's some of the things that we're going to talk about. So I'm also an adjunct here at the law school and have been on and off for 10 years. So had a lot of opportunities to work with students in class and in the office and in the courtroom. So it's a wonderful experience, didn't exist before. You know, now you have so much of a better chance to actually practice. I always love that word, right? We practice law because we don't have it right yet. We keep working at it. So this is great for you. In your environment, how do you define professionalism? I think that a lot of it has to do with respect, not only for the judge that you're in front of, but for the sheriff who brings you in, for the clerk that's running the calendar, for the stenographer who has to take every word down that you say. It's respect for the other litigants that are in the room and the other lawyers. I think that's something that people forget at the door. There are lawyers and Janet just said that, you know, your reputation, once you get it, you own it. There are lawyers who have the reputation of thinking, you know, they are the best things since sliced bread and they'll walk into a courtroom and if they're not nice to my sheriff and they're not nice to my clerk, they may be at the end of my docket because I can't stand for, you know, I can't listen to the lawyers. This everybody, it's not professional. That to me is like 101, courtroom 101 to me. So it's respect for everyone that is in the courtroom and everyone that's part of that machine that's going to make this thing run. That's basically it for me. I love when I'm in agreement with judges. Not everything Judge Bernard said, I fully agree with. As a firm, we aspire to be fierce litigators and staunch advocates in business and representatives for our clients. But we pride ourselves on the civility and respect which we treat our adversaries, our judges, their clerks, their bailiffs, our associates, our partners, our management, our staff all the way from top to bottom within our firm and within the community. We strive to be kind and generous and courteous to everyone. And we do that because we try to be nice people, but we also do that because we have found over the course of however many years this firm's been in existence, this is more than eight years, we have found that that achieves a more effective and efficient result for our clients. And that is really what you're signing up for. You're representing a client and everything that you can do to make that result better for your client is the reason why you're in practice. And the civility in the practice in my experience, and I've only been in practice for 12 years, but I feel like that's a long time. Everything that I've done in practice has only been made easier by being civil and courteous to everyone and anyone involved. And it's a contentious atmosphere, especially going to court, but it's a big deal. I won't repeat what my colleagues have said because it's absolutely true, especially the clerks by the way. That's a special one. So let me just talk for a minute about what I expect for professionalism, sort of in the cosmic sense, is that when you come to work, if you're getting paid, if you're not getting paid, if you're there as a volunteer, it doesn't matter, you come prepared to work. And you come with a good attitude and you come being ready, willing and able to do what is assigned to you, even if it's not something that you particularly love. You also treat the clients, especially in a public service because you might be working with people that have substance abuse issues, have mental health issues, are low income in crisis. You need to treat those clients particularly with the same respect as you would the president of a corporation. And what you need to make sure in the public service area is that you don't ever align with the other side who is going to be more like you, you know, who's going to be more of a middle class educated person, whether it's a housing authority, whether it's a social worker from the Department of Children, Youth and Families is taking our clients' child away. You know, you make sure that you understand your role, you're there as an attorney and counselor for that person, under the direction of an attorney, of course, so far. But that you understand your role and your role is to help the attorneys you're working with. The role, though, is for you to also learn about how to talk with clients. And that's part of professionalism, to always keep your focus clear, I think. What kind of mistakes? One common mistake that we frequently see is how casual our new attorneys and summer people can be towards what the task is and what they are doing. It is a job and it's my job and it's not the most important thing in the world to me, but when I walk in that door or when I'm involved in my job, it's serious. I mean, we take it, you're all going to take a note. You're going to put your right hand up and whatever court you're in, you're going to swear that you will, whatever the oath is, I can't remember it, but it doesn't matter. The point is you have to treat every communication that you have with the court, with your opponent, with your client, as if you are talking to them with the utmost seriousness and professionalism that you have. So casual comments really have no place. And one of the biggest concerns that we have right now, and I'm sure everyone is faced with this, when we got rid of paper basically, we stopped sending out letters. We send out emails. I probably send 100 emails a day. Everybody gets so used to being casual about it. You know, Twitter and texting has just destroyed the English language. We want you to come in and divorce yourself of the LOLs and the WTFs and not using punctuation, which apparently is like a texting no-no. We need you to divorce yourself from that system and get back to the formalities that you know, because our clients and everyone involved in these cases appreciates that and needs that from us as a professional. That's a really good point. You know, your written communication is always going to be viewed by other people. So always remember that. The social media problem is a problem for younger people like yourselves, in that you don't want to be sitting at your desk, a cubicle office, whatever your situation is going to be, and have someone come in and see Facebook up on your computer. It sends the wrong message. You don't want to be sitting with your supervisor, whoever is giving you an assignment, and be looking down on your phone and you say, oh, well, who would do that? People do that. It really sends the wrong message. Just turn your phone off when you will not turn it off. Turn the sound down and put it aside when you're working. You know, you don't need to be tethered to it and keep your focus, again, on the job. You know, the cultures in different offices are always going to be different. You don't know the culture until you get there. You know, the interview, maybe you can make some assumptions. You see how people are dressed, or you see whether they're joking with you during the interview, or whether they're serious, you know, at all times. But don't make assumptions, even based on that. Come your first day, if you don't know how to dress, overdress. Be more formal than not. And then let the culture of the office soften up. And if you see that, you know, people don't dress up every day, or there's appropriate office attire if you're not going anywhere. You know, make those decisions later. Come in, dress professionally. You know, it's harder now, generationally. Not with you guys, but with clients. It's hard to get clients to dress appropriately sometimes in my situation because I used to be able to say to clients, okay, now we're going in front of the judge, so I need you to dress up. You know, and they would come in appropriately. Now if I say, I need you to dress up, which I don't say this way anymore. They come in like they're going to the club. You know, they're clubbing. No, we're not clubbing. You know, we're going in front of the judge. And maybe it's a custody case. And this actually happened to me one time. I was representing a very young woman, very buxom. And we were going in for her custody case in front of an older, conservative judge who really hated women, I think, anyway. So it was not good. But we went in and she took off her jacket and she had on the tightest T-shirt I have ever seen that said, wild thing, right across her shirt. Now, I don't expect any of you to do that. I lost, by the way. I didn't have time to send her away. I told her to put her jacket back on, but I lost anyway. I don't expect any of you to do that. But come, you know, dress professionally. And the same attitude that is going to have you dress in a certain way. Take that as your attitude the first day anyway. Walk in, address people, you