Internship at Ashfords ... An Advoc Experience

At Ashfords we are pleased to be able to offer internships to our valued Advoc colleagues. We regularly have interns working for us at various stages in their training, enabling them to experience firsthand the nature of working within an unfamiliar legal jurisdiction, as well as giving them the opportunity to build upon their knowledge of English legal practices and culture.

Through an internship at Ashfords you will gain a practical, working experience of English law, as well as procedures that may differ from those that you are familiar with.  You will be directly involved in the activities of the department that you work with and will be able share in examples of good practice while building strong professional relationships that could last a lifetime.

If you are interested in our internship opportunities and would like to request further information, please contact Simon Rous at s.rous@ashfords.co.uk

For some examples of recent interns' experiences, please see the feedback below.

"I worked at Ashfords in the main Exeter office to complete my traineeship as a German legal trainee. The law firm in Hamburg (Bernzen Sonntag Rechtsanwälte), where I had worked during my traineeship, arranged this contact via the ADVOC network.

During the ten weeks which I have spent at Ashfords, I was given the chance to work in three different departments - Commercial Litigation, Employment and Corporate.  This choice has given me an insight into a wide variety of work.  The staff were very helpful and friendly and I enjoyed working in such a pleasant environment.  I also had the opportunity to visit three of the other Ashfords' offices, in Tiverton, Taunton and Plymouth.

I am very grateful that Ashfords has given me the opportunity to work with them and I would like to thank all the staff there for their help and support and also for making me feel so welcome.
 
And as I have not been to either England or Devon before, it has been a good experience to enjoy another country and explore some of the beautiful landscape.

Johanna Kuster"

"Working with Florian Bachelier from AVOXA (French Advoc Member) gave me the opportunity to get a work placement at Ashfords as part of my training course.

Thanks to Simon Rous, I have been able to make a one-month work experience within one of the most famous law firm in the Southwest of England.

This allowed me to learn very important things:

• First, you usually put milk in your coffee. Well we don't frequently do that in our French coffee
• Second, you finish your working day at 5.30 pm (but this has to stay between me and you)
  

Let's talk about more serious topics although really fascinating.

I have been able to work on different matters and some of them were common with AVOXA. That was really instructive to see how you work on the same matter in diverse ways.

I have gained knowledge of English law but also practise knowledge and how solicitors treat a matter from A to Z including meeting, negotiating, drafting and so on.

At the end of the day you always leave with a lot of new useful skills.

If I had to summarize this work experience in a word I'll say "BRILLIANT".

I thank everyone at Ashfords for their nice and worm welcoming and patience to hear my French accent.

I hope we'll meet again.

Luis Freitas"