Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.
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The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.
So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?
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Hello again! Forgot to ask the question I wanted to ask: has anyone here ever worked in a law office? If you have, what was the nature of the support roles? For example, I suppose there are word processing people (although now they’re called desktop publishers). Is there a person who schedules the appointments and if so, is she or he called a receptionist or a scheduler? (Conceivably there are still receptionists who greet visitors.) Also, is there an in-house mail person who delivers paper documents throughout the building?
The March short story is well underway but I need more info. Thanks in advance if you can help!
I have worked with law offices but none that were large enough to have mailrooms and buildings that spanned many floors. Just about all but the tiniest (one or two person firms) have a receptionist of some sort for people who walk in off the street or to redirect people who show up for appointments. Most firms will have a new client talk to an attorney, before they schedule an appointment, to find out more about their legal matter. After they are a client, usually the assigned attorney’s legal assistant handles the scheduling – an attorney may have their own legal assistant or they may share, depending on their workload. Those legal assistants usually do the typing as well often from dictation … some firms use transcription services that transcribe the dictation, some via the Internet, and produce documents that are emailed to the user. You would be hard pressed to find a law firm that is not highly automated and many don’t fool with paper at all any more especially since all court filings, both state and federal, are done electronically.
I don’t know if that helps or muddles things. For what it is worth, I have never heard of a staff person in a law firm, or any firm other than a graphic design firm, referred to as a “desktop publisher”.
Thanks, Jan!
Diana, I haven’t worked in a law office in about 20 years, but maybe I can help from my experience both working as a lawyer in private practice and with lawyers most recently as an expert witness. A typical small firm of more than 2 or 3 attorneys – say anywhere from 10 to 50 lawyers – will have a receptionist and waiting area for clients, where the clients wait until their attorney is ready to see them in his or her office. Most attorneys work on their own computers – I imagine it’s still mostly desktop computers, not laptops, as the firm’s computers would normally be networked together. Every attorney in every firm I have worked with had her own secretary/legal assistant to do a variety of tasks, but in very large firms, there probably would still be a whole staff of legal assistants to do legal research and routine filings, I think. I am not sure these days whether there would be a mail delivery person – there was when I was practicing in a couple of large firms in the 80’s and 90’s, but I don’t really know how eletronic mail and filing of documents, which is prevalent now, has affected that.
Hope that helps a bit.
I will add a few things to this. The secretary/legal assistant title varies by region, I think. “Secretary” conjures up all sorts of unwanted images and may not accurately reflect that the person filling that job has expertise in law offices, somewhat different, perhaps, than the secretary for a middle manager at an insurance company who may only do dictation and schedule meetings. However, some people prefer “Secretary” and I have seen firms use both.
There are also paralegals who do more complicated legal work. In some states, you have to have training or education to call yourself a paralegal … in other states, you can just use the title. They can’t sign briefs or conduct depositions but they may manage 95% of a case to allow the attorney to concentrate on the things that only he or she can do.
Beyond that, there are often law clerks who do legal research for the attorneys. They are usually law school students working part time (and probably very cheaply!) and generally work for the entire firm but could work for a specific attorney or maybe a practice group within a larger firm.
Geordie, laptops can be networked! :) Most of the firms I am familiar with give laptops to the attorneys and assign desktops to the support staff. Laptops go to depositions, court appearances, trials, home – and then come back and get connected to the corporate network. Most communication is done via email with PDF documents of all sorts arriving in people’s Inboxes and then saved to network drives. The incoming mail very often is scanned at a scanning station (an extra task for the receptionist in many cases) and emailed to the recipient. Again, I don’t know how the larger firms handle this and I am going to guess there are still some old guys who won’t touch a computer (it’s wimmins work to be near a keyboard!) but there are not many of those left. Every attorney graduating from law school since at least 1990 has had to learn to type his or her own briefs and many, quite frankly, still want to do that. When I first started working with law firms, none of the partners had computers. Eventually many of them got connected for email and then reading the electronic documents but lots of them are still consumers of the content rather than creators.
A lot has changed over the years! But they still bill in 6 minute increments. :)
Thanks, Jan! Yes, when I asked Aunty Google about it, she said that definitely lawyers are expected to do their own “keyboarding,” even if they are MALE. And yes, sometimes what used to be called a “legal secretary” is now called a “legal assistant.”
One thing that’s helpful to my soon-to-be-written story is that law firms often employ a “runner,” who can run documents from the law office to court and vice versa. I’m guessing that even in this high-tech age there is still a need for paper documents, either because some old poops won’t touch a computer or something is too secret to go over a network.
Thanks, Geordie and Jan, for your help! I have a much better foundation for the three main characters now. :)
Absolutely on the runners! Many firms use messenger services but the larger ones have their own runners (some use their slave-wage law clerks). Some documents may still have to be delivered to the courts on paper or the firms may send them both electronically and on paper to make sure that they don’t miss any statutory deadlines.
Thanks, Geordie!
Here is a fun story: 102-year-old Iowan prepares to cast her 20th presidential vote
Ha!! May you live long enough to cast a vote for the first woman president, Ruline, and see her sworn in.
Great story, Jan!
Walked 7 miles. Finally got warm about 4 miles in. Didn’t go to breakfast tacos after, wasn’t feeling that good. Head doesn’t hurt any more, I’m just tired. Justifiably. I might get up enough energy to go grocery shopping & do my baked oatmeal today. Or not. definitely a nap. maybe a massage…..
Yr Wonkette