know, by their last name, Mr. Mizz. They'll probably tell you right away, oh, you can call me. You know, and that's fine. Maybe some places they don't. You know, I don't know. In my office, we're very casual. But there's no harm with coming in that way. And then I say, oh, for God's sakes, you know, call me Janet and ghost it over there and, you know, it's a little more casual. But let the workplace direct you. You know, don't you come in making assumptions about how it is. And particularly if it's a public service or a public interest place, you think, oh, well, you know, anything goes. No, no, not necessarily. Let the place be your guide. Take your time, figure it out. It's comforting to know that they have the same problems that I do. When Veronica sent this to me and I was looking at the syllabus for it, I said, hmm, my two biggest pet peeves are interns on cell phones and interns, and I'm going to say this more to the women than to the men who aren't dressed appropriately to come to court. And by that, I mean I've had some interns who are dressed like they're going for a picnic. They have, you know, stretch pants and flat shoes on and a sweater maybe, or they throw a scarf on. I mean, I just, you know, it's not in school. You guys are nice and casual for school, although when I was in law school, people would come to school and, you know, suits and that's fine because usually they were going to some other job somewhere. But it definitely lends itself to a level of respect if the men who always show up in jackets and ties, I'm not saying a suit from Armani or anything like that, I'm saying a jacket and a tie. Women, skirts, dresses, pantsuits, something. It boggles my mind that that's even an option that women are wearing flat shoes and, you know, the men judges would never say anything. I have had conversations with some of the women who have been my interns to say to them, you know, you should really put a blazer on, you should have a skirt or a dress on or something. It's just, you know, dress lack something because every judge that's in there, even the secretaries are all dressed appropriately for an office. Not a rock fight, as my father used to say. So that's sometimes for the clients that come in. But, you know, the lawyers I expect to have that level of professionalism, and that includes their clothing. The phone thing drives me nuts. I have three kids at home, and I refuse to let them have their phones when we're, well, at church, having dinner, in a restaurant, no. And so I don't want my interns sitting in my office in my chambers on their phones. I'm all set with that. So I say to everyone, the number upstairs to the secretary is 458-5310. You give that to whoever needs to have it. If there's an emergency, they will find you, otherwise you don't need to be on your phone. You know, they take breaks, they have lunch. I don't want you on Twitter. I don't want you texting. I don't want you on, I don't want, I don't want that. And that's also been an issue for me. So you can put your phone in your pocket or in your pocketbook, whatever, your suitcase, your briefcase, rather. But that's it. Those are two really big pet peeves for me. So, and again, that professionalism that you present to everyone lends itself to you being treated that way. I'm supposed to use the microphone. I know for women it is, it can be confusing in terms of it's pretty straightforward for business attire, for men, what they should be wearing. It feels as though there's a lot more options, so to speak, with respect to women's attire. My advice as always, if your sister or roommate wants to borrow it, don't wear it to work, okay? And that's just a good rule of thumb. You want it to be, you want to be, you know, professional. You want to sort of put that image forward. And if somebody wants to borrow it, it might not be the right thing to wear it to work. Wear it somewhere else, but not to work. So I was wondering if you have any more egregious examples of professionalism that you've seen over the years that might surprise people in terms of what interns have done. I think I mentioned this last year. This was the most egregious thing that I've ever seen. And it was a student from Roger Williams who was working in our housing office. And so he was helping to represent. In our office, if you're a Rule 9 after your second year, you go to court, you do cases, you know, you do a lot of things. So after he left, and he was just a, you know, just a regular, nothing outstanding, nothing horrible, we thought. So we're going through the desk he'd been sitting at and found a letter on our letterhead that he had written to his, as it turned out, his girlfriend's landlord threatening him with a suit if he didn't, you know, whatever, a landlord-tenant type thing. And just signed it on our letterhead, sent it off. That was the most egregious thing. So don't do that. Don't do that. Don't, you know, don't put your personal or your friend's personal issues, work them in to your summer job. You know, that's just cannot happen. That cannot happen. So he snuck that obviously because nobody would ever approve that. And that you do have to have your writings approved by an attorney, you know, before they go out. I had an associate last year. He was new, and he was, we had a property we were repurchasing out of a tax lien sale. And so we needed to run title on the property, and all of our lawyers aren't title examiners, but they know how to run title. And so I sent him down to run title, and he emailed me the results. And then later that night, I'm sitting in my house, and I get this text message, and I have no idea who this is from. And it says, hi, Sam, it's, and I won't give you his name. I just wanted to let you know that I don't think we did the title search right. I think we should do it again. And I'm going to go back to the land evidence records tomorrow and do it. And I thought to myself, okay, there are a bunch of different issues with this. Number one, we never text message each other. We never text message clients. There's nothing protected about text messaging. You all should know that from just watching Hollywood. There's no way to protect him. Number two, you're basically telling me I screwed up. I got to fix this, but I don't want it to be in an email because God forbid our client, you know, there are all these levels of this is just not the way to approach things. And this goes back to what I was saying about. There's a formality to these things. Come talk to us. Call me on my phone. You can call me. Everyone's got my cell phone number, but for the love of God, don't send me a text message because it just looks, I look at that and I'm like, that's just not good. You know, and it's a calculated mistake. So that's probably the most agree. And it ties in with social media as well. I mean, you guys are, you're way more advanced than I am. I'm sure my children are more advanced than you are and they're four and six. They can work iPads like crazy. But, you know, in general, be very, very careful about what you do. If you have a Twitter account, don't use it for your law profession. I know, I know plenty of lawyers who actually market themselves on Twitter and Hinshaw actually has a Twitter account, but just be careful in how you post things, how you let things out into the world, how you communicate with your lawyers who work for and how you communicate with your clients. I have been on the child welfare calendar now for almost three years in Providence. And when I get my interns, the first thing I do is say to them, there's lots of confidentiality. It's like, yes, what happens here stays here. Oh, you guys are probably all too young to appreciate that comment. But anyway, so they all know at the very beginning it's all confidential. They're not supposed to talk about it, names, you know, anything like that. We can talk about it amongst ourselves, but so that's pretty good. Everybody gets a handle on that. You know, so that really hasn't been a problem for me. I can honestly say, even with memos that I've gotten and research that the interns have done, they've all done a great job. So I don't have any horror stories like them because when they sit down, they sit with me and they'll sit with either my clerk and my sheriff before we even start and kind of give the lay of the land. So I don't have any horror shows, which I guess I'm happy to say. No real egregious anything like that. Yeah. Great. That actually kind of leads right into the next question. So if you could each think of your most professional intern that you've ever had working with you or new attorney working with you, what three adjectives would you use to describe that person in terms of professionalism? With the top three expectations or attributes, do you think define professionalism in the legal practice? Well-dressed, on-time, and willing to