A Brief Respite

Every so often, things at the office slow down to a crawl.  Usually in early August when everyone is taking vacations and it's too damn hot to work.  I work hard during this period to deal with all those little things that aren't important, need to be done but I never seem to have the time for.  Like pruning my office plants, cleaning out my bigger and uglier files, and my personal favorite:  Cleaning Attorney Offices. 

Yes, I said it.  When any of my attorneys go away for a few days, I make it a point of going through their office and finding all those files, transcripts and discovery things that seem to get lost forever. 

Some of my attorneys, like Skippy the Wonder Associate, are easier than others.  Skippy treats hard copies like Kryptonite.  It's one of the things I actually like about him.  Most of the younger generation seem content with electronic-only documents in Word or PDF.  That suits me just fine.  Electronic files are always in the same place (especially when I make them read-only and lock their location so that only I can move them :).  Skippy's office is remarkably clean for someone as busy as he is.

Other attorneys are more difficult.  We all have at least one attorney who needs everything as a hard copy, and hangs onto it like gold bars.  One of my attorneys is so bad, I actually maintain two seperate, identical files for each of his cases.  One in my office with the originals, and one in his office with copies.  Doubles the work I have to do in each of those cases, but it beats the hell out of keeping everything in his office where it will be strewn wildly about without any sense of order.  Keeping the main file in my office at least means I can find things when he panics.