Memos from Work*, 12/24/2003

It's Christmas Eve. I left my office about 3:00. I wasn't the last person to leave my office. That award goes to the
EvilGeniusPartner. It takes a lot of time and effort to keep that moniker.

I wasn't being an overachiever or anything, I had to stay until the guy from Gateway called me about my new computer. It's been losing time. When you live and die by the number of hours you bill a day, that is a terrible thing.

The Gateway guy wasn't a lot of help and didn't have a lot of novel ideas. He said, "I think you need to reload windows." Which means, losing all my settings, and having to spend a lot of time changing the computer so it works the way I want it to again. That's a drag.

While I was waiting for the GatewayGuy to call, I studied the most recent memo "The Lawyers" got at the office. It says
it is from "The Firm." The last one we got was from "The Firm's Shareholders." I really hate this anonymous shit. If
they've got something to say, they should say it. It also reinforces the idea that no one is really in charge. It's not like we're talking Ford Motor Company or some other huge conglomerate. It can only be one of three people and most likely one of two.

There has been a lot of grumbling going on at my office the last couple of months. One of the secretaries left abruptly,
and early, for her maternity leave which made them short-handed. Apparently the powers that be (there goes that anonymous shit again) had no plan to account for her absence because we have simply done without since she left last summer. There are a lot of people in my office who qualify as "support" staff but the lawyers don't feel like we are getting much support. With my adversaries, I'm sure I get as much, if not more than most of the lawyers here, and my frustration level runs pretty high most of the time.

This most recent memo asks us to outline what we are working on, (have I said no one knows what's going on here) the
kinds of things we would like to work on and "Your comments and/or concerns regarding needed guidance, administrative or staff assistance." They also want "our availability to assist other lawyers."

This is a loaded memo on so many different levels.

You can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a relative, or someone distantly related in some shape or form to
someone in a high position here. The staff (it's probably this way to a large extent everywhere) seem to have been hired, not because they possess any particular skills we need but because of who they know. As a result, the support staff has the attitude that they aren't here to work for the lawyers but to do as little as possible, draw a paycheck and occasionally do something when someone grovels sufficently. Generally it isn't worth the effort to get them to help and the lawyers do pretty much everything themselves except for the occasional running of copies. When I was new here, before I realized where all the land mines were buried (and occasionally I still find one of those), my secretary (they seem to rotate between an among the lawyers every three or four months) who is a certified legal assistant told me. in response to my request to put some discovery together for a case I was working on, "I don't do discovery."

The what we are working on part will be relatively easy, at least for me.

The kinds of things we would like to work on is a little more problematic. I think, in part, that question was thrown out there to give us the feeling that they give a shit about what we want. Realistically everyone knows we are a Bankruptcy
Firm with a capital B. We may dabble in the occasional car wreck case, do the odd Will or set up the occasional Trust but
fundamentally we do Bankruptcy work. Some of it is litigation within the Bankruptcy Court but it's still basically bankruptcy work. The senior partner is a retired Bankruptcy Judge. One of the other partners is a Bankruptcy Trustee. I
think anyone who says, "I don't want to work on bankruptcy cases" would be shooting themselves in the foot. I anticipate they'll be hearing a lot (assuming the threatened meetings they tell us they want to have ever actually occur) of "I want to do more bankruptcy work." Frankly, I'd like to do more of the pure vanilla bankruptcy cases. I tend to work on exotic sorts of things but I've only worked on a couple of simple bankruptcies.

The last two are the most problematic.

My availability to assist other lawyers.

Can I specify which "other" lawyers I want to assist? One of the partners (I really need to find monikers for these
guys but everything I can think of sounds mean and I don't really intend them to-the EvilGeniusPartner isn't mean because I think he likes that moniker and when he does something especially sneaky I call him that to his face) is so frustrating to work for that I honestly think if I had to work for him on any regular basis, I would get fired or quit in frustration.

This is usually what happens:

He will give me an assignment which is generally very vague. I'll do what he wants, or what I think he wants, and go see him because he rarely gives me (and I don't for an instant think he's singling me out because I know he treats everyone this way) any assignment which I can do start to finish without coming back to him for more information. His office door is always closed and we must wait to be admitted to the sanctity of his office. There is always a delay between the time I knock and when he says "come in." I'm not sure what that's about. He will look at me like he's never seen me before. This guy is in his early fifties so I don't know what that's about either. I will ask my question. I try to keep them "yes" or "no" questions or "this" or "that" questions i.e. "you can do this, or you can do that, which would you prefer."