work. Check, check, check. Check, check, check. That's what I'm looking for if I get an intern. Conscientious, energetic, and respectful. Probably reliable, be there when you're supposed to be there unless there's a major problem. And on time, it's very important. Enthusiastic about what you're doing. And if I say, oh, could you help me out and do this? And you say, oh, no problem. You know, I love that. I really like that. And competent, you know, works, work now toward establishing your competency so that the product you produce, the interview you do will come through. So those are my thoughts. One of the things that I could just say one more thing, when the interns, after we leave court and we go back into chambers, I'll ask the interns, do you have any questions? And they'll be like, no. How do you not have a question? You just sat and listened to things you've never heard before. So sometimes I have to pull teeth to get them to at least start. But then once I get them rolling, I'm like, I love questions. I love to talk about the cases. I love to talk about different scenarios. So I want you to be inquisitive. I want you to ask questions because when I go to tell you I need you to do a memo, I want you to come to me and ask me the questions so that you can give me what I'm looking for in terms of that research and that writing. Okay, great. So now we're going to shift a little bit, since a lot of you are in job search mode and you will be searching for jobs throughout your law school career as well as after graduation. I'm hoping the panelists can talk a little bit about the application process and professionalism issues you've seen with respect to application materials, resumes, cover letters, appropriate interview behavior, so to speak, and any sort of communication with an employer throughout the application process. Do you have any thoughts on those topics? This is a very difficult process. I'm not going to lie, getting a job is hard. I went through all sorts of twists and turns before I actually landed in a place where I was happy and where I actually got the job. From an application perspective, we obviously want to see your resume. We want to know how you're doing in law school. We want to know what courses you're taking, whether you received any awards. Probably want to know what your GPA and class rank is. We want to know where you went to undergrad. We probably don't want to know where you went to high school, but if you're really proud of it and you want to put it on there, I'm not going to stop you. We want to know what kind of work experience you have. We really want to know if there is any reason why there's what we call a hole in your resume. Are there like two years when you're doing nothing? That is a massive red flag for me. I would rather have you working at Ben & Jerry's scooping ice cream for two years than, oh, you know, I traveled the country. Really? What did you travel? Well, and I've heard it a lot. So we want to see a complete work experience that you've had. It doesn't matter what kind of work you've done, and we recognize as 1Ls, as 2Ls, and as 3Ls, and even as practicing attorneys, you may not have worked in a ton of different places. And one of the jobs you may put on there was, I was a waitress at Friendly's. And there's nothing wrong with that in my mind. What I'm looking for is somebody who's been consistently working or actually doing something rather than just sort of sitting around. We also typically ask for a cover letter. Please proofread your cover letter. Do not make any grammatical errors. I will find them. And I will call you out on there. My son's applying for schools right now. He's going into kindergarten. I called the school out on their use of the apostrophe because it was wrong. And the woman is like, and I said to her, I said, listen, you know how much it costs to go to this school? I expect you to have, like, you know, the right grip. My wife is like, please stop. All right, sorry. Make sure your cover letter is proofread. Make sure you're applying for the right job. Make sure you, if you have a form cover letter, I don't want to know how much you want to work for Rhode Island Legal Services because I'm not Rhode Island Legal Services. In terms of the interviewing process, and here's something I will stress, please, please be prepared. Be prepared for the questions. Lab someone you're friends with. Talk to each other. Go through your resumes and think, what are the questions that these people are going to ask me? Do it like I prepare to go to court. When I go to court, I'm ready to go. I've got my argument ready. I've anticipated the questions I'm going to ask. I've actually sat there and talked to myself about the responses they're going to be. It's a little scary and disturbing, which is why I recommend having a friend. What I don't want to see is someone who is unprepared to answer a question. I'll give you an example. I'm our associate candidate, and we were talking, we were going through the interview, and inevitably every interview devolves into, hey, what do you like to do in your spare time? And that's because lawyers get nervous because there are no more questions to ask. So they're like, well, I'm going to ask this person about his spare time. Maybe they're into something, but we can talk about it for 20 minutes because it's only been 10 minutes. I asked this candidate, what do you like to do in your spare time? And she hesitated for a second and I almost fell to my chair. But I felt bad for her because in that very same moment she thought, oh my God, I can't believe I just said it. And I said, and this is not a full-time position, I said, I appreciate that. I can appreciate that. But here's why I'm not going to hire that person. You could come to me and I could ask you that question and you could say, Sam, I like to take naps. I'm on the Roger Williams University School of Law Napping Committee. We've done a napping study for three years. We've talked to the engineering and science department. We have found that napping increases our productivity by 20% yada yada yada. You could have that whole answer ready and I'd be thinking, wow, great. I would hire that person. The reason why I wouldn't hire the person who hesitates and says I like to take naps is because I'm going to send you to court. I'm going to send you in front of a judge and the judge is going to ask you questions and I don't want the lawyer who's going to say, I like to take naps. I want the lawyer who's ready with every single question and even if they're not ready with that question, man, they're going to have an answer for the question that they're not ready for. So please prepare responses to all of the issues that are on your resume. Talk to each other. Talk to career services about what are the possible questions someone might ask me. They might have some insight into how we do our interviews because we've hired a lot of people. This is very interesting. I think the last thing for us has been Frank. I think what you can learn from Sam's description of what he looks for in a resume, it's different than what I look for in a resume. I obviously need to know your educational background. I look at your jobs. But at this point, you're really new. You're presenting yourself. And so we're looking at what I'm looking for is interest. So we're a public interest firm. I want to know, have you worked, have you donated time? Have you worked with an immigrant population? Have you worked on civil rights kinds of issues? So if you have, whether it's volunteer work or paid work, that's important to me. I don't care as much about your GPA and we don't require to know your GPA. We want to know if you're a person that is likely to be interested in work doing our work and if you would fit in with the people that we like to surround ourselves with. And that's a big part of getting a job is convincing the people in an interview that they would like to see you every day. That you are, you know, we don't want you to leave. You know, come back. Come stay with us. Have lunch with us every day. So part of it is putting your personality forward and I cannot stress enough about the cover letters. You know, like in my day, I love to tell stories, of course, about the early days when they were only typewriters. There were no computers. You had to type out every letter and if you made a mistake, you had to throw it away and you had to start all over. You took your resume to a printer because there were no real copy machines and they printed them, you know, and that was a long time ago. It's different now. And I do, you know, cut and paste is dangerous. It's a minefield. You know, make sure that you don't say in your cover letter to me and always do a cover letter. You know, it can be the basic one or you could have a public service one and a private firm one and a government one. That's