Tuesday, February 28, 2006
The Strange People Who Work for Us
Work days are stressful for litigation/arbitration lawyers. We run 20 to 30 cases at the same time (all in different stages of the legal process) and we need our Secretaries, Pupils and Associates to assist us otherwise we'd never be able to handle all the work. Lately though, I've experienced some bizzare behaviour amongst them.
A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine proposed to act for a plaintiff in a defamation claim. He turned it down when it was pointed out to him that the prospective defendant was one of our Pupils. Generally, the firm tries not sue its own employees. It sounded like a bum claim anyway.
Then yesterday, that same Pupil showed me a Third Party Notice naming him. It was apparently some traffic accident matter and the defendant was claiming that the Pupil's poor handling of his car caused the defendant to crash into the plaintiff. The Pupil is painfully aware that his job is to try to get into cases as a lawyer and not as one of the parties. That didn't stop me from making fun of him though :)
Last Friday, my Secretary showed me her draft of a letter I had dictated to her. It involved an arbitration hearing at a social club called "The Legends @ Fort Canning". In that one letter, she spelt "Legions @ Fort Canning", "Legend @ Fort Canning" and finally "Legends @ Fort Canning". Even if she misheard what I said, I would nevertheless have thought she would have been consistent in her misspelling. I was wrong.
It brings to mind an occasion some years ago when a colleague showed me a draft letter prepared by his secretary of 6 months. She had misspelt his name. Twice. Both identical misspellings. You'd think they'd know your name if they worked for you for 6 months. Especially since in those days, we still had all our names listed on the letterhead! We were wrong. I suggested he circle his name in the letterhead and draw a line from that to his misspelt name in the body of the letter. We then waited to see if she would change his name in the letterhead to her preferred misspelling :) No such fun though.
On Valentine's Day, a male Associate received a card from a "Secret Admirer" who said something to the effect of being unable to stop thinking about him. The card had a big picture of the new gay cowboy movie "Brokeback Mountain". It also contained a newspaper cut-out of celebrities people most wanted to date - with all the female celebrities' pictures crossed out. The Associate is not gay (as far as I know) and the card appears to be a practical joke on him. We hope anyway.
The people who work for us are strange sometimes.
Work days are stressful for litigation/arbitration lawyers. We run 20 to 30 cases at the same time (all in different stages of the legal process) and we need our Secretaries, Pupils and Associates to assist us otherwise we'd never be able to handle all the work. Lately though, I've experienced some bizzare behaviour amongst them.
A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine proposed to act for a plaintiff in a defamation claim. He turned it down when it was pointed out to him that the prospective defendant was one of our Pupils. Generally, the firm tries not sue its own employees. It sounded like a bum claim anyway.
Then yesterday, that same Pupil showed me a Third Party Notice naming him. It was apparently some traffic accident matter and the defendant was claiming that the Pupil's poor handling of his car caused the defendant to crash into the plaintiff. The Pupil is painfully aware that his job is to try to get into cases as a lawyer and not as one of the parties. That didn't stop me from making fun of him though :)
Last Friday, my Secretary showed me her draft of a letter I had dictated to her. It involved an arbitration hearing at a social club called "The Legends @ Fort Canning". In that one letter, she spelt "Legions @ Fort Canning", "Legend @ Fort Canning" and finally "Legends @ Fort Canning". Even if she misheard what I said, I would nevertheless have thought she would have been consistent in her misspelling. I was wrong.
It brings to mind an occasion some years ago when a colleague showed me a draft letter prepared by his secretary of 6 months. She had misspelt his name. Twice. Both identical misspellings. You'd think they'd know your name if they worked for you for 6 months. Especially since in those days, we still had all our names listed on the letterhead! We were wrong. I suggested he circle his name in the letterhead and draw a line from that to his misspelt name in the body of the letter. We then waited to see if she would change his name in the letterhead to her preferred misspelling :) No such fun though.
