Summer internship

This internship was my very first experience in legal practice, my expectations were thus somehow vague. My main objective was to comprehend how law actually works, hence to explore the basis of functioning of a law firm, its advocates’ daily work and every other aspect that working in this field brings with it. Before the internship, I was not sure whether in future I wanted to become a lawyer or rather an official dealing with legal issues, so I was also hoping it could give me an insight into this and help me decide. I was aware from the beginning that it was not possible to learn everything about legal practice in a one-month-long internship, I therefore took this one as a starting point to my career – an introduction from which I will gradually progress to more difficult and complex experiences.

As a part of the plan to realize my internship this summer I have sent emails to several law firms in Karlovy Vary, my hometown, where I wanted to do it. I received a positive response from one of them, which I decided not to name and which generously offered to take me in as an intern. I was thus doing my internship in the Karlovy Vary office and my working hours were Monday to Friday from 7:30 to 16:00. Even though the law firm’s focus lies on a wide range of legal areas, I personally have encountered mostly family law, inheritance law, commercial law and criminal law.

I am glad I was so lucky to have done the internship at this very law firm, because it belongs among the biggest and most successful in Karlovy Vary. It possessed the capacity for me to undergo the internship and simultaneously promised an inspiring atmosphere. I have been mostly working with the legal secretaries and I have therefore been assigned tasks of a more administrative nature. However, administrative acts are inherently connected to legal practice and I am hence convinced they were very helpful and explanatory in making me understand how a law firm works. In summary, the content of my internship was working with cases under executions, searching in the online land registry, filing away clients’ records, correcting legal documents, helping with translations to or from English and occasional contribution with my knowledge of EU Law and International Law.

The tasks I was given were not too difficult to handle but I have learned a great amount of new skills at the same time. I had the unique opportunity to look very closely into how a successful law firm works and it was indescribably enriching. My expectations were not only met but I have experienced things I did not even foresee. Among everything else I must highlight the incredibly amazing and friendly workers of the law firm. They were always available to help me or to give me advice, they proactively sought the ways to pass new information onto me and created such an inspiring atmosphere, one I would once like to work in. Similarly, my learning objectives were fully met, I have, in fact, gained much more knowledge and new skills than I thought when setting out my learning objectives. One important realization this internship gave me was that I would not mind working in advocacy in the future and that I will probably, after finishing my bachelor in Maastricht, start studying Czech law degree as well.