not a bad idea. And then you just, you know, you just adapt within that. But don't tell me that you want to work at legal services because you've always wanted to represent, you know, indigent defendants in criminal cases. We're a civil law firm. We don't do any criminal law. You know, don't tell me that. What that tells me right away is that you're sloppy and it tells me that you're either totally sloppy or that you haven't even pulled us up on our website to see what we do. Don't, everyone has a website now. The law firms have websites much better than ours. Ours are really not good. But we do the best we can. But we have websites that tell us what kinds of cases we do. You know, it talks about our mission, our goal. Because I can tell you, or maybe you'll disagree, but every interview that I'm in and I'm in a million of them, someone's going to ask, why do you want to work here? Why do you want to work here? How can you answer that question if you don't know what we do? You know, and, you know, and if you have no public service on your resume, again, this is part of you're starting to advocate for yourself. You're going to be advocates. You have to learn how to spin it when you don't have the facts or you don't have the law. So if you have nothing on your resume, you say, you know, I've done all these different jobs and I've found them very interesting, but I realize that there's a lack in what I'm feeling inside and I really want to work with a group that is doing good and trying to help the indigent people that don't have access to justice. And that's really why I'm applying here today. Okay? That's going to get you over, you know, that hump. So plan it. And if you want to act it out, you know, but these are common questions. Why do you want to work here? You've got to know that one. Where do you see yourself in five years? That is another typical question. You're going to get that in six out of ten interviews probably. And it's not, even though we don't know, and I'm not a planner, I go day to day, but if you ask someone that and they say, I don't know, it doesn't inspire confidence, you know. Have an idea. Like I would like to make my career in working in divorce and custody cases. It doesn't mean you have to do it. Have an idea because you're going to change. And the other thing to remember is you're interviewing the employer as much as they are interviewing you. Do I want to work there? Or do I get a good feel when I come in here and I look at you, you know, and if you're all like sitting, if you're all sitting there like, you know, maybe you don't want to work there. If you know you're sitting there and the receptionist is like terrified and you know everybody, you may want to think about that, you know, and think about is this a place I would really be comfortable with. And my last, this is another bad story, but somebody came in for an interview and we always do group interviews, which are a little challenging, I know. We have five or six people doing an interview and this woman came in with a big gulp and she brought it into the interview. You know, we have a little waiting room. It's not much, but it's ours. You know, she sat there. She could have left it on the floor. She should not come in with it, first of all. But she could have left it on the floor. But no, she came in all through the interview. She's not going to be gulp. She is not with us. She is not with us. Because we're judging, we're judging your judgment. That's a big thing. You know, you can be the smartest person in the world. If you don't have common sense and you don't have good judgment, I don't want you. I really don't. It's very important. My interview process is a little different because whoever I pick or whoever picks me, we're stuck together. I don't pawn people, I don't pawn my interns off on anyone. I expect that if you want to be an intern in family court, and I'm not saying you have to commit that that's what you're going to do for the rest of your life, but if you're going to commit to come and work, then you need to know it's me and you. So I like to know when I asked at the beginning who's from Rhode Island, I always try to find a connection with who my interns are. Whether you went to my high school, whether you went to Providence College, I went to Suffolk because the school wasn't even built yet, but I need to find a connection. I was a waitress, I put myself through college in law school as a waitress, so I have a great respect for anyone who's down and dirty, making a living, trying to get through the day. But I need to know that I can look across my desk and deal with you every day, and you can deal with me. And sometimes I let interns go, actually it's happened twice, and once an intern said they just didn't, it wasn't working out, which is fine, but because we're going to be working together all day, there has to be a connection between the two of us, because it's us. I do let them go to the other you know, the other courtrooms and look around, but I need to know what somebody I can work with, so you know, I ask questions about Sam, what do you like to do? I'm a huge basketball fan, so you can talk basketball with me, you're good. But there's a lot more to just being in that courtroom or being in that office, there's a lot more to that, and I think that's what you need to know in terms of the dynamics of any office that you're going to work at, you've got to know what's going on and what you can bring to the table and what your expectations, what the expectations are going to be. But I need to know when someone comes in for an interview, I usually get a packet from the internship program, they'll send me a packet and I'll look at what they've handwritten out, every once in a while I'll get a nice cover letter from someone, I'll get a typed application, they automatically go to the top of my pile, because they put that extra effort in, and it doesn't hurt if people try to find out about me before they get there so we can talk about it, or they ask me questions when we sit down and talk, I think that's important as well, but you know, show up like you're going to work and not to the movies or a prom, because some people show up all dressed in their best costumes. But I just think that half the battle is getting there on time, having your head in the game and having the ability to really work and meet the expectations of the person who's directly in charge of you. Can I just say something? You remind me of it. Don't be late for your interview. People are often late for interviews, and that kills me. My office is in downtown Providence, it's a medium, small city. You know, oh, I couldn't find a place to park, that's the most common thing. Just surrounded by parking lots. We are, but also plan that. You know, if you don't know where you're going, I got lost. I've gone places on the weekend before I'm going somewhere and just drove around to see where it was. So I would know, because you're nervous when you're coming for an interview. So, make it easy for yourself. Give yourself plenty of time, know where you're going, have a plan. If you're going to park on the street, have quarters, although now they have the swipe cards. But do that. Don't be late for your interview. You can overcome it. If you have a terrific interview, you can overcome it. But if it's just an okay interview, that's a problem. Yeah, one more. This process that you're going to go through, you're going to be interviewing at lots of different places. And you may get a job in one place and have pending interviews in the other places. My advice to you is go to those interviews. Don't call the firm the day before and say, oh hey, I took a job here. I'm not coming for an interview. Because it's just bad form. And we spend a lot of time interviewing. And when we do that time, we're not making money or working for our clients, which is our two primary goals. So when I've got someone coming in and they're like, oh, I got my job. I'm not coming to see you anymore. Because when am I ever going to run into you again? Well, I guarantee it. And I think that goes back to being on time. It's just sort of being conscientious about it and being respectful. And this is where it goes back to the start. It's being respectful of the profession and who you're interacting with. Just one other point. You guys are really lucky to hear from a judge. And Judge Bernard, I've never met her. Judge Bernard identified earlier. I don't like it when you come and dress casually, when you've got flats on. My strategy for that is, if a judge is noticing what you're wearing, that judge is not paying attention to what your argument is. And you're hurting my heart, our chances of winning. So it's really important when you hear from judges and from employers and whatnot, and they're telling you these things, to think about it strategically. How does this