PT-LawMom

It’s almost 2 and I’m just getting started on studying. Ugh! I have to get it together. So now for the update:

1) No news from AILA, except an email saying they forwarded my WTH inquiry to the membership director and I should get a response this week.

2) Met with the immigration lawyer yesterday. Bad news is it could go over $5k (5k only gets us 27 hours at her 180/hour rate), but I volunteered to pull cases, transcribe yesterday’s interview tape, serve as typist/cite checker for her brief, etc. — basically anything that will help us reduce costs. Added bonus is the chance to get some experience and an inside view. Good news is that she has found a U.S. Supreme Court case on point and basically thinks that the omission was immaterial, so hopefully she can argue that successfully.

3) Still feeling great! Yay Cymbalta! I meet with the neurologist on Thursday morning to find out what, if anything, they can do to stop further damage. I know I should be more worried about that, but after two months of constant, increasing pain, I’m just happy to feel good enough to actually get up and out of the house.

4) On that note, I took Pumpkinhead to Build a Bear Workshop yesterday. We had a blast making him a horse called Neela with a red/white spotted heart and a ROAR sound. He named the horse “Neela.” Also picked up some makeup during Clinique’s bonus time. Hooray for the energy to run errands I’ve been putting off for weeks.

Pumpkinhead must have heard me blogging about him because he just burst through the door calling, “Cuddle time!” So much for Chapin keeping him downstairs. I’m off to remind Chapin of his Sunday duties and grab an apple for sustenance and then it is time to get down to work!

The EEOC has filed suit against Bloomberg L.P. for discriminating against mothers in its organization by reducing duties, position and/or pay. I think it is fantastic that the EEOC is backing up its recently enacted policies against caregiver discrimination. Hopefully this case will turn out to be a landmark one and employers will realize that assuming a woman is not up to the challenges of her job simply because she has had a child is not acceptable!

USA Today has a fascinating blog post about the sad story of a family coming to the end of a 10-year battle for political asylum only to have it denied and now to find that, due to war and other political circumstances, the parents and their four children will not be accepted together in any country. This post also highlights the absolutely obscene number of backlogged FBI background checks and other ways in which the system is broken.

So, if it’s not already obvious, my lifelong dream has been to become an immigration attorney. Today I emailed AILA, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, regarding membership and I got back the following, stunning, heartbreaking response:

Dear [PT-LawMom],

Thank you for inquiring about AILA’s student membership. In order to qualify for law student membership status, you must meet all of the following qualifications:
–You are enrolled as a full-time student;
– You attend an accredited law school;
– You are pursuing a degree in law.

At this time our policies do not accommodate

part-time students

.
+++++++++++++++++++
AILA Membership Dept.
918 F Street, NW
Washington, DC 20004
Phone: (202) 216-2400
Fax: (202) 783-7853

Okay, so this may not seem like such a big deal to you, dear readers. But apparently AILA is *the* organization to join if you want to be an immigration attorney; without it, you’re shunned from local USCIS meetings with the District Director and other office heads and with it you get a liaison to help smooth the way between you and USCIS officials. With it, I can attend AILA conferences and get immigration law-specific publications; without it, nada. I am so bummed! Between this news and the WSJ story on crappy post-law school salaries (less than I make now as a legal secretary), I really need to find a way to win the lottery or otherwise come into some big money so I can afford to quit work and go full-time. Not likely.

P.S. I have emailed AILA’s executive director to point out that one of the reasons I’m going part-time is to reduce my loan burden so I can serve that population. Doesn’t seem very fair to make it harder for me to succeed by not allowing me to join!

Remember last Tuesday when I was drained and feeling crappy? Well I decided to take the bull by the horns and go see my internal medicine doctor instead of waiting until October to see the neurologist. I had done some research and found out that the most commonly prescribed medication to treat the pain of peripheral neuropathy is Cymbalta. It’s an anti-depressant, but apparently the way it acts on your brain makes your nerves feel better. So I discussed it with my doctor and she agreed that it made sense to try it for the few weeks between last Tuesday and my October appt. As recently as this Sunday, I was still in a ton of pain and worried that it wasn’t going to work for me but I woke up yesterday feeling so much better and didn’t have to take any pain pills (well, I did take Tylenol once in the morning)! I felt better than I have in probably three months! I decided I’d wait until today to see how I feel and, so far, I am cautiously optimistic. With any luck the pain relief will continue so that I can toss the Vicodin and, when I finally do see the neurologist, the only issue remaining is how to stop the processes that are causing the nerve damage. Hopefully the remedy for that won’t be too difficult or time-consuming. Last summer I had to do weekly IV iron treatments at the cancer center and that was a real pain in the tushie in terms of time off work.

