You know, people have this idea about what lawyers are, how their personalities work. Lawyers are super-organized, right? They have their shit together. They keep their paperwork in order and alphabetize their files.
Not.
On my shelf is a hated, hated stack of paperwork, one that grows and diminishes but is never completely gone. My nemesis, there are nights I think I can hear it chuckling in the dark office, even though my house is miles away. I swear last weekend I saw it gleaming with an eldritch glow. Unholy. Unredeemed. Out for revenge on me, because it has heard the cries of the stacks of unsorted paperwork on my work table at home, and knows that I am the cause of all their suffering...
It is...the Miscellaneous Documents Stack.
The MDS is all the stuff that somehow gets orphaned from its file. Sometimes paperwork comes in after the file is closed; more often, an attorney hid it under a pile of menus and back copies of the Law Review, then dumped it on top of the file cabinet and slunk away like a cat that's just shit in the hallway. They know I'll find it there. Furthermore, they know I'll go and file it for them, even though the file in question has already gone to archives and started the process of carbonization. I swear, in the back room at Archives it smells just a little like coal. (Did I mention that our archives are...in another county? Thirty miles away?)
Still more often, it comes about because certain attorneys, and I name no names, seem to think that their law school education removes from them the responsibility of ever, ever having to operate a 2-hole punch again in this life. They think if they just dump the new correspondence and pleadings in the middle of the file, unsecured, that some jerk without a J.D. will punch, resort, and file their shit.
They never consider the fact that before that jerk, namely me, gets the file AFTER it's shifted around from desk to desk and cabinet to cabinet, and that WITHOUT FAIL one lonely, measly document -- usually missing any indicator of what case it belongs to -- is going to waft itself somewhere unwarranted and end up taking a good 45 minutes out of my day to locate its parent file when at last it comes to light, quivering and shaking. And believe me, forty-five minutes in an airless, windowless room, crammed full of enough paper to crush me were it all to simultaneously decide that shelves are lame and the floor is where it's at, looking for a file that, with my luck, someone has reopened and hidden in the corner of their office floor, is exactly what I wanted today! I was psyched! That's why I wore a sweater and three-inch heels; it makes the sweating and clambering up and down the rickety stool even more fun!
Don't believe that Type A, organized lawyer crap. They hire their organizers/minders/nose-wipers. What did you think a paralegal was? Hint: attorney nanny. Don't believe me? Wait until you overhear a grown man asking his assistant, plaintively, in the voice of a three-year-old waiting for Santa: "Where am I supposed to be, today, again?!?" (Feel free to add the unspoken "Mommy!!!!" at the end of that statement, as it's definitely there in the subtext.)
If the South wasn't so damn anti-union, I could shut down the entire legal system by organizing the paralegals (hell, I'm not classist: let the legal secretaries in on it too!) and getting them to strike. Picture downtown Nashville full of lawyers, their shoes untied, their ties askew, their briefcases empty, crying out as with one voice, "What am I supposed to do NOW?!" Picture the screams of agony as they attempt to locate their own files! Picture the river of blood as their papercuts well up as one papercut and they realize that they never knew how difficult it was to run all the mail in the thirty minutes remaining before pickup time! For your visualization pleasure, throw Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World" over this mental montage of disgruntled entitlement!
Life is beautiful. Union-related revenge dreams? Even more so.
Maybe those will slack off a bit once I'm done with finals. But I doubt it.
Not.
On my shelf is a hated, hated stack of paperwork, one that grows and diminishes but is never completely gone. My nemesis, there are nights I think I can hear it chuckling in the dark office, even though my house is miles away. I swear last weekend I saw it gleaming with an eldritch glow. Unholy. Unredeemed. Out for revenge on me, because it has heard the cries of the stacks of unsorted paperwork on my work table at home, and knows that I am the cause of all their suffering...
It is...the Miscellaneous Documents Stack.
The MDS is all the stuff that somehow gets orphaned from its file. Sometimes paperwork comes in after the file is closed; more often, an attorney hid it under a pile of menus and back copies of the Law Review, then dumped it on top of the file cabinet and slunk away like a cat that's just shit in the hallway. They know I'll find it there. Furthermore, they know I'll go and file it for them, even though the file in question has already gone to archives and started the process of carbonization. I swear, in the back room at Archives it smells just a little like coal. (Did I mention that our archives are...in another county? Thirty miles away?)
Still more often, it comes about because certain attorneys, and I name no names, seem to think that their law school education removes from them the responsibility of ever, ever having to operate a 2-hole punch again in this life. They think if they just dump the new correspondence and pleadings in the middle of the file, unsecured, that some jerk without a J.D. will punch, resort, and file their shit.
They never consider the fact that before that jerk, namely me, gets the file AFTER it's shifted around from desk to desk and cabinet to cabinet, and that WITHOUT FAIL one lonely, measly document -- usually missing any indicator of what case it belongs to -- is going to waft itself somewhere unwarranted and end up taking a good 45 minutes out of my day to locate its parent file when at last it comes to light, quivering and shaking. And believe me, forty-five minutes in an airless, windowless room, crammed full of enough paper to crush me were it all to simultaneously decide that shelves are lame and the floor is where it's at, looking for a file that, with my luck, someone has reopened and hidden in the corner of their office floor, is exactly what I wanted today! I was psyched! That's why I wore a sweater and three-inch heels; it makes the sweating and clambering up and down the rickety stool even more fun!
Don't believe that Type A, organized lawyer crap. They hire their organizers/minders/nose-wipers. What did you think a paralegal was? Hint: attorney nanny. Don't believe me? Wait until you overhear a grown man asking his assistant, plaintively, in the voice of a three-year-old waiting for Santa: "Where am I supposed to be, today, again?!?" (Feel free to add the unspoken "Mommy!!!!" at the end of that statement, as it's definitely there in the subtext.)
If the South wasn't so damn anti-union, I could shut down the entire legal system by organizing the paralegals (hell, I'm not classist: let the legal secretaries in on it too!) and getting them to strike. Picture downtown Nashville full of lawyers, their shoes untied, their ties askew, their briefcases empty, crying out as with one voice, "What am I supposed to do NOW?!" Picture the screams of agony as they attempt to locate their own files! Picture the river of blood as their papercuts well up as one papercut and they realize that they never knew how difficult it was to run all the mail in the thirty minutes remaining before pickup time! For your visualization pleasure, throw Louis Armstrong singing "What a Wonderful World" over this mental montage of disgruntled entitlement!
Life is beautiful. Union-related revenge dreams? Even more so.
Maybe those will slack off a bit once I'm done with finals. But I doubt it.
posted by Pope Lizbet | 7:48 AM
1 Comments:
The hatttte, it is still alive.
Booo disorganized lawyers!!
Yayy finishing finals!!!!!
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