An Open Letter to my Claims Investigation Course

Dear Claims,

     I really do appreciate everything you’re doing for me right now. I’m getting some hands on experience with the more practical aspects of being a paralegal, and I imagine that such experience will prove useful once I enter the job market for that, my first, stage of the legal profession. So please keep that in mind as I say what I have to say right now…

    You are, quite possibly, the biggest waste of time and energy I’ve ever encountered.

    I know your feelings are a bit hurt right now, but let me try and explain to you how worthless you are. Yesterday, I stood out at the intersection of Meeting and Calhoun streets downtown, and painstakingly took notes on all the features of said intersection. Every tree, every building, every sign, the stop lights, the cycle of the stop lights, every bush, every curb, and every flag pole has been accounted for in my notes so that I may construct a detailed diagram of that, the busiest, intersection in Downtown Charleston. As I paced off the distance from the curb to the edge of the Holiday Inn, I cursed how useless this assignment was. I gained nothing from doing this. It was pointless. If I work for a lawyer, and he/she asks me to diagram an intersection for an accident case, this Class will have been no help in the process. I imagine that the lawyer would send someone who has done this before and then I would tag along to find out exactly what he/she wants – or he/she would give me explicit instructions – much like this assignmnet – and I would do it…for money. I spent 3 hours in the heat, and all I can say I got from the experience is a nice Flip Flop tan on my feet.

     I mean I appreciate having a class that offers such wonderful hands on experience, but I figure that I’m going to get most of that hands on experience as a paralegal. I can’t imagine any lawyer looking for a paralegal, and assuming that graduates from the Trident Technical College Paralegal program are fully prepared to do everything their first day on the job.

    The other courses that Trident has to offer are quite useful, however. Legal research was a good one. Those are skills that a lawyer does not want to have to teach his/her paralegals. Same goes for general knowledge. That’s stuff that is useful for paralegals to have coming out the gate.

   Busy work, however, is not useful. It makes me want to tear my hair out, and run repeatedly into a wall. One might say that that would be counter productive, but I’m not going to pass judgement.

   So don’t feel too bad, I’m sure it’s not your fault that you are a useless sack of crap of a class.

Love,

Daniel

~ by aeqvitas on July 8, 2008.