Living Up to Stereotypes
There are a lot of cliches about lawyers. "Ambulance chaser" come to mind for anyone? They seem to have a reputation of being difficult to work for. I've always been surprised by this. Granted, I've only ever worked as a legal secretary in my adult career (except for two years when I was also working part time at a tennis club), but overall I don't find lawyers, as a group, difficult. Precise? Yes. Upset when documents are not precise? Yes. But it's an environment where you know the rules, and if you follow them (very precisely) nobody gets hurt.
Forgetting things is not allowed. Forgetting to send out a cc? Unacceptable. Forgetting to remove the bcc page before sending a letter? Well, you could wreck an entire case doing that. Sometimes millions of dollars are on the line. Lives (literally) are on the line. A grin combined with a shrug and an "oops!" is not an adequate excuse. Nothing is.
Lest you be feeling sympathy pressure, please don't. You don't feel like you're being held to an impossible standard, because the attorney is holding him or herself to that same standard. They make sure the document they reference in a letter is attached to that letter. They make sure every character in the letter is spaced perfectly. All mistakes, no matter how little, are big mistakes, because they are attached to their name.
And then there's Turkey. Never mind the Answer we submitted last minute with the Valentine's exhibits. The office manager has informed me Turkey is drinking on the job. On both Thursday and Friday she smelled alcohol on his breath. I've worked at law firms that were laid back enough that on Fridays you'd sometimes see partners walking around without their shoes on, drinking a beer in the afternoon. But the cliche of keeping a bottle in the bottom drawer? Never saw it before Friday, when the Office Manager pointed out the open tequilla bottle in his bottom right drawer.
Turkey schedules lots of phone conferences. He's bad at staying on schedule, so when I arrange for Joe Schmoe and he to talk, I gently nudge Joe to be the one to initiate the call, since getting Turkey to do that is next to impossible, and getting him to do it on time never happens. Even with that effort, Turkey still misses them.
Last week he had a half hour meeting with a client scheduled. Three hours later the client walked out. Yeah. Not exaggerating. So almost every half hour I was saying, "I just wanted to let you know it's 4:30 now," because he kept coming out to ask me to copy things and let him know when it was time to do the next thing on his calendar.
He has me schedule in-office meetings in the morning, doesn't show up for them, doesn't answer his cell phone when I call, and then waltzes in late and has forgotten he's meeting them. Why bother having a blackberry synched to your Outlook calendar if you'll never check it?
You may think it's not a big deal to be late, but I disagree. It's so disrespectful to the other person who's carved time out of their life for you. Nobody shows up to work on time, because the Turkey never shows up on time. He routinely schedules a staff meeting once a week at 9:30, and routinely doesn't arrive in the office in time for it. Yet if I address the issue head-on by saying, "Do you want me to schedule next week's staff meeting for 11:30?" he'll say no.
Turkey doesn't chase ambulances because he doesn't do personal injury law. However. In the engagement letters he sends out, he gives prospective clients a deadline to sign and return the letters. On Friday he told me to contact a woman and "ask if she's hired someone else." Okay, if you know the slightest thing about sales you'll know that's not the way to save a sale. No need to suggest they hire someone else! But before I contacted her (to ask if she was still interested in having us represent her), I checked her engagement letter. Her deadline is weeks away! Why would we call her now? I e-mailed Turkey letting him know this and asking if he still wants me to call.
The office manager is fed up. At one point she was saying she would stick it out until she retires in a couple of years, but now she's saying she can't take it and needs to start her job search. Both she, and the WASP have asked me to schedule as many appointments for the Turkey out of the office as humanly possible. I do. I also try to schedule things around 4pm, in the hopes he won't bother coming back to the office, because he's known for pulling people into meetings at 5:26, or dumping a project he deems urgent on your desk at 5:28.
Turkey inspires me. He makes me want to send flowers to every great lawyer I've ever worked for, thanking them for being such a pleasure to deal with.
