Androu Waheeb is one of our IP Innovation Clinic Coordinators and a 2L JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. As part of the IP Innovation Clinic’s involvement in the inaugural year of Mitacs’ Business Strategy Internship program, Androu completed an internship at InteraXon Inc. under the direct supervision of Naseem Bawa. As Principal Investigator, Prof. Pina D’Agostino secured three $10,000 grants from Mitacs, one of which was used to fund this internship.
This summer, I interned with the General Counsel of a start-up technology company that owns an extensive intellectual property portfolio. As I reflect on my time there, I cannot help but appreciate how beneficial this summer will prove to be for my legal career. Through this internship, I experienced transactional law broadly and practically, learned from an extremely skilled and knowledgeable lawyer, and built long lasting friendships. Most importantly, I learned how to learn during my summer law jobs by optimizing the proportion of the types of tasks I take on to maximize my educational experience at internships while being productive and effective at the workplace.
A significant portion of my tasks involved completing work products and submitting them to my supervising lawyer for review. After submitting my work products, my supervisor revised them with me and explained any changes or concepts she felt would be beneficial to me. These types of tasks were an excellent way for me to “learn by doing” and kept me constantly engaged with new and exciting challenges. By putting things into practice, I both expanded upon my understanding and solidified my grasp on many legal skills and concepts. Tasks I completed in this way included preparing intellectual property searches, producing memos exploring legal issues, redlining contracts, updating privacy policies, and drafting IP claims.
In addition to submitting work products, I also worked alongside my supervisor or under her direct supervision at times. During these meetings, I learned by direct collaboration, observation, or supervision. By observing or being observed, I benefited by critically engaging with the task and being instantly corrected. In this way, I conducted training sessions, helped update the privacy policy, and assisted with contract drafting, review, and negotiation.
My experience has shown me the immeasurable value of modelling my future summer internships in a way that provides a mixture of creating work products for revision, performing under direct supervision, and observing in descending proportions respectively. This combination would allow me to learn by doing, practice what I learn theoretically, and solidify new concepts.