PT-LawMom

So… I got a little freaked out while meeting with my law school’s career department last week. My counselor basically said, “Your job is going to screw you in terms of future employment opportunities,” which I think is pretty extreme but I get her point (although now, thinking about it, plenty of full-timers never work and get jobs, but I think she thinks never working is much better than working as a “lowly secretary” — shows what she knows!). She wanted me to start looking for something else in the next year or so. Chapin spazzed out (it would be hard to find another job that pays what I make now) and said I should wait until the last year of my four-year journey. I agreed with him… and then panicked on Friday. Sent a well-crafted, detailed memo to my HR director (who hired me) requesting that, should a paralegal position come open in one of two areas of practice in which I am interested, she seriously consider me for the job. I was confident about the decision to send the memo on Friday but now I’m a little worried. I doubt they would fire me for asking, but I was hired for this particular desk because of a special set of skills and, in the past, they’ve had a hard time filling the position. Hopefully they will take the request at face value and understand that I just want the chance to gain some practical skills sometime in the next few years. I made it clear that I want to stay with the firm and simply asked for consideration down the line if a position opens and/or the chance to pitch in during an extra-busy time for one of those departments. Please pray that this request doesn’t backfire on me. I sure can’t afford to lose my job!!

P.S. I do actually have paralegal experience. I have a paralegal certificate and worked as a contract paralegal for several months before landing a position with a judge, followed by a great position as a legal secretary. My last job (the great position) consisted of many more paralegal-type activities, such as research, cite-checking and document coding. I also do contract cite-checking/proofreading work for a local company. My current job is much more secretarial in nature.

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!

It’s Tuesday; back to the grindstone.

Anniversary trip: Chapin and I had a lovely, romantic night away. We managed to work around the pain (thanks to the help of a good bottle of Merlot). We went to a really hip restaurant (well, it’s hip if you get there late at night; not so much at 5:30 p.m….) The food was awesome and the high-back booth very romantic. We really had a chance to talk about our life together and future plans. It was heavenly. Oh, and Bourne Ultimatum was great!! If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d suggest sitting as far in the back as you can because the director has camera shots from right inside the action so sitting closer might make you a bit nauseated.

Pumpkinhead had an awesome time with my parents and slept through the night with no problem. We took his Spiderman nightlight to shoot webs all over the dark ceiling. My mother said that he was laying horizontally across the bed at one point and their Shih Tzu went and pushed him back to the right position and then curled up next to him. Pumpkinhead threw his arm across the dog and that’s how they stayed for the rest of the night. Cute!

Health update: well, it’s not as much pain relief as I was hoping for, but I can see a difference. The doctor gave me my steroid shot on Friday and then sent me home with a 3-month supply of 15mg of Prednisone (apparently I can look forward to severe weight gain, moon face and rounded shoulders from this). I chose not to take it Saturday or Sunday because you can only take it first thing in the morning and I wanted to drink Saturday night and enjoy my day on Sunday. I started yesterday instead, so perhaps I would be feeling better if I’d started sooner. Yesterday I was really hot (side effect) and did okay in the morning but was in a lot of pain in the afternoon. The good news is that this morning I’m not nearly as stiff as I was last week so I think it’s working. My toes and ankles hurt, but I’ve been up for about 90 minutes and my fingers are letting me type, so that’s a really good sign.

Law school update: One of my classes this semester is Criminal Law. Did anyone else not find this difficult, at least at first? It may be because I took Criminal Law in undergrad (not that I remember much — I took it my last semester and got pregnant a few weeks in). The reading seems fairly easy and the terms make a lot of sense. Yay. That is good because my other class is a bit harder and has a lot more reading/technical language.

Work update: Today is performance review day at work — well, at least I think so. They were due on the 1st and my main partner still hadn’t completed his. He usually goes over his with me so I’m expecting that today. I’m good at my job but these medical issues have had me away from the office lately and I’m worried how that will impact me. My newer partner is hard to read and my associate is on her way out so who knows what she’ll do. Wish me luck.

