Good Morning. I’m Marcus Michles, and welcome to this week’s installment of our video blog. And you can look at all the past ones, if you’d like, by going to michlesbooth.com/blog, and we can talk more about that later, but I’m joined today by a very, very impressive member of our firm, at least temporarily, Tiara. Welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Ms. Jones is one of our law clerks. She clerked with us last year and again this summer. You’re going to be entering your third year of law school. Yes. You’re on the home stretch. Almost done. People don’t realize, but law school can really be a grind. It’s three years generally of intensive study, an intensive amount of reading and a lot of writing, and Tiara, you’ve managed to do quite well so far. Congratulations. Thank you. And so, first of all, tell everybody what it’s like to work at here at Michles & Booth, and you have to be careful, because the boss is sitting right here.
Well, working here at Michles & Booth is a really good experience. I can recall my first summer coming here. I was just getting out of my first year of law school. I didn’t know what it was like to be an attorney or what attorneys really did, because you don’t learn that your first year, and then I came back second-year with a little bit more knowledge, a little bit more attitude, and I feel like I’m getting all of the experience I would need for when I pass the bar and enter into this field. Now you’ve done a lot of work for us. You’ve done a lot of research behind the scenes on a number of issues. You also sat with us in a trial recently. How’d you like that? It was a very interesting. That was my first for void dire that I actually
Attended for a trial ever, and that was my really my first civil trial that I’ve attended. It was very, very interesting. I really enjoyed it.
For some of our viewers who don’t know, Voir dire is the selection process where the people are invited. Many, many of our viewers have been to jury duty, and you sit in a big room, and lawyers ask a lot of questions. You don’t have any idea why they’re asking those crazy questions, but Tiara, you might not know it, having seen just that one, but that one was a very unusual jury selection. We ended up striking for cause, I think, it was 28 of 35 potential jurors. You know people are just so opinionated. The process…I think you might gotten exposed to that…the process really polarizes people’s views; particularly when you start talking about pain and suffering, and you start talking about jury awards for what we call intangible damages. People are very opinionated, weren’t they? Yes, they were. Very outspoken. Some people in our jury pool said that unless it was an intentional act, unless somebody tried to hurt the other person, they didn’t think that person deserved any compensation at all. It was even for my, for my experience level, and I’ve been doing this almost thirty years, that was a very unusual jury selection.
Let’s talk a little bit about your resume. So you’re a Washington High School graduate. You’re a, you’re a local girl, and you went to University of South Alabama for your undergraduate experience. You made it through that in about five years because you changed majors, like everybody, and now you’re at Southern in Louisiana going to law school, right? How, how do you like that?
I, oh, I love Southern. It’s actually my HBCU experience, because South Alabama was not a HBCU, and so, coming from an institution such as South Alabama where you had this, you know, really, really big, big campus and these really, really big buildings to Southern which they don’t really have as much as South Alabama, you know, did and the amount individuals in the classroom that are African American. It’s a really, really good me experience that I’m experiencing, even though it’s in law school, and I love it. I love Southern.
Now you intend to complete law school this coming year, and I think you plan on taking the Florida Bar after that. What do you want to do? What kind of law do you want to practice? Do you know? Oh, yes! I think, in the years of law school, I’ve kind of grown to love the personal injury. I really do. I was actually…I CLEP’d my Torts I class. I really do. I was actually able to be the teacher assistant a couple of semesters ago, and I proctored exams. I proctored midterms. I taught the students. I helped them with their duty-risk negligence analysis in Louisiana, so…
You know it’s hard to break into personal injury without having to work for insurance companies and do defense work. Do you think you’ve got that in you? Um, yeah. I think I do have it in me. I’ve been on a lot, a lot of depositions. I’ve probably gone on like 12 to 13 since I’ve been here now with Adrian. I’ve also gotten a lot more client contact this summer that I’ve been working here, and so, I can kind of, you get a feel for what issues you need to me spot and how you would need to defend your client against a defense attorney by some of the questions they ask in depositions.
Well, we wish you the best of luck, continued success, and appreciate all that you’re doing here and the work you’re putting in here this summer. We’ll look forward to watching your career and seeing where it takes you. Thank you.
For those of you that want to learn more, you can go… You’ve got a bio page up. You’ve got a lot of information. You can call Tiara and ask her what she really thinks (laugh) if you think the pressures of sitting with the boss might have shadowed that the truth, but…well, if you have any questions or suggestions
for us on our video, just give us a call. Let us know what topics you’d like to have us discuss, and we’ll take that to the to the camera.
We’ve never mentioned Blake before, but he’s the guy behind the camera making it all happen. We want to give our are shout out to Blake Hodges who does all the video work, and puts this all together and, if you have any questions about that call him. He’ll put you on the video side of the camera and let you know what it’s like.
In the meantime, we’ll see you next week. Thanks! I’m Marcus Michles and joined by Tiara Jones. We’ll see you next time.
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