A Non-Law, Gap Year Student’s Experiences in Business Operations
- Kristina Akova
- Aug 5
- 5 min read
*If you are looking to learn how to improve your LinkedIn profile as a part of your application to Ravenscroft & Schmierer, please follow this link.
By the end of my first week, I’d translated a death certificate, begun recruiting candidates, edited four internal guides, and helped complete CDD (client due diligence) forms. As a recent high school graduate set to matriculate a year later, I had initially anticipated a modest role observing colleagues and completing administrative tasks. Yet, I was fortunate to receive projects from several departments - operations, compliance, marketing, and even legal.
Author: Kristina Akova, Intern
Core ‘Operations’ Tasks: Updating Staff Members’ Manuals, Completing CDD Forms, and Affirmations
One of the larger assigned projects was to review a set of internal manuals about the firm and its office. Five in number, these manuals cover topics from accounting procedures to internet safety to working during typhoons; I re-wrote some sections for clarity, added graphics, and designed diagrams to enhance readability.
My tip for interns who are assigned this, or similar tasks, is to focus on their audience and their needs (for example, busy lawyers skimming required reading). Simple and short sentences are easier to process than lengthy ones with multiple sub-clauses; likewise, frequent images and infographics further reduce mental load.
Other ‘back-office’ tasks I assisted with were filling out CDD (client due diligence) forms to ensure our clients are AML (anti-money laundering) compliant and affirmations of translations of official documents, such as marriage certificates. The latter involved accompanying the translators to nearby law firms, where they would sign a declaration certifying the translations’ veracities in front of a registered solicitor.
HR Responsibilities: Communicating Online and Offline with Applicants
I typically started my day with candidate-facing HR tasks such as writing emails, answering their questions on Microsoft Teams, LinkedIn, and email, and continuing their application processes. In the afternoons, I would interview candidates either in person or online. I enjoyed listening to their experiences at university and the activities they were involved in as it opened my eyes to career paths, opportunities, and points of view I had previously not considered.
Occasionally, I called candidates to follow up on their applications. Sometimes, this can be uncomfortable, but incorporating ‘phone etiquette’, such as thanking applicants for their time, using their names, and asking if now is a good time for the conversation can ameliorate such feelings.
Marketing Assignments: Writing and Editing Articles, Posters, Presentations, YouTube videos, and LinkedIn Posts
Creating posters and presentations is notoriously time-consuming, but time spent choosing colour schemes and font pairs can be decreased by selecting one of each and sourcing the rest from colour palette generators and recommendations on complementing fonts. Saving a template will help with recycling the design for future content, even if it takes a different medium. For practical tips on designing presentations, I recommend this video which my supervisors shared with me - I thought my decks were decent until I watched it and saw how much could be improved.
When collaborating with others, ensure all members of the team understand the divide in the workload. A common misunderstanding is anticipating someone will contribute, when they are under the impression they do not have to, so be as thorough as possible when discussing projects’ parameters and expectations.
Another recommendation I have for future marketing interns is to not underestimate the power of external feedback. Asking friends and family from outside the organisation to review posters, presentations, videos, articles, etc. is the best way to identify areas for refinement because they will have an audience’s mindset - anything that is confusing to them will likely also be unclear to the intended viewer.
Translations: Official Documents for Court Use
Translation assignments landed on my desk from the first week to the last; spending the first Friday morning translating a death certificate was a rather macabre (but thankfully not symbolic) start to the internship.I additionally translated birth certificates, bank statements, wills, etc., from German into English so they could be used in court. As they had to visually resemble the original, I discovered that putting the translated text into tables and playing with invisible borders and line spacings was most effective in ensuring similar alignments and line breaks.
Legal Work: Research and Drafting Responses to Clients
Despite my lack of legal background, I was fortunate to be trusted with foundational legal research. The challenges of responding to clients’ questions were twofold: uncertainty regarding how exactly to procure the necessary information and tight deadlines. While I resolved the former by asking colleagues for initial guidance and then checking next steps with Copilot’s suggestions, the latter unfortunately had no easy solutions. It did not help that my tendency to double-check conclusions drawn from the ordinances by researching technicalities and other government publications was also time-consuming, if helpful in preventing mistakes.
I navigated this dichotomy by pausing and asking myself “what exactly am I solving for” before opening a new tab to assess whether the information would be central to addressing the main point of the client’s question. If not critical, I then noted this side question and moved on, and mentioned these additional research points when submitting the work to the lawyer. As deadlines for interns tend to be internal, I returned to these side points when the lawyer thought they were worth pursuing and submitted supplemental research later.
Closing Notes: Gratitude for the Opportunity, the Colleagues, and the Lessons Learnt
Often, Business Operations interns are referred to as jacks of all trades and masters of none; this article certainly does not challenge the stereotype. I wouldn’t say that this is inherently not good: gaining exposure to multiple types of tasks can well be considered the purpose of an internship and I appreciate having been trusted with such a wide variety of opportunities.
Even though some of my responsibilities can be perceived as ‘un-intellectual’ or ‘grunt’ work, such work is not going to get done by itself and my four months here changed my outlook on careers, gave me a taste of what life after university could look like, and taught me the value of long-term goals, which I like to think are insights worth many times the actual production of the work.
It is fitting to end by thanking those who made all of the above possible: the colleagues
at Ravenscroft & Schmierer, each of whom welcomed me with open arms. Every staff member I worked on projects with were genuinely interested in hearing my perspective on the work, and helped me by not only providing guidance on the task at hand, but also by sharing career advice and their perspectives. I am grateful for their time and effort in sharing their experiences, life lessons, and wisdoms, and for the relationships established. People who are this generous with their attention, energy, and knowledge are hard to come by - I am so fortunate to have found a whole group of them in one place.
During a gap year between secondary school and university, Kristina Akova spent four months interning at Ravenscroft & Schmierer with the Operations team.
Kristina Akova
Intern
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