Forgetting things is not allowed. Forgetting to send out a cc? Unacceptable. Forgetting to remove the bcc page before sending a letter? Well, you could wreck an entire case doing that. Sometimes millions of dollars are on the line. Lives (literally) are on the line. A grin combined with a shrug and an "oops!" is not an adequate excuse. Nothing is.
Lest you be feeling sympathy pressure, please don't. You don't feel like you're being held to an impossible standard, because the attorney is holding him or herself to that same standard. They make sure the document they reference in a letter is attached to that letter. They make sure every character in the letter is spaced perfectly. All mistakes, no matter how little, are big mistakes, because they are attached to their name.
And then there's Turkey. Never mind the Answer we submitted last minute with the Valentine's exhibits. The office manager has informed me Turkey is drinking on the job. On both Thursday and Friday she smelled alcohol on his breath. I've worked at law firms that were laid back enough that on Fridays you'd sometimes see partners walking around without their shoes on, drinking a beer in the afternoon. But the cliche of keeping a bottle in the bottom drawer? Never saw it before Friday, when the Office Manager pointed out the open tequilla bottle in his bottom right drawer.
Turkey schedules lots of phone conferences. He's bad at staying on schedule, so when I arrange for Joe Schmoe and he to talk, I gently nudge Joe to be the one to initiate the call, since getting Turkey to do that is next to impossible, and getting him to do it on time never happens. Even with that effort, Turkey still misses them.
Last week he had a half hour meeting with a client scheduled. Three hours later the client walked out. Yeah. Not exaggerating. So almost every half hour I was saying, "I just wanted to let you know it's 4:30 now," because he kept coming out to ask me to copy things and let him know when it was time to do the next thing on his calendar.
He has me schedule in-office meetings in the morning, doesn't show up for them, doesn't answer his cell phone when I call, and then waltzes in late and has forgotten he's meeting them. Why bother having a blackberry synched to your Outlook calendar if you'll never check it?
You may think it's not a big deal to be late, but I disagree. It's so disrespectful to the other person who's carved time out of their life for you. Nobody shows up to work on time, because the Turkey never shows up on time. He routinely schedules a staff meeting once a week at 9:30, and routinely doesn't arrive in the office in time for it. Yet if I address the issue head-on by saying, "Do you want me to schedule next week's staff meeting for 11:30?" he'll say no.
Turkey doesn't chase ambulances because he doesn't do personal injury law. However. In the engagement letters he sends out, he gives prospective clients a deadline to sign and return the letters. On Friday he told me to contact a woman and "ask if she's hired someone else." Okay, if you know the slightest thing about sales you'll know that's not the way to save a sale. No need to suggest they hire someone else! But before I contacted her (to ask if she was still interested in having us represent her), I checked her engagement letter. Her deadline is weeks away! Why would we call her now? I e-mailed Turkey letting him know this and asking if he still wants me to call.
The office manager is fed up. At one point she was saying she would stick it out until she retires in a couple of years, but now she's saying she can't take it and needs to start her job search. Both she, and the WASP have asked me to schedule as many appointments for the Turkey out of the office as humanly possible. I do. I also try to schedule things around 4pm, in the hopes he won't bother coming back to the office, because he's known for pulling people into meetings at 5:26, or dumping a project he deems urgent on your desk at 5:28.
Turkey inspires me. He makes me want to send flowers to every great lawyer I've ever worked for, thanking them for being such a pleasure to deal with.
Labels: People watching, Turkey, Work
posted by Green at 7/10/2011 07:00:00 AM
3 Comments:
HOLY CRAP. This is a disaster just looking for a place to land. I had to reread parts of this because I thought for sure I must be reading it wrong. THREE HOURS?! Holy crap.
Also. I'm 100% with you on being late. It's so completely rude and dismissive of the other person's time.
Ugh, with practices like that, he'll be retiring sooner rather than later because he won't have any clients left! What a nightmare.
Alcoholism and depression are real problems among many attorneys, and it sounds like Turkey may be fighting bigger demons than just an inability to be on time for meetings. I wonder if he's struggling in to work late because he is too hung over in the mornings? I wonder if he's drinking because he's depressed?
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