affect my job? How does this affect my interview? How does what I'm wearing make me stand out in a way that what I'm telling them is not getting across? Because none of us are hiring for some kind of glamour magazine or something. We're hiring you for your mind. We're hiring you for your experience and how you're going to be as a lawyer. So you need to think of it strategically in terms of, I want my presentation to be myself. What I am and what I'm about. Not what I've got on, because as you can see, and I've experienced this too, it can be a real distraction and it can distract from what you're trying to get across. Although I will say, there is a lawyer that is in Janet's office, who's in front of me now every day, love her. She has purple hair. And I said it the first day, I said I love your hair. I'm very casual, but I'm very approachable. And I feel like casual. And I said to her, I love your hair. Great done. I thought maybe she might be uncomfortable or self-conscious about it. And I said, I love your hair. That was it. That was the end of it. I passed it. And she's a wonderful lawyer. She does a great job. So don't feel like that's necessarily a problem. I love individuality. I'm fine with that. I get distracted sometimes with things like that, only because when I was a lawyer, I was very self-conscious about making sure I was dressed appropriately. A lot of the older judges, and when I was practicing, they were two women on the bench. They were horrified if you wore pants. They were horrified if you had too much makeup on or if you had a nice hairdo. I don't think the older judges really got it. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with the individuality part. But as long as I know that you can come and hit the ground running, that's bigger to me. Yeah. I don't know that I'd recommend purple hair right now. I'm going to put that out there. It was a nice breaker because I said, I'm going to see what you got. So let's say now they have their job and you get your first work assignment and you don't know where to start. So what advice do you have in terms of work product, how to take a work assignment in a way that is effective? How to establish appropriate communication styles with supervisors? Things like that that maybe these students have multiple supervisors. Maybe they're reporting to more than one person and how do you manage those types of relationships? If you have any advice and insight on how to professionally manage those scenarios would be appreciated. I would say the first thing is if you're giving say a writing assignment you know maybe to analyze a statute or write a memo in support of something. The first thing you want to do is put some time into reading what the assignment is. Making sure you understand it. If for example a statute is involved read the statute. Find the statute. Read it. Read it so you understand it because what is not good is when you go like you get the assignment and ten minutes later you go back into your supervisor's office and you say well I don't really understand how this works and the attorney will say well did you look at the statute? Oh. No. Go look at the statute. So anything that you're given try to figure it out yourself. I still have lawyers who come into my office and say what does the rule say about this? I said go look at the rule. Go look at the rule then come back. If you don't understand it we can talk about the rule. So look at your sources before you start. I think it's helpful if you don't know you have to go ask questions. If you really don't understand what you've been assigned or if you start one way and you find no information or something you really cannot just sit there all day and then at the end of the day go back. No I really couldn't find anything. I really you know had a problem. But if you can if you're making progress and you're starting to work you know do an outline or something so if you have more than one question you can kind of bundle them together so that you're not always going back into the supervisor's office every 10 minutes. You know wait that hour that first hour and say I have these three questions what do you think I should do here? Something like that. That's very helpful. I have a law student now who's the third year who's been with us. He came back for a second year second semester because we loved it so much and he had a difficult client at court recently that was saying all kinds of crazy things about her lawyer and him and everything and he came back and he's never talked to me before about we do time you know we keep time and we have case notes and we do everything we have to do. He was wondering how much of that to put in the notes and I thought that was such a mature time to do that he came in and he didn't just put it down or leave it out and we talked about it and it was a good learning experience for him talking about his relationship with the client and work product and we talked about all those things. So you know reasonable don't be ashamed if you don't understand something don't feel bad if you don't there are many things I never understand you know I have a problem we all have some problems especially at the beginning you know it's new and we all know it's new for you and we want to help you know we really want to help but try to package it in a way that works for you and for your supervisor so your supervisor can be getting some of their work done and helping you at the same time so that's what I think certainly the intern is there to help me but I really think my role is to help you so when I get an intern sometimes I will give them their first assignment for them it's not for me because I've been doing this for 30 years I kind of know what I'm doing but I would give you an assignment so that I could see how you do and how you react if you're going to ask me questions if you're going to you know go up in your very you know an independent researcher and you can put it all together but I love the questions I love being asked things I love to be able to have that dialogue but I think a lot of it the first couple of times I'll give you a research project or I'll give you an assignment it's to see I want to know how you work you know you may want to work very independent and go up to the library and I don't see you until 4.15 in the afternoon and that's fine but there are some that like to come back every five minutes and I don't have that kind of time so I try to get those ground rules at the beginning but I think it's important that you ask the questions you're there to learn we're there to help you I'm paying it forward because I had the benefit of doing that with my dad and he taught me every day and I love to help the young lawyers that come in and I certainly want to help the interns that's what you're there for I know you don't know everything this is kind of building on what you're learning here so that when you get out you're that much far ahead of everybody else because that's kind of what it's all about if you can do a you know you're looking for a real job after you passed the bar and you can say I was an intern and I did all these writing assignments that's perfect that's great for you to have a little portfolio and I think the more of those you can do and the more energy you can show to me that you're willing to do it and build that for your resume I think it's kind of a win-win I think I agree with everything that Janet and Karen have said one thing to keep in mind there are actually two things one is you can have multiple different supervisors our interns and associates tend to work with different partners partners they're people we're all different we all have different styles we're trying to get to the same results but we approach our practices in different ways and so the trick of it is you've got to be able to adapt yourself to working with each of these different partners and that I can tell you from doing it myself and then from being on the other side it's very difficult and it takes a lot of hard work to be able to sort of predict here's how this attorney wants it and here's how this attorney wants it it may not be the same the second thing is for as much as I enjoy having the conversations I'm really into the things we do I love the law that I practice and I like discussing it with people and I like having the structured process I also have this busy practice and I've got a lot of cases and I've got a lot of clients and a lot of people calling me you need to understand that there are boundaries and sometimes it's not a great time to come into someone's office sometimes they're busy, they've got a phone call they've got a really bad client maybe they have a really bad case coming up being able to know when is a good time to ask a question is really important often times with law firms and legal services that people have assistance the person