Week 2
After the second week of my internship at the Concord Court House, I have run into some situations where I have no idea what is happening. This has happened while I am observing the courtroom in session. There are so many legal terms that I am not 100% familiar with. It is even harder to understand what is happening when people use shorthand for these terms. The whole process moves so quickly that it can be hard to keep up, especially when I don’t know the process by heart.
I worked with the Clerk-Magistrate, Ann T. Colicchio, for the first time this week because she was not here when I started. She gave me another tour that specifically pertained to what she does. She also described in detail what her day looks like. I would describe her management style as formal. Everything is very formulaic and it is necessary to enforce these rules in order for the courts to run smoothly. However, everyone in the office likes to joke around and have fun while still doing their job.
Something that I learned this week is that the docket sheets for cases have to be kept for a very long time. Cases are assigned a number that pertains to the year, the specific courthouse, the type of case, and the number of that case. For example, the first criminal case for this year at the Concord District court has the docket number 1947CR0001. 19 stands for 2019, 47 is the number that is assigned to this courthouse, CR stands for a "criminal record", and 0001 represent the very first case of the year. Cases with docket numbers that end in 0 or 50 need to be kept for forever. These are called sample cases and there are sample cases for each year. This organizational system makes it easy to find cases quickly when they need to be accessed even if they are 30 years old.