This lovely post title stems from several searches to my blog recently (shout out to Rockville, MD)! Do you want to know the hard answer here?

TELL HER

Okay, maybe she really does suck. Or maybe you suck. But passive aggressive behavior won’t get you anywhere. I have been a legal secretary and before that an admin assistant for over 10 years. I’ve seen attorneys stomp their feet, roll their eyes, do their own work, foist their work on others and hide in their offices — all to avoid a crappy assistant. Why?!? Let me tell you, it doesn’t help office morale to know the girl down the row makes as much as you (or more) and gets away with doing absolutely nothing because her partners are too afraid to talk to her or to management.

Let’s assume she sucks. Is it fixable? Perhaps you could write down the ways in which you think she sucks and address it on a point-by-point basis. Assuming you are her direct report, but she has a supervisor as well (i.e., attorney boss but secretarial supervisor), you should meet with her together with her supervisor if you can’t stomach meeting with her alone first.

Problem - Work not completed fast enough
Solution - Does she have too big of a workload? Are their other people competing for her time who are getting prioritized first? Could you come up with a system where you give her an urgency number to help her prioritize (but this must be realistic - if you always tell her it’s urgent, she’ll probably stop believing you).

Problem - Skills lacking on a particular computer program, typing speed, etc.
Solution - Duh. Training! Send her out for a class in a specific program or perhaps for general training. Many companies offer general overview classes in everything from Word to office procedures. For legal secretaries, send them to NALS. They have both a beginner and an advanced certification. I have received both certifications and, believe me, the courses/exams really teach you a lot. If you can’t afford training right away, direct her to the wonderful blog, Lawyer’s Right Hand. Kelly has some fantastic, practical tips for all sorts of programs a secretary uses every day along with procedural tips for handling the workload.

Problem - Bad attitude
Solution - Maybe this person is just a crab. Maybe they have something going on in their personal life. Bottom line is that it is affecting your work (and probably her coworkers and the office in general). You need to sit her down and be straight with her. Offer help (employee assistance plan?) but be clear that the attitude won’t be tolerated. Especially for a legal secretary, the impression she gives your clients can hurt you (or, in the case of a good legal secretary, the clients will be pushing past you to say hi to your friendly, lovely, wonderful assistant!)

Hope this helps, Rockville, and anyone else cowering under their desk in fear of confronting a sucky assistant. You may find out that a good part of the problem is misunderstanding and lack of communication. That said, perhaps you should change assistants. It’s important to have a good fit and feel like you’re a team.

For how to treat a good assistant, please see this post.

Today has been one of those days where everything that can go wrong has. Chapin took the day off to run errands and take care of some stuff we need and he was blocked at every turn. What a waste! He doesn’t get paid for days off so the fact that he hasn’t accomplished much just really adds to the frustration.

In the meantime, my boss is on my back and my irritable mood isn’t helping me get back on his good side. I’m hiding in a conference room at lunch because if I stay at my desk all of the attorneys suddenly come out of their offices and give me work, scheduled lunch hour or not. I can even have food and law books spread out in front of me and they still want me to drop it all and do whatever they need ASAP (usually something that involves going into their office or across the building for supplies or something — of course it’s never anything that will allow me to actually finish eating!). Can I just go back to bed and wake up on the other side tomorrow?!?

The most important appointment Chapin has today is this afternoon at USCIS to find out WTF is going on with his citizenship application. Hopefully tonight I can put up another post saying that mid-day was the turnaround point and that it was only good news from hereon out. Pretty please?

Ed Poll has a great post over at LawBiz Blog on the importance of recognizing the ways your receptionist’s professionalism and attitude can help or hurt your business. His law firm-specific post was inspired by Seth Godin’s general blog post on the features that would make a great receptionist. The same can be said of your secretary. If you have a toxic secretary or a lazy/indifferent receptionist, the damage they can cause in terms of client relations is immeasurable. You may tolerate her and/or avoid confrontation (what is it about lawyers that makes them do this?!?), but ultimately your indifference or unwillingness to act is just hurting you and your firm.

