Isabella Petroni
124 Fay Road
Framingham, MA 01702
February 21, 2023
Gia Kim
Administrative Assistant
Insurance & Financial Services Division
Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
1 Ashburton Place, Floor 20
Boston, MA 02108
Dear Mrs. Kim,
I’m writing to apply for the Paralegal position under the Insurance & Financial Services Division in Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office. I got the job alert through the Attorney General’s Employment Portal and wished to demonstrate my interest in the position.
I have recently graduated from the University of New England with a dual degree in Environmental Studies and Marine Affairs with a minor in Writing. My degree requires courses in law, writing, and sociology. As part of my course load, I had to research various topics and write papers on short notice. The research focused on various sources, such as academic papers, government reports, newspapers, and other primary sources. Most of the law courses were either introductory or specialized courses focused on specific aspects of law, such as environmental law. The courses required us to write legal briefs of past state & federal court cases. It also required us to understand court procedures by participating in mock trials.
I have previously held secretarial jobs that required me to balance following instructions and having an intellectual curiosity about what I was working on. I held a seasonal office job for several summers with the Framingham Department of Public Works, where I was responsible for responding to constituents and their issues. My supervisors gave me the freedom to be able to handle these concerns and work on existing projects. Many of these projects required using Microsoft Office projects, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, to organize the information readily. They also trusted me to steer the direction of current projects, such as the future Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 road construction projects. As part of this, I was asked to present to a local neighborhood association with my supervisor, discussing these upcoming road work projects.
When I saw the job opening, it became the perfect opportunity to start a legal career, especially in the People’s Law Office. I wish to offer my communication and research skills to the Attorney General’s Office and assist in the important work being done.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with the enclosed phone number and email address. I look forward to hearing back from you soon.
Sincerely,
Isabella Petroni
508-309-0954
isabellalpetroni@gmail.com
Journal 9:
In revising my cover letter after peer review, I’m mainly going to focus on cleaning up any spelling and grammar issues, as nothing too egregious needs to be changed based on the comments from the peer-review session. A lot of my concern was making sure that I was concise and specific in my descriptions of my academic and career-related qualifications. Each paragraph for my interest section focuses on explaining one of these qualifications in detail, pulling what the job listing wanted to be emphasized. This is because the cover letter is related to a government job and a position I want to apply for when I graduate from college. It’s also an example of a position where I might be underqualified due to a lack of direct legal experience, even without a J.D., which is not required in a paralegal position. I want to also work on the formatting to get the cover letter within the rubric’s requirements for its structure. When I’m a peer reviewer, I want to focus on the negative first so that my fellow peer reviewers can highlight the more positive. It might come off as cruel or callous, but I also know it can be hard to criticize others’ writing, especially when you’re worried about how you will come off. I feel obligated to fill that role because the point of peer review is a balance of acknowledging what’s working and what’s not. If there is no criticism, then it feels like a peer review hasn’t been completely done to its fullest.
Journal 11:
Cover letters are something that I have always struggled with compared to resumes. But, this assignment has allowed me to develop what I can use as I graduate from college and venture into the job market. This is especially true given that I wrote my cover letter for the Attorney General’s Office as a paralegal. Both represent what I want to do, working in public service or the legal profession, focusing on paralegal work before applying for law school. This allowed me the chance to work on crafting the language that I could use in a future cover letter that I write. I didn’t use the textbook’s structure before or know how well I fit the overall letter into that structure. But, I have a better framework to reference when I have to work on cover letters in the future. The structure also made it seem less daunting than completely starting it from scratch with no assistance or deciding to rely on a generic template to help with the structure. Therefore, this assignment managed to get done in a reasonable amount of time and didn’t feel too difficult when working on it.
