MHC Intern Life: Jamie Lawless

For our next MHC Intern Life, we talked to Jamie Lawless. We asked Jamie to describe a typical day as an intern here.

A typical day as an intern with Mason Hayes & Curran rarely looks the same as the last, which is one of the reasons why I have enjoyed the experience as much as I have.

Mornings usually begin with a quick catch-up with my trainee mentor before getting stuck into some departmental work. I am interning with the Construction, Infrastructure and Utilities team, which operates in a wide range of areas including construction litigation, energy, and engineering projects. I have been fortunate enough to work in each of these areas during my few weeks in the department, and this has provided me with broad and varied experience while giving me a good feel for how the department operates. My tasks have thus far included sitting in on client consultations and adjudications, researching for an upcoming litigation case, and compiling a roadmap for Ireland’s energy grid connection policy.

As well as departmental work, our internship schedule has allocated time for a range of different talks and briefings with different members of the firm. These have included a talk about life as a corporate lawyer with Declan Black, a discussion with Kevin Cahill about presenting with impact, as well as a series of lunchtime briefing sessions with trainees and newly qualified solicitors. These talks and sessions have been extremely informative, and each has helped give me more of a flavour of life as a corporate lawyer at the firm.

On the less formal side of things, a typical day as in intern here often involves some form of social activity. A highlight of these was definitely our group bonding session in the first week, which involved a trip to GoQuest in Ballyogan and dinner and drinks in Paulie’s Pizza. We also had a pub quiz organized by the trainees which my team were blatantly cheated out of winning, but it was great fun nevertheless!

We interns have also been fortunate that our internship has run concurrently with WOW (Working on Wellness) month, during which the firm run a series of events to promote wellbeing and mental health awareness. Among these events have been a number of meet and greets, whether it be over free coffee or free smoothies and treats, which have allowed me to get to know people from other departments around the firm as well as catch up with my old colleagues on the Insurance & Risk team. Also, having free ice-cream down in the canteen hasn’t hurt either!

Finally, if the typical day in question happens to be a Friday, there are usually intern after-work drinks to be had in a nearby pub. This has been great for getting to know the other interns outside of the work environment and has definitely brought us closer as a group.

Learn more about our internship programme.