My positive energy must be spreading because Pumpkinhead decided that 4 a.m. was a good time to bounce out of bed this morning. I tried to convince him that the better plan would be to return to bed, but he wasn’t having it. So now he’s sitting next to me playing with my hair and watching Blues Clues (thank you Noggin on Demand!) I’m going to log off and get some reading done. Yippee for a clear head and hands that can type!!!

Okay, now I’m leaning back towards John Edwards, especially because I’m so impressed by his wife’s involvement in the campaign and because, after doing more research on the healthcare issue, it appears that Clinton pretty much copied Edward’s plan (obviously I missed that announcement several months ago).

You can view each of the candidates’ positions on immigration here.

You can view each of the candidates’ position on health care here.

New York is going to start allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses with valid foreign passports. It’s about time. This makes sense because then you have less people living in the shadows. I’m surprised more states don’t see the plus side of this — insured, licensed immigrants on the road rather than untrained, unlicensed, uninsured immigrants driving (sometimes by their own country’s scary driving rules).

…[O]fficials pointed to a study showing that unlicensed drivers were almost five times more likely to be in fatal crashes than people with valid driver’s licenses. The State Department of Insurance estimates that the new rules will save New York drivers $120 million each year by reducing premium costs associated with uninsured motorists by 34 percent.

The change fulfilled a promise Mr. Spitzer made repeatedly last year in his campaign, and it was hailed by immigrant organizations and labor unions that had pushed hard for it. Those groups said that the regulations imposed by the Pataki administration had hurt about 250,000 immigrants who needed licenses to drive to work, to hospitals or to schools.

“Immigrant communities throughout the nation can take heart that today’s victory may begin to turn the tide toward sensible and humane reforms at the federal level,” said Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, an umbrella group for more than 150 immigrant self-help and advocacy organizations.

The weekly roundup is available at Butterflyfish’s site.

The Weekly Moms In Law School (MILS) Roundup is hosted on a rotating basis by Reasonable Expectations, PT-LawMom and A Little Fish in Law School and is usually posted no later than Monday morning.

Next week’s MILS Roundup will be at Reasonable Expectations.

Since Evan Schaeffer has so kindly referred his readers to my “What to do when your assistant sucks” post, I’m also going to repost my “Curmudgeonly Legal Secretary” post (or what attorneys should do so THEY don’t suck!):

ABA Journal has a piece on Mark Herrmann’s new book, “The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law“. As a long-suffering (ha, ha) legal secretary, I really enjoyed his advice to future associates (Note -”quoting” from memory, so may not be word-for-word):

“I’ve seen associates come and I’ve seen associates go. I’ve been a legal secretary longer than you’ve been alive. I know you think you are smarter than me and that there’s nothing I can teach you. Get over it…

If you want me to be part of your team, you need to treat me like a member of your team. If you treat me like office equipment, I will act like it. And considering how often the equipment breaks around here, that’s not a good idea!”

I am constantly amazed at the hubris of young associates. Most of them probably went straight from undergrad to law school and have never worked in the real world. But seriously, don’t just draft a document like you learned in law school. Take the time to look up the partner’s past documents (there will surely be a similar one out there) and figure out what he/she likes and the language they use. I’ve worked for several partners in different areas of law and every one of them has a unique style and at least one formatting/wording choice that is in direct conflict to what one “knows” to be “correct”. Correct does not matter. If the partner has to spend three hours reworking your document to fit his style, you can bet he or she will be less likely to utilize you on future projects.

As for befriending your secretary, I recommend it - to a point. I think it’s important to be respectful and friendly, but a bad idea to be overly friendly. One of my coworker’s associates had a crisis one time and called me from the client’s office (she was out) to search his office for a document, scan it, and e-mail it to him. He thanked me and then when he returned to the office later that day, he was bearing a chai latte and a cookie. You know I would now do anything for that man. I had a former associate at another firm who was close to my age and was always coming by my desk to chat me up. I really liked her but that got me in trouble because my partner would see us “goofing off” and it ultimately hurt both of us. I also think that, like it or not, there is a hierarchy and when you really need something done, a true Friendship may get in the way. That said, BE NICE!!!

