SENIOR PROJECT CONFERENCE SHEET

Name: Donny Hiers Conference Date: 1/29/2023

Project Title: Law Firm Job Shadowing

SMART Goal I set for this conference:

Lock in specific dates with the public defender to job shadow & obtain an interview with the public defender per
the requirements stated in the research paper portion of senior project.

Steps I took to accomplish my SMART Goal:

STEPS TAKEN EVIDENCE TO PROVE WHAT I DID

Reach out to the public defender.

Obtain an interview.

Employability skills that I worked on this month and specific ways I have improved. How have you shown
growth with the goals listed above? Do you need to make any adjustments? Which skill has been the hardest
for you to practice and improve? Why? One employability skill I have worked on since the last conference was
being able to take initiative. I did this in multiple ways. One way was that I was able to shadow a public
defender almost three times; the third being when I will shadow him in a murder trial. I reached out to him the
second time to conduct an interview, in which a screenshot of the audio is placed above. As well as this, I have
also reached out to a solicitor to see what it is like being on the other side of the law, instead of defending
someone, you’re the one running the offense, so to speak.

What I have learned since my last conference: One thing I learned since my last conference that I did not really
have a full understanding of was about the dark side of being a public defender. Sure, the trials seem
interesting and the cases are intriguing, but one side that I did not fully consider was how easy it is to get
desensitized to bad things such as murder and more, that they have to deal with on a daily basis. This makes it
both a good and bad thing, because on one hand it makes it to where you’re not getting traumatized over and
over, but that also comes with being desensitized to bad things.

SMART Goal I am going to work on for next month: By the next conference I will be able to acquire an
interview with a solicitor and shadow him at least once.