And then he'll look at me. Sometimes he'll look at me so long I begin to think he's forgotten what the question is. And
then, invariably, his response will be, "can I get back to you on that?" I flee his office and wait. Six weeks or so later
(I ALWAYS document these encounters, CYAWP ya know!) he'll show up at my door and say "what did YOU ever do about X?"

Our "needed guidance, administrative or staff assistance." That's suppose to be our opportunity to bitch about the
support staff. That's another minefield I'm not sure I want to navigate. As I've said, the secretarial staff is not very
supportative and related to someone or another in the office. Let's see. Where.To.Begin?

Recently I got a scheduling order in one of my cases changing a bunch of deadlines that had already been established. My secretary just added the new deadlines to my calendar without taking the old ones off. I said "I need you to take those old deadlines off my calendar." She responded, "I didn't put them on, SoAndSo did because I was busy that day." I stood there for a minute looking at her. I finally responded, "I don't care. Get them off my calendar." I don't know if she thought I would hunt SoAndSo up and see if I could get her to take them off. She clearly indicated to me she didn't think it was her problem. One of the problems we have is in an office of 12 or so lawyers we have no central docket. Oh they make some kind of lame attempt to have everyone send their appointments to the receptionist but even I, and I'm pretty good about figuring out what the procedures are and trying to follow them, don't do that anymore. Everyone here keeps their own calendar and if your secretary has someone else docket your deadlines, well that's o.k. because she's not going to worry about whether you need any help with your deadlines even if they were to show up on her calendar.

I wondered by the copy room recently and one of the lawyers was in there making copies for one of his cases. The
support staff likes him the least and he seems to have been hit the hardest by the recent press of business and lack of staff. I inquired:

Why aren't you using the automatic stapler feature of this high dollar copy machine we have?
It's broken.
Oh. Have you told anyone?
No, it's been broken for 8 days, I'm counting the days to see how long it takes the support staff to notice and do anything about it.

I suggested he would make himself crazy doing. I've done similar things on similar sorts of issues so I know where he's coming from.

Recently they bought a new printer for my side of the office to use. We are 6 lawyers and 5 support staff on my side of the office. It only has the paper tray it came with, one, and doesn't have an envelope feeder. If you want to print an envelope, you have to go physically look at the printer to make sure it's free, take the paper out of the top tray (which in reality only holds about 10 sheets of paper), stick in an envelope, return to your desk, print the envelope, get back out there and hope you got it all done before anyone else sends something to print. The alternative is to use the other printer, which does have an envelope feeder, but it doesn't work and you have to physically stand there and feed your envelope into the printer. All this at my reasonable rate of $130 an hour.

Heaven forbid that one of the paper trays run out of paper. When I walk by the printer, and the lights are blinking to
indicate something is wrong, I stop and figure out what it is it needs to make it work. The secretaries, there are
two within about 5 feet of the printer and another within 10 feet of it, can't be bothered to fix the printer unless they want to print something off the internet or someone actually says, "fix it."

Oh and don't even get me started on the coffee. I make, on average probably 10 pots of coffee a day. On any given day I can go into the break room and find two or three secretaries standing around gabbing with full cups of hot coffee in their hands. In the pots will be less than 1/2 an inch of coffee. None of them even thought about making more. "Why do that when one of the lawyers will be by to do it soon."

I probably shouldn't worry too much that anything will come of this memo, or that a meeting will ever occur or I will be
called upon to genuinely decide whether to voice any of my bitches.

Last fall we got the memo from "The Firm's Shareholders." That memo was a result of my quest for a raise. Business is
bad. Not everyone (though they don't ever tell us who) is pulling their weight. They intend to have a meeting with each of us individually to discuss our performance at the Firm. Needless to say, none of those meetings ever occurred. Everyone needs to bill, and collect, 150 hours a month; though they never share with us how much is being collected of what we bill. I was told the way for me to make more money is to generate my own business though no one has shared with me exactly how that will result in more money for me if I stalk the streets in search of my own business.

Maybe Santa will bring me a dead cat for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Peace & Be safe,
M&Co.