Hello Everyone! It is the beginning of a new wonderful week. I am excited because this is week 9 of my stay in Washington D.C. Why am I excited you ask? This is because the number 9 is my lucky number and being a slightly superstitious person I can only expect good things this week.
However, this past week has been overloaded. My internship has keep me occupied and I am not complaining I would always rather be busy than bored. This week I was able to organize another lawyer’s office which as menial as that sounds is a relief for me, since I have to resist the urge to start organizing most of their offices as is. I also started working on sum deposition summaries for a lawyer so that way when his trail comes in January he does not have to read hundreds of pages of depositions. I know a hundred pages sounds like an exaggeration but depositions can last from 2 to 8 hours and with only 25 lines expressed on each page it is easy to see how a 2 hour deposition turns out to be at least a hundred pages. Often times, cases have more than one deposition this case has about 6 depositions so thankfully I will no longer have to worry about being idle at my internship. I also scheduled deposition prep and handled missed deposition prep. I also went to court this week! It was very fascinating to me because I was able to see one of the pro-bono attorney's Ali argue a motion for Summary Judgment. A motion for summary judgment is when the defendant requests that the judge moves to dismiss the plaintiff's complaint based on the facts gathered from discovery. Discovery is when the parties in a court case gather information by the exchange of documents and speaking to witnesses. I was very excited for Ali arguing one of his first summary judgments. He did an exceptional job especially since he had a "hot" judge. No, I do not mean that the judge was exceedingly attractive it means that you have a judge that has read the case over and has an abundance of questions. Just as if he had a cold judge which would mean that the judge has not read the case extensively over, which means that instead of answering the judges questions the lawyer would have to explain the case in greater detail. After, I went and saw the summary judgment motion I had to scurry over to the Office of Police Complaints and copy a file for Patricia. It was very interesting being in the office of the Police of complaints since it was all investigators and police offices scrutinizing complaints made by citizens to check their validity. Then before I knew it the weekend arrived! This weekend was my best friend's Bridal Shower and Bachelorette party. As one of her maid-of-honors I was obligated to go home for the festivities. This was thrilling for me because Shelly, the other maid-of-honor, and I had completely planned the two parties. Friday I finally flew out of Reagan airport around 10:30pm and arrived in Rochester, NY about an hour later. I stayed the night at Nazareth College and was able to see the club that I started called Wishing Well's first event. This event was a haunted house and I am an absolute scared cat! So needless to say even though I knew almost everyone in the haunted house I was still terrified. It went very well with 358 people turning out to see the event. The haunted house theme was an insane asylum taking place on the third floor of founders a dorm building that closed this year on campus. It was very scary with fake blood, scary hair, tattered clothes and glow in the dark paint. Needless to say I was very proud! Then the festivities of the bridal shower and bachelorette party went off with only a couple of bumps. The bridal shower only had one slight problem we forgot to buy bubble gum for one of the games we played. the point of the game was for the bride to be to answer questions about her fiancé and every question she got wrong she had to eat a piece of bubble gum but every piece she got right I had to eat a piece of bubble gum. Which left me to run (yes run!) down to the local dollar store and pick up bubble gum. The game went splendidly I was able to chew, with some difficulty, 12 pieces of bubble gum and the bride to be only had to chew 6 pieces. To be fair when we asked all the places the groom had traveled we had her take a piece of gum for every place she couldn’t remember so she really only answered 3 questions wrong. The only issue with the Bachelorette party was we had a broken DVD player that refused to play any sound. So we did the next best thing and narrated the movie ourselves which was just as much fun. The only serious problem with this weekend was I missed my flight back to DC! I know I should have been better prepared but I mixed up the times of my departing flight. I thought my plane left at 11:30am which was really the time my layover flight left for DC. But after some explaining to the airplane company they moved my flight to today at 6 A.M. After notifying my internship that I had missed my flight home and that I would not be in the office Monday I stayed with Shelly. Shelly was my hero of the day for offering to let me stay in her dorm room for the night and bring me to the airport at the crack of dawn this morning. But after several delays and a transfer later I made it back to DC at about 12:30 this afternoon. So I am grateful to be back in what has become my favorite city for what I am hoping is going to be an amazing week!