to get to me any hour of the day is my assistant she basically runs my entire life and you should talk to her before you would talk to me and I know from working in court clerks are a goal because you always want to talk to the clerk first does judge so and so have time for a conference what do you think and the clerk's going to tell you hopefully this is not a great day maybe we can push you to the next day my assistant is the same way she would say you know what Sam's going to have a really bad afternoon he's got this call at 1 he's got to go to court at 3 why don't you send him a calendar invite for 10am the next day I know he's got nothing on his calendar so being able to recognize that there are times when not to get involved with your supervisor and there are times when they want to talk to you is going to make a huge difference in your internship we kind of skirted around this before but I just want to bring up another good concept for you to remember at all times which is confidentiality which is client confidentiality I don't think we've said enough about that when you go out you're going to like I think Karen said before you're going to see things you've never seen before you're going to be sitting in courtrooms or in a deposition or wherever you are you're going to want to come back and talk to your friends or fellow law students about it and that's fine you can talk about the issues talk about the case do not use names obviously that should be very basic do not tell too many even in telling the story do not use too many identifying factors that somebody could know what that case is about this is Rhode Island and even though maybe some of you are going off to work in Texas the legal community is a small community we always tell people our students in like because we go over to the Garahee building every day we have maybe 10 lawyers over in the Garahee every day do in district court and family court do not discuss anything in the elevator do not you know if you're in the coffee shop downstairs and it's a kind of pitiful coffee shop in Garahee but people sometimes sit there you know if there are people sitting right right next to you do not discuss anything you really have to protect your clients confidentiality at all times and I'm going to say again Facebook you know Twitter text messages do not be talking about I was in court today and you won't believe what this woman did you know don't do it you're going to spend a good part of your your attorney lives in the near future dealing with your clients telling your clients to get off Facebook and telling your clients to stop texting you know pictures of themselves in inappropriate settings to the opposing party because guess what that's going to come up and they all do it even if you tell them 10 times they all do it they can't help themselves see oh my god you know people in a custody fight post pictures of themselves lying drunk drunk on the floor with bottles around it not good even mothers in law now and other parties they know enough to look it up you know there's a movement that says especially in family law that it's almost malpractice to not check out the opponent's Facebook page and their twitter account and any other social media they have because it will all be used against your clients and it's going to be your job to keep them off of yourself don't put anything up there that could get you in trouble I was down here before with someone who hires for the city of Providence and she was telling the group that she goes on Facebook before she hires anybody and tries to see what you all are putting up there if you have crazy stuff on there and she has someone in her office and they said they asked to friend you and you know a lot of people just say sure there it is and don't put stuff about the terrible interview you just had or you went to a law firm and I would never work there with those assholes don't do it someone's going to see it and they're going to tell them I'm sorry I search everything I google anytime I get a new case in I google the name of the plaintiff I check them all out on Facebook I will do some LinkedIn research except not a lot because often times LinkedIn will tell you hey so and so I was looking at you I don't want anyone to know I'm doing that I will know as much as I can about a plaintiff or a defendant on a case and their counsel I want to know everything I can because I need every single advantage I can get and I can guarantee you the clients that I represent that people have googled them and they've read all the nasty terrible things about them on all these stop whatever pay they've seen it all so I need to know all that information too going in and I also need to know if you're a candidate interviewing what's going on you know what are you up to what are you into in your personal life what do you like to do and I don't really care all that much about what you're doing but it is important as an attorney because we're into sort of unconventional marketing these days where people are hiring lawyers after they look them up on the web we want to make sure that we as lawyers in our firm have what I would consider a clean Google search so that your law firm page comes up maybe your Martindale Hubble there's going to be some silly Avvo profile there's still something about my wedding because it was like on the not.com it's you know but yeah we so be careful what you do out in social media that's the first thing because it all is recorded and the second thing is understand that when you become a lawyer and you guys are all kind of what your sort of baby lawyers right now when you become a lawyer you know you've got this heightened level of professional responsibility and it is going to extend to your professional life and unfortunately it's going to extend to your personal life and there are personal things that you do that can get you in trouble with disciplinary counsel with judges so you've got to be wary of it it's a sort of a necessary step that you have to take except that Twitter, Instagram, Facebook all those others have privacy settings and nobody ever uses them I'm on all of them and if you want to even get on my page you have the friend request me go XXXX so I have like my kids who I stalk on Facebook right I stalk them but I have family and friends on it I don't have other judges I don't have lawyers so there's privacy settings so if you're going to do something that you don't want everybody to know about just put all your privacy settings on it's that easy but they don't do it and I guess it really goes beyond just family court any client you have anywhere you have to kind of do that like every lawyer now when we do our monthly ins and court meetings that's one of the social media somehow makes its way into every topic we talk about because that can really hurt you I had a case recently where no your office doesn't have the mom I just did a termination of parental rights trial and the mom and the father of this baby have had restraining orders domestic violence you name it even with all of that she had another baby with this guy so clearly they broke it for at least 5 minutes and she now has a baby so I say that in court too that's just the way it is so for 5 minutes anyway they violated that restraining order so now she's got this baby the father is prohibited the baby guess what somebody from CASA the court appointed a special advocate went on to her facebook page and lo and behold there's a whole spread of her the baby and the father together while we're getting ready for the trial so nothing shocks me anymore and the picture was worth a thousand words and it's also worth losing your child I mean that was one of the biggest reasons why I terminated her parental rights so that's what you need to be aware of not only for yourselves but for your clients going forward just a couple more follow up questions so often times when you are new to an internship you might make mistakes and you'll get called out on those mistakes so I was wondering if anybody had advice on how to best handle and take accountability for mistakes that you make on the job as you are learning any thoughts you know obviously acknowledge the mistake and make a statement that you are sorry and you will make sure that it won't happen again and then just keep doing your work keep your head down and keep doing your work don't keep coming back and saying you know I just want to know I really am so sorry that I really did that you know that's not necessary and then after a while you say don't hide it but you will make a mistake but don't hide it acknowledge it if you see it don't text about it you know wait go in face to face say listen I think I made a mistake here you know and you are going to be supported because it's in all of our best interest to support you because you are representing us and our clients so we are not