I am a solicitor apprentice, and I am currently studying at Northumbria University. My main duties at Evans & Co involve a combination of both legal duties and administration duties. As well as assisting on reception and answering incoming calls, I am often tasked to work on specific files within different departments to assist our fee earners.
Should you be interested in learning more about what a solicitor apprenticeship entails, please see below a typical day for Ella’s diary at Evans and Co.
Morning
9am – 9:30am – When I arrive, I check and print the emails that I have received overnight. I then review the work I have to do today and work out what is most urgent.
9:30am -11:00am – I then deal with the incoming post, rename it and allocate it to specific files on our case management system. It is vital that fee earners receive their post as soon as possible that day to help them meet deadlines and keep our clients updated.
11:00am -11:30am – Conveyancing is a large department within the firm and therefore we give our estate agents a weekly update on all the files that we have ongoing with them. We do this weekly with estate agents that we have a lot of ongoing files with. I usually spend some time each week speaking to the estate agents that we work closely with to maintain relations and provide an update.
11:30am -12:15pm- I reviewed a purchase file for completion and raised some additional enquiries to the seller’s solicitor that had been flagged from the searches on the property.
12:15pm – 1:00pm – Before my lunch I drafted a letter on a litigation file chasing a response from a defendant. The fee earner was dealing with a new matter relating to a property dispute. Once drafted, the fee earner checked the letter and gave me feedback.
Afternoon
1:30pm – 2pm – I regularly spend time on the afternoon drafting completion statements for upcoming completions. Completion statements are sent to our conveyancing clients towards the end of the process to show the breakdown of our fees and the money needed to complete their purchase of the property. Once I had drafted the statements, I then got them checked with our accounts department.
2pm – 3pm – A fee earner had been given a new conveyancing sale file and therefore asked me to verify our client’s ID, and to draft contracts to be sent to the buyer’s solicitors.
3pm – 3:30pm – I had an initial call with a client for a new file and then sent out his client care for him to sign. Client care letters are one of the first steps on any type of file as they explain our fees, the work which we have agreed to do and provide details of our policies and procedures.
3:30pm – 4:30pm – Last week we had a lot of completions and therefore I took this time to draft applications to register the new owners at the HM Land Registry.
4:30pm -5pm – I use the last few minutes of the day to tidy my workstation and put the files away that I had worked on during that day. I then make a note of the work I must do tomorrow.
Ella Goodwin – February 2022.