My blog usually has humor in it, but these are honestly rules to live by. If you are a new Paralegal, print this one and carry it in your pocket. This is no joke. These rules come from personal experience.
Disclaimer to avoid the inevitable hate mail:
I don't fault the attorneys because they were never trained like a Paralegal, so they don't know the "rules" that we live by. These don't strictly apply to EVERY attorney, either. Some of the younger attorneys have some basic skills, although they lack the experience to apply their basic skills as an attorney (even though they think they know how). Some attorneys start out as paralegals, so they too have an understanding of support staff's challenges. For the most part, however, these rules should be strictly enforced.
1. Never let an attorney hold an original document without supervision. They WILL write on it, spill coffee on it, or lose it and claim they never saw it before. The "WORKING COPY" stamp is your best friend.
2. Never let an attorney answer the main incoming telephone lines without supervision. The caller will be lost and someone in the line of fire will be blamed.
3. Never let an attorney scan or copy more than one document without supervision. S/he will jam the copier. It won't be an easy jam either. It will be a call the repair man and beg, plead, and bribe them to get here today-kind of jam.
4. Never let an attorney type their own letter and print it without supervision. It will keep your printer technician in a job, but it will halt progress while you wait for the tech and try to explain to the attorney why they can't push all those pretty flashy things.
5. Never let an attorney have admin privileges on the firm calendar (even with supervision). Just because they know how to read a calendar does NOT mean they are skilled enough not to delete deadlines.
6. Never let an attorney clean-up his/her own office unsupervised. Things will be put in ridiculous places and will be lost forever. The attorney will deny it's existence. Don't even try to argue that [lost item/ file] was in said attorney's office last week. That fight is pointless and you will never win.
7. Never let an attorney prepare service copies unsupervised. Those copies will never make it to their destination.
8. Never let an attorney send a status update to a client unsupervised. Usually, they don't know all the facts, and you will palm-to-forehead Homer Simpson-style "D'oh!" yourself when you hear the inaccuracies that said attorney tried to relay to the client.
9. Never let an attorney re-organize the electronic files unsupervised. They have no idea what the system in their own firm is, and it should stay that way. You will never find something if they start "improving" the system.
10. Never let an attorney prepare trial exhibits unsupervised. They are likely frantic about preparing their trial arguments for the big gamble we call trial that they will screw them up.
Usually, the older attorneys recognize that they are not allowed/able to do these things. BUT, those attorneys, on occasion, will try to be "helpful" and handle their own crap. Reinforce with those attorneys it is a bad idea and that they have tried to be "helpful" in the past and it ended in disaster.
LOL at 6. I'm dealing with this right now. I have discovery due in a case, and my file was in my boss's office to review. Guess who is getting blamed because the file cannot be found?
ReplyDeleteHmmmmmmm....Paralegal of 7 years here. I do not play that game with the attorney's I work for; nor do I encourage that type of "blame game" behavior. The individual in possession of a file is responsible for it's return to the file room. End of story.
DeleteYep, exactly. Guess who refuses to use the file check-out system too?! That's right, the attorneys who LOSE the files. You can't save them from themselves.
ReplyDeleteLoved the can't push the pretty flashy things comment... Some of these apply to my office as well. Mom
ReplyDeleteLOL. I love this list.
ReplyDeleteI have seen each one of these in real life! Thanks or the laugh via Vicki Voisin!
ReplyDeleteI have a new job and for the first time my attorney actually does all of those things really well. I think he would be less stressed if he let others take the responsibility of mastering them, but that will take time. I hope in due course, he trusts my competence enough to feel comfortable to lose his own in those areas and concentrate more peacefully on the things only he can do.
ReplyDeleteI love each and every one of these! My attorney does some of these well. She can calendar stuff and thank god she recognizes the stuff she is not allowed to do and asks to have it done!!
ReplyDelete#1 is my top rule. But no one ever listens to me. *sigh* If only paralegals ruled the world. We'd at least all be organized.
ReplyDeleteMomalegal - so true!!
ReplyDeleteVery significant information that everyone should know, they are basic things. sure many appreciate, is that these legal things are delicate.
ReplyDeleteParalegals do rule the world, we just let attorneys think they do.
ReplyDeleteI'm a paralegal and also spent the last 13 years as a technical trainer. I'm actually upset that attorneys do not do MORE to understand the whole process. Only then can attorneys understand the tasks' significance, respect others knowledge and demonstrate gratefulness to all paralegals who assist in a case.
ReplyDeleteAttorneys don't have a clue how to process cases, just how to argue them in trial!
ReplyDeleteAs a retired attorney,"I am shocked, shocked, mind you," to read such things. I thought they, much less almost all of them, only happened in the offices where I worked! My first week, using the ancient copiers you don't remember where the original went down through the rollers, etc., I managed to incinerate the original of a $1.6 million note, and fifty years later I still remember the amount. I also worked in one rated insurance-defense firm where absolutely nothing could be delegated by an attorney, nor could anything dictated or marked up by anyone but the senior partner ever be revised even if for the senior partner's signature. I have taken some useful courses on delegation to paralegals, etc., from one noted lawyer at ABA and State Bar functions, and later had substantial professional dealings with his firm and its legal secretaries and paralegals, and discovered that they don't actually do it they way he taught us, including the infernally complicated official way to do the State Bar
ReplyDeletes family law forms, which at least don't contain the serious legal errors and omissions my last set from another vendor did.
Of course there was the very efficient secretary-paralegal to trial counsel, in another office, who didn't check with or tell me when she filed an appellate record the day it arrived, thereby shortening our defendant client's deadline for filing the appellant's brief by most of the 90 days before the clock normally starts upon filing the record. Fortunately, this had first happened to the predecessor to a leading firm here in Texas not long after the state's founding.