going to throw you under the bus we are going to try to help you and learn from that everybody makes mistakes I am guilty of it as well whenever someone makes a mistake the first thing is tell someone tell your supervisor tell whatever you need to do as soon as you know about it because hopefully at least the way I practice is my first response is not going to be oh my throwing things everywhere and yelling and screaming my first response is okay how do we fix this let's fix this first what do we need to do to make sure that whatever mistake was made is corrected that we are still representing our clients to the best ability and to the extent that we need to disclose this to our clients do we need to take it off the bill do we need to tell them what the error is explain how we are fixing the error we are going to get that done first okay then when we fix the mistake and everything is okay with our client with the court with whoever then we will talk about alright what are we going to do to correct that next time and we are going to do that in a constructive conversation because you will have spent so much time with me fixing that mistake that I will have gone down from nuclear back to you know on my usual self but the point is you all will make mistakes I've made plenty of mistakes it's how you correct the mistake not how you say I'm it's good to say I'm sorry I really appreciate that but it's what you are going to do to fix that mistake that makes you a lawyer in my eyes it's only a mistake if you don't learn from it so if there is something that happens and it's corrected and it doesn't happen again then I'm fine with that for my interns I'm not giving them anything that's life or death we build on that stuff so I'm not giving you something that if it's a mistake it's going to be the end of somebody's life but when I have lawyers in front of me again, reputation precedes it's a small bar, it's a small state there are lawyers who come in front of me that I almost have to second guess and ask more questions about what they're saying to me because I don't always take them for their word and then Janet you know what I'm talking about there are lawyers who on a handshake on something they say you can take it exactly for what they've said there are others who for whatever reason feel like they need to either build up their client or make some representation you're an officer of the court so if you're in front of me and you say something that you know is not true I am going to call you on it and I might call David Curtin disciplinary counsel and tell him about it and that's happened twice I've only been on the bench almost six years and twice I've called disciplinary counsel to report lawyers who in front of me made a statement or made a representation or did something on the record that was false and that they knew was false that's a problem for me and if a lawyer comes in and says I'm sorry I misspoke and again especially well I guess in every court but in family court you only know what your client tells you until you have something to back it up so I know that you're advocating for a client and it's what they've told you most times you don't have independent information you have to rely on that and you can represent what the client says but when lawyers get up and start giving big speeches and making representations that they can't back up and that clearly aren't true that's where I have the problem that's not a mistake that's a calculated move that a lawyer made and those things will get you into trouble that might be a good segue into three more things that might get you into trouble so we just want to make sure that you're aware of the actual rules that you want to be aware of before you start any internship and Janet talked a little bit about confidentiality and then there are also going to be conflicts of interest that you need to make sure you disclose as well as the unauthorized practice of law so we want to make sure everybody is aware of what these mean in the actual practice so I know Sam you've had a lot of experience with this if you'd like to talk about it or obviously anybody on the panel but we just want to make sure you cover your asses so to speak the big thing with the rules of ethics and you guys are all in professional responsibility class the most important thing is to be able to recognize when you have an ethical situation because there's this whole thing called the rule book that you can read and it will tell you what to do beyond that there are three main things confidentiality you're going to hear information you're going to go work in a law firm you're going to work in legal services wherever you're going to work clients are going to come in with you and the lawyer you're working for anyone else you may hear something that is absolutely amazing you may be sitting in the room with some representative at Hasbro that discloses to you that they just manufactured 10 million Barbie dolls that have defective hair and it's going to be this huge lawsuit and you're going to go oh my god that's amazing you're going to walk home, you're going to walk in the door and you're going to start talking, no you get confidential secrets you may not disclose them and I know it will be frustrating we literally did not talk to one other for like five years now we have kids you can complain about that conflicts of interest you may not represent a client in a matter that is adverse to an existing client's interests that's the basic rule there are other sub parts to that rule in specific situations of conflicts of interest particular to you and in Rhode Island it's a small jurisdiction you hear something, you may see something and you know about it you know someone about it your mother's involved with it you've got a brother that's involved in it it may not be a conflict of interest it may be nothing but if you hear something and you're practicing somewhere and you think jeez I think I know that person talk to the lawyer talk it out between yourselves and decide whether you truly think it's a conflict of interest there are rules that you can refer to to use all the time lastly, unauthorized practice of law you cannot practice law until you're sworn in there are rule nine exceptions I don't, there are the rules but beyond that you may not provide legal advice you may not sign a pleading you may not appear in court and make representations to a judge the judges don't know if you're a lawyer or not there isn't this thing over your head that says lawyer too bad you may be in a conference room where you're the intern you're with an attorney let's say the attorney walks out of the conference room and the client is sitting there with you and the client says to you hey what do you think about my case I'm very sorry I'm a law student I'm a legal intern this summer I think that's a question that you probably don't want to ask when the attorney comes back let's wait for him or her to come back totally respectful now you may get a question like hey where do you say I'm a legal intern talk to me but just be mindful of the fact that you may not provide legal advice and don't worry once you take the bar and get sworn in you'll have plenty of opportunities to provide legal advice but until that time the lawyer provides the advice and here's the thing in any situation you know we hire interns and jans people in the court they're going to ask you for your legal position they're going to want to know what you think and there's nothing about being licensed as an attorney or not it prohibits you from actually researching a legal issue and presenting it to your supervisor you just don't get to present it to a client until you're licensed I've just been appointed to the Supreme Court's Committee on unauthorized practice of law so be careful don't get yourself into trouble before I went on the bench well for six years but for the last three judge I was the chairperson on the Supreme Court Disciplinary Board which was the overseer of complaints that were filed against lawyers those three things are always the biggest confidentiality conflicts of interest and unauthorized practice of law those are all big things that can get lawyers in the jackpot the others money and that's a whole other story but for the majority of the complaints they're you know breach of confidentiality or there's a conflict you might have represented someone previously now you're going to represent a party that's adverse all those kinds of things and as a judge I have the responsibility like I said I've called the disciplinary board a couple times the judicial canon of ethics also requires me to rat out lawyers if they you know fall within one of those categories I do get people occasionally that come in that are either lawyers that have that are practicing in Rhode Island or don't have authority they may be suspended that still try to