Caution: Pressure Added

My job title is kind of interesting and ambiguous, to a certain extent. I consider myself to be a kind of freelance writer and editor for SEK-CAP. I have had minimal contact with my supervisor and the task was left open-ended.

Since legal writing is a serious matter, the document I revise will likely need to be revised once again by a licensed attorney. I only made the changes that I felt comfortable making. Without any background in legal writing, I felt cautious to make any executive decisions, but felt that I was sufficient in my work and completing my task, which was to update the Agency's by-laws to abide by the soon-to-be federal mandate for block grants made available to non-profit organizations.

To successfully and completely finish the job, one would have to be, in my opinion, a licensed attorney, which I am not. As an intern, however, I understand that my work will be gone over again and this was merely for experience. I feel like after law school I will have the appropriate qualifications to complete a task such as this with ease.

I have practiced both document design and technical editing, for the most part, during my internship. Before I really began, I edited the entire document and made the necessary changes to verb tense, clause agreement, etc. After making the changes and insertions that I felt comfortable with, I changed the layout of the document and inserted a Table of Contents at the beginning of the document, making it useful both as a hard copy and an online document by using hyperlinks on the headings.

In a sense, I thought I would have more supervision during my internship, but I understand the difficulty in finding an attorney willing to have a shadow. I had many questions about things like wording and whether or not to make a subheading for a new statute or to create a new heading altogether. It would have been nice to have someone in the same building to answer these questions, but again, I understand the difficulty that comes with that.

It was a great experience for me to work with a legal document that carries weight. One can edit and revise assignments all day and never feel pressure. When editing something that makes a difference and is used as a guideline, pressure is added in exponents. In many aspects, I didn't feel comfortable making some changes, but I can say that I did my best as of now. In three years, I feel my best work in this field will be much, much better.