associate, enforcement Review

Honestly, I felt like a bit of a burden. At no point was I handed a project, so to speak, and told to complete it. I had to chase ad hoc work.

For the first few weeks I was merely asked to read documents. This was ostensibly to understand cases, although I have been working on a couple of cases over the past few weeks which I did no prior reading for. I have had no difficulty in understanding those cases, and feel that I have learnt significantly more having learnt by doing.

I was given the responsibility of conducting 1st reviewer's document review on two cases. Other than that, I was given no responsibility by my team.

I don't think that the Kaplan training was particularly valuable. I personally made the effort to have coffee with two or three associates per week, alongside speaking to other interns and grads. I found that to be my main source of skill development. Some of the training, namely the talk 'In The City' was great.

The people were lovely. I found that the other interns were what made my experience so fun. I would regularly catch up with them. The team were also really lovely. However, I think that the grad team could do an awful lot more to ease interns into the process. I understand that we are mired in unusual times, and are lucky to have retained our internships. however, it would have been invaluable for the HR team to try and ensure we got to know each other. I was happy to reach out to people - and I did - however, this was alongside getting to know the FCA, tracking down my missing laptop, setting it up and getting to grips with an entirely new experience.

To be honest, I remain very disappointed with how this has been organised. The grad team did not send me details of the placement until a couple of days before I was due to start. This was in spite of my having emailed, stressed that a) I hadn't heard anything, and b) I had no laptop! My manager was very busy, understandably so, but that meant that if I wanted to make the most out of this, everything came down to being proactive. I don't mind that - I'm outgoing. But, if you are offering a structured internship, I think it would be reasonable to assume you would be allocated work. I had to chase every single task I completed. Nothing was simply delegated to me, other than reading. that made me feel useless and very small.

Really brilliant. but that was down to mine and their willingness to reach out to one another. Had I not made an effort, I needn't have spoken to them at all.