Associate Trainees’ insights: what we learnt during our traineeship
Lieke applies for law students three times a year for Trainee and Associate Trainee programmes. Associate Trainee programmes are full-time and usually last for four months. In this blog post, Associate Trainees Elga Wagoner and Charlotte Åkerblom share what they have learned during their Spring 2024 traineeship.
Four months is a relatively short time, and especially as the traineeship nears its end, it is cliché but true to say that the time has just flown by. However, as the internship is full-time, the spring has been full of different projects, assignments and thus great learning experiences. Therefore we thought we’d share what we think are the most important lessons from our Associate Trainee period in Spring 2024.
Learning experience beyond practice borders. At Lieke, the Associate Trainee does not usually work as part of a specific team but performs tasks for all of the practices. As a result, the spring has included a wide range of different areas of law – energy, insolvency and employment law, for example. The work tasks have included for example legal research, translations and more mechanical tasks such as document management and collecting sources for arbitration proceedings. It has been particularly interesting to attend the monthly meetings of the various practices to keep a record of the discussions held on current issues and work situations. This has provided a good insight into what the day-to-day work of each team actually involves.
Time management and prioritisation skills. During the full-time traineeship, we have got to work on several projects simultaneously, but at the same time we have also had to deal with smaller daily tasks that have to be dealt with on a more urgent schedule. This has provided a valuable opportunity to develop our own time management and prioritisation skills.
Substance. During the spring, we have had the opportunity to work on a wide range of different areas of law, and some projects have allowed us to delve deeply into a specific legal issue. It has also allowed us to guide our own work and projects in the direction of our own interests. For example, Charlotte has a particular interest in dispute resolution, while Elga has a particular interest in energy law and public procurement. These preferences have been reflected in our work during the spring, and it has been great to delve deeper into our own interests and, on the other hand, also get to try our wings on topics that are more foreign to us.
Collaboration skills. The law students work closely together at Lieke. Work assignments are usually sent to a common e-mail governed by the law students, and often the work is carried out in cooperation with several law students. Some may have deeper knowledge of a particular subject area, for example through elective studies, a previous job experience or through bachelor’s thesis, and in such cases the answer can be found by a colleague in a fraction of the time that you would spend searching in Edilex alone. Additionally, Lieke’s hierarchy is very low, which allows trainees to work in closely in cooperation also with experts from different areas of the company.
Our internship, which will soon be coming to an end, has been extremely rewarding and instructive, and we can warmly recommend it to everyone. The spring has been filled with learning experiences, as well as numerous new acquaintances, shared lunches and after-works, and one winter day full of skiing and downhill skiing in Messilä. As a related learning experience, we would like to end this blog text with an “nice-to-know” -extract from the Public Order Act (612/2003) 4:14 §:
In order to maintain public order and security, the owner of a dog, or the person in whose possession the dog is, shall ensure that the dog has no access to a ski track maintained for public use or a sports field, unless this is specifically allowed.
(The police enforce the Public Order Act. Failure to comply with this obligation is punishable by a fine. The fine is EUR 40.)
Have a wonderful and hopefully sunny spring!
Kind regards,
Elga and Charlotte
