Our interns reflect on their time with Bizibody
Every year, Bizibody welcomes two interns from the Temasek Polytechnic Diploma in Law and Management final year cohort. This year was no different, but for the first time, we asked them to pen some reflections on the time we spent here. The following is what they shared…
Jordan Leong
When I first applied for an internship with Bizibody, I wanted to learn more about legal technology and the legal technology industry as a whole. I wanted to have a realistic view on it and truly understand what it meant to be in a company that promotes legal technology; and I am happy to say that I got exactly what I was looking for.
For the first week I was introduced to the legal technology we have and had training sessions on one of them. I became familiar with that software and started to use it over the course of my internship. From the fourth week onwards I was tasked with setting out the specs for software in development and eventually had to create a workflow for it. It was a new and refreshing experience as not only was I learning about legal technology through already existing products, but I was involved in the product development itself; and that gave me a different perspective on legal technology. It made me realize that the area of legal technology is still green and there are a lot of improvements and innovative ideas that can be made.
Technology advancements are only widely used by people and society when there is a revolution, a paradigm shift, in the technology that it becomes so essential for people to have it. Take for example the iPhone when it came out, or social media in present day. These objects have not only become a huge part of society due to the jump in technology. Likewise if we legal technologists want legal tech to become a huge part of practice, then we must too, take that huge jump. We cannot just look towards small improvements and expect the legal industry to change, instead we must change the way we view legal technology and truly work towards making law practices a better place.
Alexis Cooke
When our lecturers at Temasek Polytechnic launched the Student Internship Programme for our cohort and released the list of companies we would be able to apply to, I never would have guessed that I would end up securing a spot at a company like Bizibody.
Unlike the majority of my classmates, I could not see myself interning at a law firm so I was on the hunt for other companies that would provide me with exposure that would still be relevant to my Diploma but would also be different from the experience I presume I would have received had I interned at a law firm.
Jordan and I started our internship on the first Monday of September 2019. We were informed that that week was to be quite a hectic week as Bizibody was preparing to exhibit at the Tech.Law Fest 2019. I was surprised to find out that despite Singapore gaining a reputation for being one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, our legal system and practitioners are trailing far behind other developed nations in terms of the utilization of modern legal technology in everyday practice.
We were given a quick rundown of some of the products and solutions the company would be showcasing to guests during the event and prepared the logistics required for the better part of the week. On Thursday and Friday, we were given the opportunity to interact with and share our basic knowledge of the tech solutions to visitors from local firms as well as foreign guests.
The next couple of weeks were a lot less hectic and we got the chance to try our hand at corporate secretarial work. We had learned about drafting resolutions, annual returns and incorporation documents in our Corporate Governance & Compliance module in school so I found it very satisfying to be able to directly apply that knowledge to complete these tasks.
I would say, however, that the biggest and most significant chunk of our internship was spent on a process workflow automation project. In my opinion, this was the defining task of our internship as it was one that Jordan and I spent more than a month on. Our activities included conducting legal research, which included reviewing international laws, presenting these findings to the team, attending meetings with several external vendors with Managing Director, Serena Lim, and drafting the final workflows and procedures for the implementation program.
It was a little challenging to get into at first as it was a completely new area I never really knew existed but under the watchful and meticulous eye of the team here at Bizibody, we always had help, constructive feedback and were encouraged at every step along the way.
When I compare how involved we were in the development of this program, it made me look at my internship in a different light as I feel that I had truly achieved my two personal goals for SIP –
- I believe I helped to create something that would be relevant and useful for a law firm’s daily practice; and
- I feel that my entire internship experience was completely different from that of my classmates who went into law firms thanks to the Tech.Law Fest, the brief exposure to corporate secretarial work and obviously, the workflow automation project.
Overall, I think interning at Bizibody truly is one of the highlights of my three years pursuing my Diploma as I feel that I learned a lot about several different aspects of both my personal and working life that I think are important going forward. I gained exposure to what it’s like to work in an office and to manage my interactions with my colleagues and fellow intern; I learned about the legal system and practice through the various tasks we were assigned; I got to experience what the product development of a new software is like, and I discovered some strengths and weaknesses I did not know I had.