On the flip side, if you hire talented staff, respect them, and encourage their professional development, you will find clients eager to call on you, assured that their messages will be passed along and their needs attended to promptly. Just having a kind, knowledgeable voice on the line can reassure a client and keep them at bay until you are able to attend to their matter.

As I have said before, if your secretary feels like a respected and trusted member of your team, she will want that team to succeed. She will derive pleasure from anticipating your needs and those of your clients. She will approach her work with gusto, knowing that your success and the firm’s success will ultimately lead to her success (trickle down economics). If you recognize her contribution and reward her appropriately with regular feedback, praise and compensation increases, you will help yourself and your practice more than you can imagine.

The ABA Law Practice Magazine has some great tips in their latest issue for new associates working with an assistant for the first time.

· Do tell your assistant where you are when you leave your office.

· Do assign priorities when you give your assistant several jobs at once.

· Do introduce your assistant to your clients.

· Do share the credit when things go well.

· Do encourage your assistant to take training courses.

· Do say please and thank you.

· Do set an example by being hardworking and professional and showing that you care about the clients.

· Do keep your personal problems to yourself, especially your issues with other people who work for your firm.

· Do prevent a buildup of tensions by sitting down with your assistant at least once a month and really listening.

· Don’t hover over your assistant and make a sucking noise at every typo.

· Don’t wait until the annual performance review to reveal what your assistant’s goals should have been.

· Don’t act like your disorganization is your assistant’s problem.

· Don’t eat, slurp coffee, cough, sneeze or sniff into the dictation machine.

· Don’t yell from the next room or use hand gestures to signal your assistant to come and go.

· Don’t shift the blame when things go wrong.

· Don’t lie to your assistant, and don’t ask your assistant to lie on your behalf.

· Above all, don’t underestimate the power of positive expectations, participation, civility and recognition.

These are all dead on. In my opinion, miscommunication (or lack of communication) is the number one problem in attorney/secretary relations. And I could go on and on with stories I’ve heard from colleagues about their attorneys’ nasty habits (dictating while in the bathroom, clipping toenails with their foot on the desk and the door open, sending their secretary to buy lunch and asking her to work through but not buying her food even though the firm would reimburse them, putting a hand on the secretary’s shoulder and leaning over her while giving instructions, marching right into her workspace and reaching around her to open her supply drawer, etc.) Don’t get me started…

Kelly over at Lawyer’s Right Hand also shares some great tips in her post on the history of Administrative Professionals Week. I learned a lot from that post. While I agree with her that we should be treated well all year round, I do enjoy having a special day where the spotlight’s on me. I think Kelly’s suggestion that, in lieu of candy/gifts, the lawyers give more business/professional development-related gifts is great. I would have loved to receive a new agenda, some software or some neat office supplies (yes, I’m a bit of a stationary freak). Thanks for the perspective, Kelly!

To all of my legal secretary colleagues out there, I hope you have a day filled with respect and accolades for all that you do for your attorneys.

If you happen have a micromanaging boss who doesn’t appreciate you (what? A micromanaging attorney? Never! ROFL!!), I suggest you read HalfEagle’s ever-insightful blog today. Oh, and wait until after lunch to read about the attacked blogger she mentions at top. That picture and her story really did make me physically ill. Men!!

Well apparently a magazine in the U.K. has featured my blog and the British legal secretaries are heading over to check it out. Although I am a legal secretary and could regale you with many a cautionary tale (couldn’t we all?), the best legal secretary blog I have found is ” Lawyer’s Right Hand“. I would recommend that all of you visiting my blog from the U.K. first read and comment on my Curmudgeonly Legal Secretary post (which is aimed more at new attorneys than at us) and then head on over to Half Eagle’s blog to check out her very creative and useful tips for your everday life as a secretary.

The latest 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.

That’s all I have for now.