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As stated by the title, it has been a very busy week! My internship has provided me with plenty of work getting rid of my routine of bothering them for work to do. Which is as much of a relief to me as it is to them! What have I been doing? Well I can't wait to tell you! This week I called people to schedule deposition preparation. Which means that people from the Districts department are being deposed. We prepare them for depositions so that way they do not get stumped by a question or say any unnecessary information. There are also some tricks that the opposing side can play on the person they are deposing. One of them is asking them questions about their family and home life lulling them into answering without thinking and quickly, then asking them a question that is really important which can prevent the defense to make an objection and the depositionee from saying something that shouldn’t be said. Another reason we prepare people for depositions is because by the time these lawsuits are in place 2 or 3 years could have passed since the original allegation occurred. For someone to remember what happened 2 to 3 years ago is kind of blurry the first time you ask them but when they have time to think and deliberate on it they can remember and tell you what happened in great detail. Also this gives a lawyer an opportunity to learn more about the workings of a case from the people involved and not just the complaint. Today, I went to one of the deposition preparations that I went to. It lasted for 3 hours which is actually not a very long deposition. I was a little bored because the lawyer kept repeating his questions. Although, the opposing council who was questioning our witness was not very happy when the lawyer I was with started her cross exam of our witness. I mean obviously they would not be thrilled but they looked visibly angry, they huffed and sighed, frowned and ran their hands over their faces. One of the lawyers was texting under the table at one point which I though was very rude since I resisted my urge to doodle. However, switching gears I also completed an exhibit binder. An exhibit binder sounds, a little boring since I didn’t get to pick out the exhibits but putting the binders together is an important aspect of trial because if your case goes to trail you do not want to be flipping through a mass of paper looking like an idiot in front of the jury. The fun part was my little field trip to go deliver the binders to the opposing council. The original address they were at was on Vermont Ave. but when I got there the floor was filled with a podiatrist office. It turns out that his law office had moved to another building on Connecticut Street. So I brought the exhibit binder to his new office. Which happened to be one of the nicer offices I have been in while in D.C. I felt really proud of myself for being able to think on my feet and find the new law office. The advice to be flexible is something I have really taken to heart this week. This weekend I went to the zoo! So exciting I have been waiting for the shutdown to be over so my roommates and I could go. As an animal admirer I was so happy to see so many of them running around and playing. As you can see below the zebras in the first picture and the otters in the second are having the time of their lives. I even saw a mammal I had never seen before... A maned wolf! As seen in my slightly blurry picture below it looks like a giant, long, legged fox. I always enjoy myself at the zoo except when I go to the ape house the animals there always look sad. I think apes are smarter than your average bear, and want to live wild and free but then that argument could be made for most of the animals in the zoo. However, on a happier note my best friend from home's family came to visit on Sunday. I was there tour guide all along the monuments. Which was tons of fun because even though my best friend wasn’t here her youngest sister Christina was and this girl is a hoot. As seen in the picture below she was fascinated with all of the marble columns so when we went to the National Gallery of Art she couldn't help but running to the pillars and giving them a giant hug. Although, when I took this picture she ran and hugged the pillar a little too hard. But in true Christina fashion she rebounded quickly and ran off to hug the next pillar. So between work and play I believe I had a well-balanced week and stayed busy as a bee.