DO: Let your secretary in on your whereabouts. Nothing sucks more than getting a call from an important client or corner office partner and having to fudge because you don’t know where the person is. It’s also disrespectful. We start to feel like the aforementioned office equipment and get resentful when we have to call other secretaries to find out where you are and hear “Oh, he and [her partner’s name] flew to Zurich this morning for client meetings.” (Been there, done that, eventually requested a transfer off that guy’s desk)

DON’T: Forget secretary’s day or your secretary’s birthday. An e-card is fine. Completely ignoring it? Not so much…

DO: Tell your secretary if you’re sick but want clients to think you’re just out on business. If you have been kind to your secretary, she’ll cover for you. Otherwise she may not say you’re home, but she may not cover for you in the way you’d like. “Oh, I’m sorry. He’s not in the office AGAIN…”

DON’T: Forget that your secretary has access to your e-mail (if you’ve given it). This is a very important tool for managing your calendar and can really help your secretary become more of an integral part of your team. She can read through your e-mails and calendar items, remind you of pending issues, respond on your behalf when you’re out, etc. I highly recommend it. However, when last night’s girlfriend sends an ode to your naked body, it becomes a bit embarrassing. Also a bad idea to talk negatively about your secretary or others with others via work e-mail…. (And remember that your secretary probably has access to her partner’s e-mail. Obviously any secretary worth her salt will be discreet about almost everything, but you should avoid discussing HER with her partner via e-mail. DUH!)

DO: Give clear instructions and say please. We need to learn your style so you need to be explicit in your instructions. If we don’t do it right, tell us nicely. What may be “totally wrong” for you may be the preferred style of our partner or of the firm generally. We’re willing to learn/adapt, but less so when the message isn’t delivered in a respectful way. Don’t treat us like we’re stupid.

DON’T: Go to our supervisor without at least trying to speak with us first. Also, don’t blindside us in evaluations or give a “3″ (out of 5) on everything because you’re stingy - that affects our compensation! I had a coworker whose associate would never directly address her from day one and sent one-word responses to her request for elaboration on his work requests. He e-mailed her documents to print or format and that was it. He never gave her feedback of any kind (even when she solicited it) and then gave her straight 3’s on her review (out of 5). When she asked him for constructive criticism so that she could improve, he said “You’re doing just fine” and then he repeated the straight 3 review the following year….

DON’T: Use the spacebar to make tabs, ignore styles, hand-mark a bazillion different format changes on a document and then expect us to turn it around in 5 minutes. A little Word training never hurt anyone. If you need help setting up a document shell, let us know. Or write it out on a legal pad and let us enter it. There’s a reason we type 80wpm+. Fixing your screwy document takes a lot longer than setting it up right in the first place. Oh, and when you, your partner, three other associates and a paralegal are all simultaneously reviewing a brief that needs to be e-filed by 11:59 p.m., don’t bring me 6 sets of contradictory edits at 11:15 p.m. and then wonder why I fall off my chair laughing.

I have one more from a recent Legality discussion about how attorneys are always taking the free food/office product giveways when they make more money than sin and don’t seem to realize or care that staff might really want those things (the tote bags are especially nice, even if they do have the firm name across the front). If your secretary bakes or brings in a cake for your birthday, reciprocate. Many large firms, including mine, have a “rule” that secretaries must do this for their assignments. We DO NOT get reimbursed for this, yet it is our duty. I’m not kidding. I’ve laid out $55 in the last two months for a goodbye cake and a birthday cake. I think this rule is just so wrong and the attorneys probably don’t even realize it’s coming out of our pockets but, seriously, THINK!

Last night I had to stay late at school and then I came home to a bunch of changes to my editing job that had to be turned around before I could sleep. Need the money to pay the immigration attorney, so I dutifully sat at my computer until 1:30 a.m. This morning I woke up and it was like all of the stress of the past few weeks just came crashing down on me. I just wanted to pull the covers back over my head and stay there. I am staying home because I feel lousy but I did have to take Pumpkinhead to school (so much for languishing in bed all morning) and scrounge up some breakfast so I can take my myriad drugs. As I drove home from Pumpkinhead’s school, I just felt so down and overwhelmed by everything that’s going on right now. My supervisor got on me yesterday about having yet another doctor’s appointment (over my lunch hour, BTW), which just makes me want to scream because a) they know I’m sick - I even gave them a note, b) it scares me because I cannot afford to lose my job and c) I just don’t need this pressure right now.

SO… this morning, feeling guilty for not being at work because that sure doesn’t solve the problem above, I’m going to focus on catching up on my studies and try to get some much-needed rest to see if that kicks me back into “happy” mode. We haven’t heard from the immigration attorney, but I know she was planning to visit the local office tomorrow to talk about the two-week mailing delay and see about an extension. Oh, and I got the results of my tests. Apparently the pernicious anemia I’ve been battling for the past two years has left me with nerve damage (permanent?) in my legs, feet and arms and the Vitamin D deficiency isn’t helping matters. They said the misfiring/damaged nerves are probably what is causing all of this and they want me to see a neurologist, although they can’t get me in until early October. In the meantime, I just have to take the pain pills and bide my time until they figure out a way to counteract the damage or change the nerve signals (maybe through SSRIs). Bleech. I’m not thrilled with the diagnosis, but I am very, very happy to have some answers for why everything hurts so much!