Advice regarding the Work Experience section I've drafted

[keepmewherethelightis]

Hi!

After reading multiple threads on TCLA regarding the Work Experience section, I've drafted my entries for the applications. I'm posting the entry for one of my work experiences; I'd be grateful for any comments/suggestions on the draft.

"As an intern with ___, I worked with the Capital Markets and Banking & Finance teams. For the Capital Markets team, I drafted amendment deeds and addenda to information memoranda for numerous debenture trust deeds and information memoranda. I was provided with the base drafts of the amendment deeds and addenda for a particular series of debentures, which I referred to for drafting the documents for the other series. My work involved closely comparing and identifying the differences in the documents of multiple series with the documents of base series, and drafting the amendments accordingly. This required me to coordinate and communicate with the Associate regarding the impact of any additional clause/difference I was unsure about and accordingly draft the documents.

For the Banking team, I worked on an assignment for drafting a consolidated Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Consumer Due Diligence (CDD) policy for a non-banking financial company. The company already had four separate policies in place. My work involved researching and identifying the laws regulating AML and CDD policies in India.

I identified the clauses that were repeated in the existing policies of the company, and drafted a comprehensive list laying down whether these were mandatory clauses, and their requirements as per Indian law for inclusion in the consolidated policy. I also identified and made a list of the non-repeated clauses in the existing policies. This exercise intended to identify clauses not mandated by Indian law, to decide whether to retain them. Additionally, I tabulated the above research for being sent to the client and for ease of use in drafting the consolidated policy.

I also proofread Draft Red Herring Prospectuses, checked for cross-referencing, typographical and grammatical errors and carried out a due diligence of the Key Regulations and Policies section by updating the legislations included. I also prepared requisition lists of clarifications required from clients and researched on various propositions on banking law and company law."

Also, I had a few questions:

1. How many words should one entry of the work experience section be, for applications that do not lay down any word limit? Would around 350 words be too much if no limit has been prescribed?
2. (With respect to my draft) Have I included too many/too little details for my tasks? Also, when I mention that I researched on some propositions, would it be ideal for me to mention what the topic of research was? I thought of excluding that since it did not seem to be of a lot of use from a Grad Rec perspective.

Thank you so much!

 

[futuretraineesolicitor]

Hi!

After reading multiple threads on TCLA regarding the Work Experience section, I've drafted my entries for the applications. I'm posting the entry for one of my work experiences; I'd be grateful for any comments/suggestions on the draft.

"As an intern with ___, I worked with the Capital Markets and Banking & Finance teams. For the Capital Markets team, I drafted amendment deeds and addenda to information memoranda for numerous debenture trust deeds and information memoranda. I was provided with the base drafts of the amendment deeds and addenda for a particular series of debentures, which I referred to for drafting the documents for the other series. My work involved closely comparing and identifying the differences in the documents of multiple series with the documents of base series, and drafting the amendments accordingly. This required me to coordinate and communicate with the Associate regarding the impact of any additional clause/difference I was unsure about and accordingly draft the documents.

For the Banking team, I worked on an assignment for drafting a consolidated Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Consumer Due Diligence (CDD) policy for a non-banking financial company. The company already had four separate policies in place. My work involved researching and identifying the laws regulating AML and CDD policies in India.

I identified the clauses that were repeated in the existing policies of the company, and drafted a comprehensive list laying down whether these were mandatory clauses, and their requirements as per Indian law for inclusion in the consolidated policy. I also identified and made a list of the non-repeated clauses in the existing policies. This exercise intended to identify clauses not mandated by Indian law, to decide whether to retain them. Additionally, I tabulated the above research for being sent to the client and for ease of use in drafting the consolidated policy.

I also proofread Draft Red Herring Prospectuses, checked for cross-referencing, typographical and grammatical errors and carried out a due diligence of the Key Regulations and Policies section by updating the legislations included. I also prepared requisition lists of clarifications required from clients and researched on various propositions on banking law and company law."

Also, I had a few questions:

1. How many words should one entry of the work experience section be, for applications that do not lay down any word limit?
2. (With respect to my draft) Have I included too many/too little details for my tasks? Also, when I mention that I researched on some propositions, would it be ideal for me to mention what the topic of research was? I thought of excluding that since it did not seem to be of a lot of use from a Grad Rec perspective.

Thank you so much!

Hey! I think one aspect that can be improved here is the capitalisation of certain terms. Words like "Associate", "Key Regulations", "Policies" do not need to be capitalised IMO. Even the names of the practice areas do not need to be capitalised but I could be wrong here.

I also feel that you can categorise the work done into separate sections for example drafting, legal research and miscellaneous. You can then explain a few legal research tasks in one single paragraph, do the same for drafting related tasks and then another para for miscellaneous tasks like proofreading etc.

Regarding question 1, don't feel overburdened to hit a certain word limit if you can't do it without rambling and exaggerating. Some experiences need very little explanation and others require a certain degree of detail but again, it's totally your call to figure out which is which. If you worked at an NGO teaching children, then I wouldn't go into that much detail because it's pretty obvious that there is not a lot that you can do while teaching children, but for legal internships, I would definitely add some detail, much more than the NGO experiences but again, being cautious that I might bore the grad rec with too much legal jargon.

Q2. Again, once you feel that you have demonstrated enough legal stuff, I'd focus more on the overall takeaway from the experience. I don't have a conclusive answer but I think you're right in assuming that more legal jargon isn't really going to impress the GR team. So, I think you could probably finish your answer with a few transferrable skills that you feel aren't highlighted by your description. For example, if you think there is no statement in your work experience entry that shows how good you are at managing different deadlines, then feel free to add how you worked simultaneously with multiple associates at one time.