This week has been a bit of a blur. I started the week off by going to a law school fair. Which was fasinating it was exactly like a typical college fair only with law schools. As I mentioned in a presentation earlier this week I have been quite daunted by law school. The process seems so over whelming and it has put me into a slight state of denial and panic. However, I am starting to get on top of everything. At the law school fair I signed up for a practice LSAT's and received a bunch of information on several different law schools helping me to form a better picture in my mind of what is out there and what will work best for me. After going through what I liked and didnt like about each school I am feeling more at ease. After a busy week at my internship I had a pretty relaxing weekend. To update you all really quickly about my internship for about the past three weeks I have been writing a paper on breastfeeding. WHAT BREASTFEEDING?? I know that is kind of strange, but a case we are working on involves breastfeeding and the lawyer I was workiong for needed information so its the intern to the rescue. Its not as dramatic as that but it has kept me pretty busy. I was also able to sit in on a deposition prep. Which allowed me to see a deposition from the opposite side of the spectrum. Then my relaxing weekend was very nice I only did two exciting things. The first one is as you can see from the picture below is I saw the White House for the first time up close and in person. After seeing the white house I wandered around with my friends Nicole and Catherine we walked around in search for a cup of coffee that was not Starbucks. Not that there is anything wrong with Starbucks we just wanted something not name brand. An hour later we found a little stand in an alley in Chinatown called Coffee Alley. Sounds sketchy promise it really wasn't! This is one of the best cups of coffee I have ever had as seen below. Lastly my long Columbus day weekend involved thrift shopping. This was one of the biggest thrift stores I have ever been in. I was able to purchase a Blazer, my Halloween costume of a 50's housewife, and a sweater. So exciting! I love thrift shopping. Back home this is one of my favorite activities to do with my friends. One of my favorite purchases back home was a lime green print chair, which is now my desk chair. I have had a grand time this week and even though the shutdown is still going strong I am still having a grand old time.
Lastly this is a picture of a fun lamp I found in the thrift shop!! It finally happened. The government has shut down. As I mentioned last week my office has enough funds to keep on going for another 2 weeks. Well week one is almost done and the office has started to get a little bit tense. It started off with a meeting last week on Monday were my division met with the Attorney General and the Deputy to the Attorney General. I was a little late to the meeting because I was speaking with the Senior Assistant Attorney Martha about a project she wanted me to help with. Nonetheless, when we showed up to the meeting it was in full swing with the Attorney General laying out our plans for the next couple of weeks. As previously stated we have enough funds for the next two weeks and they are all praying the shutdown will end before our two weeks are up.
Now as an unpaid intern this shutdown does not really affect me because I do not make any money. Yet to several hundred people who are out of work, it makes quite the difference. I even notice it on my way to work every morning because the metro is not very crowded and the traffic is significantly slow by my apartment building. But back to work. After the government shutdown was announced on Tuesday October 1st several things changed when I went into work the next day after class. For starters I had an email informing me that 400 of the District of Columbia Superior Court had been furloughed. For those of you that do not know what furloughed means it is when you have to come in and work even though at the present time you will not be paid. This is when my office became a little bit frantic because we were running on a shoestring budget in order to stay open for the next two weeks. It became harder and harder for the lawyers to do their jobs. For example, in order to give a deposition you have to pay the court reporter coming in to take down the deposition. Also it the person you are deposing is and expert they also have to be paid for their time. The problem is the District does not have enough money to take down all the depositions that were planned causing several of the lawyers to cancel their depositions. Which puts a major dent in their cases and timelines to file court paperwork. As you can imagine this made several of the lawyers in my office very unhappy because they want to get things done and not have to delay there procedures. I noticed the lawyers in my office were not the only ones who were getting nervous or frustrated. The Deputy Governor was also going around and asking to have everyone's budget for the next two weeks. To see where people were allocating the remaining funds they had, and probably praying that someone would have some extra to distribute the wealth. As this past week has gone on there has been a growing fear among several of the office workers that they will be temporarily out of work. Guaranteed most of them are lawyers and are most likely not having money troubles but it does not mean they do not want to be out of work. Now I of course cannot speak for everyone I know some of the lawyers are a little bit looking forward to having a slight vacation, but they do feel guilty about others being out of work who really need the money. My main concern is at the end of the two weeks does the entire building shut down? If not do I have to go to work because I am not paid either way? These questions will just have to wait and see but hopefully the government shutdown does not last much longer and people can go back to work and being paid. |
AuthorMy name is Shannon McCullough. I have Political Science and Legal Studies degree at Nazareth College of Rochester. I have previously interned at the Office of the Attorney General for DC. Currently, I am studying my Masters degree in International Relations at Shandong University in Jinan, China. Archives
September 2016
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