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This is a humorous and sarcastic blog written by a paralegal in a mid-sized law firm in a mid-tier market. The goal is to share some of the pitfalls and foibles encountered in my own day-to-day experiences. Feel free to contact me at aparalegalslife@gmail.com with comments. Complaints, not so much :)

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Communication Breakdown

The main office of the firm is large.  Super-BigLaw.  Bureaucracy is the name of the game there, and rightfully so due to the volume of work they need to handle.  Responsibility for different aspects of case management are broken up among dozens of people in numerous departments. 

The office I work in is much smaller. Those same tasks are done by just one or two of us in the regional offices, because our caseloads are much smaller and more localized. 

The most frustrating aspect setting up my practice has been attempting to explain that to the bureaucrats.  They just don't grasp the difference in scale, or the need for me to be able to do more than one kind of task.  After nearly a month, I still don't have a fifth of the access I need to key systems, databases, etc. in order to do my job.  (Every time I hear "you aren't supposed to handle 'X', that's another department" after telling them we don't have multiple departments here, a piece of my soul dies and a fairy loses her wings.)

The worst part is trying to explain all of this to the attorneys here in the regional office, who don't understand why I can't do X, Y and Z.  Attorneys aren't known for their tolerance or patience.

2 comments:

Momalegal said...

Wow, yeah, attorneys do not = patience. At least not the ones I've worked with! That sounds incredibly frustrating. I hope you can get through the red tape to get things situated soon!

Lee27 said...

Try using emails to communicate with the big office and copy your attorneys on all messages. And if you see they were not copied on a reply forward it to them with 'FYI"

1. It let's your attorneys know you are making an effort
2. It let's big office know you you are not trying to access the firm's inner secrets for fun.

It you don't get a response, forward the email back to the person and state you are following up on the below email and ask when can you expect a response.