The Reciprocal Nature of Effective Supervision and a Law Intern’s Role in It

"Managing" one's boss assumes that effective management is a two-way street in which common goals are supported on both sides. To serve clients well and to make the most of your internship experience, you must often be a positive participant in your own supervision.
 

For example, supervisors are not likely to know how you are doing, or even if you are learning anything, without input from you. Supervisors cannot resolve problems they know nothing about. This article addresses the reciprocal nature of effective supervision and your role in it.


In the sections that follow, you will learn how to be a participant in the supervisory process so that you can
 

• get feedback on your performance,
• benefit from both praise and criticism,
• get better assignments,
• prevent problems during a supervisor's extended absence, and
• make sound decisions about a supervisor's unethical conduct, if it occurs.

When it comes to knowing how your performance measures up, ignorance is definitely not bliss. Just as students need frequent suggestion; from instructors in order to learn and improve their work, interns similar benefit from the review and comments of their supervisors and coworkers. Instructional feedback in the office heightens your skills. It helps you gauge your progress toward the level of professionalism you want.

Supervisors, on the other hand, are busy people, focused mainly on their own work. Weekly review sessions with your supervisor are ideal but not all supervisors can meet with an intern that often. You may have to devise creative alternatives-things that can be done whenever your supervisor has a free moment. Here are a few ways to create opportunities for feedback from your supervisor and coworkers and then make it as easy as possible for them to respond.

Flexibility on your part is crucial to getting good feedback. Remember that internship supervisors are providing a valuable educational service for w hich they are not being paid and that your services may or may not compensate entirely for their investment in you. Your availability for a review session during non-internship hours, either in person or at least by telephone, is a small price to pay for valuable advice and comments.

The old adage, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" applies to your need for feedback. So, speak up! Ask for comments and suggestions. Create opportunities for others to see and critique your work and make it convenient for them to do so.

Being a participant in your own supervision means you are more than just a repository of whatever comments anyone happens to send your way. It means you share responsibility for the instruction you receive. Rather than passively waiting for praise or criticism to be offered, interns should actively seek and respond to both.

Getting Comfortable with Criticism

Student interns, like employees everywhere, tend to be so fearful of criticism that they sometimes go to irrational lengths to avoid it. Some pretend confidence in actions about which they are actually very doubtful. Others ignore or downplay mistakes, foolishly hoping no one will notice them. Both these approaches raise stress levels tremendously and can bring great embarrassment later.

Even more troublesome, some students divert useful criticism by blaming someone else for their error or misjudgment. Habitually resorting to blame signals an unwillingness to learn anything new from the experience-an attitude most supervisors regard with deep disdain.

Positive criticism focuses on your work product, suggesting useful improve-ments. Negative criticism, on the other hand, is an attack on your personality. If your supervisor does not know the difference, assertively shift the focus back to the work you are doing.

The honest mistakes of a conscientious intern are no cause for shame. Smart interns realize they do not know everything. They underst: id that mistakes are often a sign of growth and learning. Having mistakes pointed out and learning from them is precisely what internships are design ;d to do for you.

Constructive criticism is not "blame" but a form of evaluative comment or judgment that you learn from-a potentially helpful critique or analysis of your work. Encourage your supervisor and coworkers to use cril icism in this positive way by freely sharing problems and difficulties. Ask coworkers to critique your work, too. Try using words such as these:
 

• "Would you mind looking at this for me; have I missed anything here?"
• "Here's what I've come up with so far; tell me what you think."
• "Am I headed in the right direction with this?"
• "Is there another approach I could try?"
• "How would you suggest handling this?"
• "If you could improve on this somehow, what would you do?"

How you respond to suggested improvements is also important Saying "thank you" may be difficult when you have been told that what ou did was not quite right. But "thank you" is the appropriate response to helpful criticism. An appreciative reaction tells everyone your goals are to produce the best work possible and to learn all you can.

When you learn that your supervisor will be out of town for several days, act quickly to resolve the following issues:
 

• Who will be available to handle matters requiring immediate legal judgment? To avoid any hint of the unauthorized practice of law, you must have an answer to this. If you are not given a satisfactory answer, consult the director at your school without delay.
• Whose responsibility will it be to review and approve your work in the supervisor's absence? Will this person also contribute to your final evaluation?
• What steps have to be taken on client matters while the boss is out of town, and which of these require the supervisor's action or approval? Review current files and list upcoming steps that may cause concern. Be sure your supervisor sees this list before leaving.
• If litigation documents have to be filed in your supervisor's absence, what are the local rules on who may-or may not-sign court documents? Do not be left in the position of putting a signature to document that court rules may prohibit you from signing.
• Will you have enough assignments to keep you learning productively while the boss is away? Agree in advance on additional projects, just in case.
• Can your supervisor be contacted if an emergency arises? You will be much more relaxed knowing how to reach this person if you really need to. Ask for a phone number for reaching your supervisor if urgent problems develop.

Because supervisors may not be conscious of all the implications from an intern's viewpoint, you must assume partial responsibility for protecting your interests while the boss is away. Initiate the planning process yourself if your supervisor does not. He or she will be grateful for your intelligent foresight. With good planning, your boss can enjoy a much-needed vacation or take depositions two thousand miles away, with no loss either to clients or to your internship experience.

An office willing to expose its operations to the scrutiny of a local paralegal program is not likely to be involved in criminal conduct or unethical behavior. Many of your school's internship offices have already established a very positive track record. If ethical problems had been noticed, the offending office would undoubtedly have been removed from consideration. Most offices operate ethically in any event. So, chances are slim that you will ever find yourself at the center of an ethics storm.

Nevertheless, the actions of a lawyer or other coworkers sometimes raise doubts in an intern's mind. Questionable practices do occur, and every intern should be prepared to deal appropriately with such things if they become worrisome.

Your Ethics or Your Internship

In those rare instances in which serious misconduct is clearly apparent, an intern may have to make hard choices-and make them quickly.

An intern working for a solo real estate practitioner suspected question-able dealings between her supervising attorney and a local mortgage company with whom the attorney frequently worked. As the intern processed mortgage applications, she noticed that reports on applicants' income and assets had been inflated, making unqualified home buyers appear qualified on paper. Extravagant purchases and odd comments from her supervisor suggested that he might be receiving kickbacks from the mortgage company. Understandably, she became frightened. She went to her school's internship director and asked to be placed in a different office, immediately.

The school's director gave her two options: be placed right away in another office that might not be the best match for the intern's career goals, or wait and begin a new internship search the following semester. The intern opted for the latter, eventually interviewing for a fresh internship and mentioning nothing of the last one. A year after the incident, local newspapers were full of reports about the first internship supervisor, who was suddenly being indicted on multiple counts of fraud.

This was an extremely unusual situation, but the intern instinctively took the best possible action. If you are reasonably certain that serious ethics problems exist in your internship office, do what you can to get out immediately. Particularly if the misconduct is an ongoing pattern of activity, it will be discovered eventually-with or without your reporting it. You do not want your professional reputation tainted by association with unethical or criminal conduct.

Students facing serious unethical conduct in a supervisor should do the following:
 

• Get help from the internship director at your school.
• Quietly but quickly disassociate yourself from this internship office.
• Seek another internship office immediately, if that is possible, or begin a new internship search the following school term.
• Do not mention the troublesome internship experience to other offices. When interviewing for permanent employment, use your second internship experience as the basis of discussion.
• Cooperate fully with any law enforcement or investigative body that becomes concerned about the supervisor's conduct.
• Take pride in your own ethical conduct and in maintaining high standards in the paralegal profession.