Proofreading is a typical trainee task and a trainee with good attention to detail can be a real asset for their team. It may seem like a rather mundane task, but if the formatting of a document is off, or there are sloppy spelling or grammatical errors, then the client may feel less secure about the advice a document contains. They are paying hundreds of pounds per hour (maybe more) for professional services, and therefore expect their lawyers to be responsive and technically accurate, whilst also taking care of the little details. And this is often where trainees come in. 

Proofreading does not just mean spotting spelling and grammatical errors, or pointing out inconsistencies. There may be elements of a document you are looking at that could confuse the reader, or inherent ambiguities that the creator had not noticed or considered. There may be numbers that do not look right (for instance, a 0 may have been missed off a price), dates that don’t fit the chronology, or quotes that are clearly incorrect or have been taken out of context. Having an awareness of the context of the document(s) that you are proofreading can help you to sense check documents for these types of issues, and therefore spot errors that would otherwise not have been obvious. So try to get some information in advance about what the document’s creator wants to prove or achieve.