On Valentine's Day, a male Associate received a card from a "Secret Admirer" who said something to the effect of being unable to stop thinking about him. The card had a big picture of the new gay cowboy movie "Brokeback Mountain". It also contained a newspaper cut-out of celebrities people most wanted to date - with all the female celebrities' pictures crossed out. The Associate is not gay (as far as I know) and the card appears to be a practical joke on him. We hope anyway.
The people who work for us are strange sometimes.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Maybe All the Work Around Here is Ultimately done by One Person
I refer to the following in my post yesterday - "normally [the] Associate gives me a draft reply, I make some superficial amendments like changing the grammar or underlining a word so it looks like I worked and then I send it on to clients."
I just spoke with that Associate. He knows what I've been doing with the drafts he sends me because I copy him on emails to clients and he looks through the correspondence files. He just confessed that actually, he takes drafts from the Pupils, makes some superficial amendments like changing the grammar or removing underlining from a word so it looks like he worked and then he sends it on to me.
I suppose if I can do that, why not him? But stuff like that leads me to suspect that maybe all the work around here is ultimately being done by just one person. He or she is at the bottom of the totem pole and gets instructions from whoever is one rung above in the heirarchy. He/she does the research, drafts the opinion and hands it back to the instructor. Everybody else in the food chain just makes grammatical changes and takes turns underlining and de-underlining words and we all bill the client as if we did some real work :)
I suspect its the Tea Lady who really does all the work around here. Maybe that's why she comes in before anyone else in the office, leaves really late at night and always has a flustered, busy look on her face all day.
I refer to the following in my post yesterday - "normally [the] Associate gives me a draft reply, I make some superficial amendments like changing the grammar or underlining a word so it looks like I worked and then I send it on to clients."
I just spoke with that Associate. He knows what I've been doing with the drafts he sends me because I copy him on emails to clients and he looks through the correspondence files. He just confessed that actually, he takes drafts from the Pupils, makes some superficial amendments like changing the grammar or removing underlining from a word so it looks like he worked and then he sends it on to me.
I suppose if I can do that, why not him? But stuff like that leads me to suspect that maybe all the work around here is ultimately being done by just one person. He or she is at the bottom of the totem pole and gets instructions from whoever is one rung above in the heirarchy. He/she does the research, drafts the opinion and hands it back to the instructor. Everybody else in the food chain just makes grammatical changes and takes turns underlining and de-underlining words and we all bill the client as if we did some real work :)
I suspect its the Tea Lady who really does all the work around here. Maybe that's why she comes in before anyone else in the office, leaves really late at night and always has a flustered, busy look on her face all day.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
A Day in the Life of Me
I've been reading a lot of Anonymous Lawyer recently. His perspective on life as a lawyer really resonates with me. This post is an attempt to replicate his style.
I got in the office this morning to find a long email from a lawyer in a nearby country explaining that there was some kind of misunderstanding and therefore my firm doesn't actually have to withdraw from the case because of the client's behaviour. It's a long, confusing and ultimately illogical explanation. That's par for the course but what impressed me the most was that he sent the email at 8pm his local time. I didn't know he worked that late.
So I called a Junior Associate working on the file with me to discuss our response. The Associate sounded terrible, so bad that I was forced to ask what was wrong with him in the hopes that he could fix it so that it wouldn't annoy me over the phone. He had the flu. We agreed on our response to the foreign lawyer's email then I told the Associate to go home and I would draft it myself (normally, this Associate gives me a draft reply, I make some superficial amendments like changing the grammar or underlining a word so it looks like I worked and then I send it on to clients).
After lunch I make small talk with the Pupil sitting right outside my room and notice that he sounded terrible too! He had the flu. He said he probably got it from the Associate whom I instructed to go home this morning. I asked if they were being gay together. It was a valid question - the Associate doesn't have a girlfriend (he can't with all the work I give him to do) and the Pupil doesn't have a personal life I care about. The Pupil denied they were gay. He said the Associate probably got it from the Deputy Director in our team. That guy's off the gay list since he's now dating an Associate in Corporate/Banking. The Pupil then suggested that it was that girl in Corporate/Banking who started it all because she fell sick a few weeks back.