come back in and practice that's a problem that there are issues that believe me if you do the wrong thing someone will find out sooner or later and to build on Karen's comment I defended lawyers for a long time if you breach confidentiality or conflicts of interest that is evidence of legal malpractice so not only are you going to have to answer the disciplinary counsel your clients can sue you have we scared you enough? yeah it's the greatest profession in the world I have a son in college now I would never talk him out of being a lawyer well don't encourage it but I wouldn't talk him out of it but it's the greatest thing in the world anything you have a passion for do it and do it well and do it above board and you will be successful in my office you know it would be an interesting fact but I think it's careful you need to be careful how you address it so if it's like say you saw a certain situation in a family setting you know so you would say first of all I would start with I've been interested in this because I find that there's not enough in our case representation for folks in this situation and talk about it in addition you know I've seen this and personally I've been involved or I've witnessed something that makes me realize even more how important the representation of this class of people is so something like that I would not get into details I just would not but I think that could be for my kind of work and it's probably different for Sam but for my kind of work that is something that I'm interested in I like to know it's difficult because I defend banks and mortgage loan servicers and consumer class actually lost it but the reason that's not exactly something you're interested in but the reason I really like it is I really have this thing about real estate and I've always loved property and I've always my wife will tell you that I'm trying to sell the house like every day and so you could have some kind of interest in what we do and have a litigation interest I'd like to hear it I'd like to know because we like to hire people that are energetic and enthusiastic and if there's something about what we do it's good to know now that comes with a warning you better have the right thing on so if someone comes and says to me I just love I have this big thing about the powers of family and I'm really passionate about keeping families together and divorce is really troubling and I want to make sure everyone has representation here talking to me and I'm thinking well that's great but I don't do that I can't help you there nor does anyone at my firm the one intern that I did let go it kind of didn't work out for my interest I might want to be a litigator I'm interested in family law I want to hone in on my reading and writing skills that's great I want to commit that you want to work in family court the rest of your life because you may not want to but if there's some connection there that's great the one intern that I did let go I don't do railroad mergers so don't come in and tell me that you want to talk about all this big corporate stuff because that's not going to happen in my courtroom but if you said to me I just want to polish up my research and writing I want to be a litigator that's enough for me other questions I'd be wary of it because not everyone is LinkedIn and it may especially in law firms which are still kind of dinosaurs I think what I would tell you is you're better off having that information on your resume on a piece of paper that lands on the attorney's desk than say hey check out my LinkedIn handle you know and I have a whole LinkedIn profile in my firm we encourage it because we like our clients always looking at us on LinkedIn so they want to know our experience but when you're trying to get in the door and you're working on here's who I am do your best to put it on the resume because that's what really gets passed around other questions yes Colin I had Colin I had someone assert as an affirmative defense the doctrine of unclaimed hand that does not exist it's the doctrine of unclean hands now here's the problem the lawyer who dictated this answer in affirmative defenses did not review it did not review the affirmative defenses and the assistant who typed it out wasn't exactly affirmative defenses or whatever it may be that is a classic example of proofread, proofread, proofread you guys and I know this because we've got I'm not going to pick on millennials but I am a lot of millennials these days and one of the things that they like to do and I'm okay with it it's environmental conscientiousness they don't like to print stuff out because it's just wasting paper even though we're going to recycle the paper I promise they like to look at stuff on the screen and they like to edit on the screen big mistake in my mind because it's not until you print that out and read it to yourself and I think your writing instructors will tell you this that you're going to catch the mistakes every motion that I file that goes out and this is kind of crazy as well I read it out loud sitting in my office I mean people must think I'm nuts but I do that because that's the only way that I'm going to know I've got a great proofread piece and the last thing is give it to someone else to read because the more you go through something the more used to it you get and you almost internalize it to yourself like yes that's okay and you may not catch that grammatical or syntax error that you've made so acknowledging confidentiality and not sharing secrets it's always good within where you're working to share your work product with one another and to collaborate so that you get a good result anything I write that I consider important not just a run of the mill thing I give to another attorney and just say would you mind just looking at this because when you read it over so many times and I agree totally about paper and if I'm doing an important email I print that out before I send it because I want to read it and make sure because you've worked on it so long your brain puts things in there that aren't there and you really need to sit down and look at it and watch out for autocorrect watch out for words that suddenly are wrong and until you stop and read it you won't do it and almost always some will come back maybe just one thing say I just thought that was a little awkward or I didn't understand that particular you know it's helpful very helpful I don't know if you are all aware but the Rhode Island court system is doing e-filing so while federal court's been doing it for a hundred years we're just starting to do it I don't do it yet on my calendar they're going you know from the different calendars when I was practicing law there was one judge in particular who ironically I took his spot when he retired used to get a red pen out and he would read the motions that lawyers would write and he would circle them check mark asterix it's like I was in third grade and he would send things back he would give them to the lawyers and so now you knew when you were in front of that judge he read every single thing that you wrote and he's going to call you out on it so you live and you learn doing that once everything's e-filed it'll be a little bit different you won't be able to get the red pen out but the judges read everything you got to assume they're reading everything and you got to make sure that you spell check isn't enough auto correct isn't enough you have to read what you write because you own it you own it I had a partner I worked for years before years ago we had a trial in Worcester County Massachusetts and the judge we had a motion to eliminate on a piece of evidence and the judge issued a written decision and he sends the decision out and then the next day of my inbox was my partner's blue pen lining of the judge's decision and I want to tell my David you know I don't think the judge really cares about what you think about his grammar and syntax or what not he said no that wasn't for him that's for you and I'm like well I'm not the judge I didn't write this but what the point was is always trying to make sure that everything you do is the right grammar the right syntax everything that's involved and I agree judges read everything and you need to make sure that everything you give them has very good grammar and it goes back to what I said before you don't want them reading it's thinking oh my god look at that stupid grammatical error you want them reading the substance of it and ruling on your motion for the argument you think any other questions? I know that the sign-in sheet has been floating around so please feel free to leave it up here at the front with us and I did put handouts there if you are interested in the opportunities at Rhode Island Legal Services for this summer but I just want to thank the panelists so much for their time to come out here thank you have a great break