来自一个赴美高中生的见习报告

        2020年的夏天，一位赴美高中生在浙江安策律师事务所完成了她的暑期见习生活，让我们来欣赏她朴实无华的见习报告：

        Serena Tan

        7/30/2020

An Internship Experience At An Ce Law Office

        The internship experience at An Ce Law Office is one of my unforgettable memories in 2020. As a high school student, having an internship can often feel a distance dream. I certainly felt that internships were reserved for college students with years of serious academic experience under their belts. Surprisingly, Mr. Xu, a director of An Ce Law firm, offered me an internship position at his law office for two weeks.

        I started working at the law firm during the summer of my junior year in high school, typically spending seven to eight hours per day there. My first two days at the law office was apprehensive. Although I had experience working at a bank, being a lawyer is way different from being a lobby manager. It is widely known that lawyer is a job with a high barrier––––demanding adequate professional law knowledge, however, the only two things require me to become a lobby manager are mastering the basic financial knowledge and being patient. For the first two days, receipting clients was my primary task, as I had no legal expertise and could not really work with real sensitive documents. With each client comes, I grew a little bit more confident. Doing simple works like this makes me feel like an active member of the law office.

        After a few days, I received a more exciting task: sorting through client files and organizing them with orders. Most of the files I worked were closed cases, therefore, I could spend enough time reading them step by step, understanding what type of services my colleagues were dealing with. After another two days, my boss, Mr. Xu, gave me a new case about a disputation of the contract. Instead of giving me complete cases with all the evidence and conclusions, he brought me just the evidence part. He wanted me to think from four different sides for the conclusion–––defendant, plaintiff, judge, and jury. Even though I ended up concluding from a different perspective than the direction of Mr. Xu, I was fascinated by this way of learning.

        Sitting in the office, listening to the case descriptions from clients, and reading multifarious materials sound exciting to a lot of people. Indeed, keeping in touch with brand new cases and meeting with various people attracted me very much. Nevertheless, I gradually found out this job does not fit me the best. Lawyers are doing contradict things: the purpose of the job is to help clients protect their own legitimate rights, but they have to bound by their moralities. I do not wish I will be making decisions between a dilemma of whether exposing the truth or defending the clients for my own interests without justice. Although I know both of the defendants and the plaintiffs have their rights, I am still not able to run counter to my morality to defend. Maybe, I was just too timid to admit my incapacity when I am standing on the side of someone who I want to protect. Laws are established to protect the interests of the rich and used as bulletproof vests for them. Apparently, under most of the circumstances, human beings are all selfish. If there is a day I am facing the lack of physiological needs, I do not want to become a lawyer who only cares about his own interest but violates his ethics.

        I have shown the highest respect to Mr. Xu as well as my colleagues at An Ce Law Office, who are courageous enough to face the reality and stand firmly with the integrity of the professions. I do not regret taking this internship and I definitely do not consider my time wasted. Thanks to this opportunity, I had a more confident response to the inevitable question adults asked when I mentioned my future plan: “why don’t be a lawyer?”

        列夫·托尔斯泰曾说：“人生的价值，并不是用时间，而是用深度量去衡量的。”祝这份宝贵的见习经历能够你的生命中熠熠生辉。