Just to be safe, I buzzed another Pupil and asked him to give me a memo in 1 hour about who's been spreading the gay flu around the office. We have a laugh at the 2nd Pupil's expense and the first Pupil blows his nose in front of me. I tell him to go home early, about 9pm or so :) Actually, I told him to go home immediately. He said he would last through a normal day's work to about 5pm. He clearly misunderstood my instruction to be genuine concern for his well-being. The truth is, since he sits just outside my room, if I catch the flu next, I'm on the gay list too.
I then call J and tell her I'm feeling lethargic. I'm thinking of getting a massage this afternoon then coming back to work into the night to make up for the lost billable hours. If I do that, I'll have to cancel on dinner tonight and I'm sorry. J said it's ok and then asked if I was going to use one of my Amex Platinum "1 For 1" spa/massage vouchers. I said no ... if I'm going for a massage this afternoon by myself, there is no one around to use the other "1" in the voucher. Sometimes J is funny that way.
I just opened my door to take a peak. The Pupil is blowing his nose whilst hard at work on some document. *sigh*
I've been reading a lot of Anonymous Lawyer recently. His perspective on life as a lawyer really resonates with me. This post is an attempt to replicate his style.
I got in the office this morning to find a long email from a lawyer in a nearby country explaining that there was some kind of misunderstanding and therefore my firm doesn't actually have to withdraw from the case because of the client's behaviour. It's a long, confusing and ultimately illogical explanation. That's par for the course but what impressed me the most was that he sent the email at 8pm his local time. I didn't know he worked that late.
So I called a Junior Associate working on the file with me to discuss our response. The Associate sounded terrible, so bad that I was forced to ask what was wrong with him in the hopes that he could fix it so that it wouldn't annoy me over the phone. He had the flu. We agreed on our response to the foreign lawyer's email then I told the Associate to go home and I would draft it myself (normally, this Associate gives me a draft reply, I make some superficial amendments like changing the grammar or underlining a word so it looks like I worked and then I send it on to clients).
After lunch I make small talk with the Pupil sitting right outside my room and notice that he sounded terrible too! He had the flu. He said he probably got it from the Associate whom I instructed to go home this morning. I asked if they were being gay together. It was a valid question - the Associate doesn't have a girlfriend (he can't with all the work I give him to do) and the Pupil doesn't have a personal life I care about. The Pupil denied they were gay. He said the Associate probably got it from the Deputy Director in our team. That guy's off the gay list since he's now dating an Associate in Corporate/Banking. The Pupil then suggested that it was that girl in Corporate/Banking who started it all because she fell sick a few weeks back.
Just to be safe, I buzzed another Pupil and asked him to give me a memo in 1 hour about who's been spreading the gay flu around the office. We have a laugh at the 2nd Pupil's expense and the first Pupil blows his nose in front of me. I tell him to go home early, about 9pm or so :) Actually, I told him to go home immediately. He said he would last through a normal day's work to about 5pm. He clearly misunderstood my instruction to be genuine concern for his well-being. The truth is, since he sits just outside my room, if I catch the flu next, I'm on the gay list too.
I then call J and tell her I'm feeling lethargic. I'm thinking of getting a massage this afternoon then coming back to work into the night to make up for the lost billable hours. If I do that, I'll have to cancel on dinner tonight and I'm sorry. J said it's ok and then asked if I was going to use one of my Amex Platinum "1 For 1" spa/massage vouchers. I said no ... if I'm going for a massage this afternoon by myself, there is no one around to use the other "1" in the voucher. Sometimes J is funny that way.
I just opened my door to take a peak. The Pupil is blowing his nose whilst hard at work on some document. *sigh*
