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sub_dividedThen Wonder No More.
There is, for one thing, a very easy-going atmosphere. If you are a receptionist, you are allowed to spend the majority of your working hours planning your wedding. Alternately, you may schedule interviews with people who want to hire you after you quit being a receptionist. In fact, the lawyers may give you referrals for said interviews, even though it means that they will be losing a competent worker and gaining the useless daughter of one of the partners. She has never had an office job in her life and doesn't know how to work the stamp machine.
The lawyers spend the majority of the day returning telephone calls, faxing documents, and arranging meetings. It is the receptionist's job not to let any client know that the average lawyer has 20 other clinets at any one time. Fees go into the commual account and are re-distributed more-or-less equally, although the better lawyers do get a bit more. All of the terribly ambitious lawyers who objected to supporting the dead-weight eighty-year-old lawyers have long since split off from the firm to form their own firms. These new firms share office space, supplies, and receptionists with the old firm.
The original firm was recently forced to move from its rent-controlled offices to nicer but far more expensive offices following the expiration of its housing agreement. It has rented out more space than it needs and is now sub-letting space to other law firms, an accounting consultant, an international graphic design house, a woman representing the Shiites, and the Student-Pet Alliance, which is run by Amnesty International's former student coordinator for the United States. Two lawyers have just lost cases; one worked on both cases and cheers herself up by getting sushi for lunch and putting it on the firm account. She complained about her case to a co-worker at the restaurant: this is a business lunch.
Towards the end of the day, a brief will come in. This brief (a short statement of cause in a lawsuit summarizing relevant facts) is the joint effort of two lawyers and must be mailed out to the judge and opposing council before the end of the day. Heavy editing is necessary, but is confined to serious grammatical mistakes in the interests of time. Later, the union lawyer faxes another copy of the brief with "corrections" which must then be included. It is several hours overtime before the lawyer finally leaves the city for an extended weekend.
The brief was edited for grammar by the useless daughter of one of the partners who originally came in just for the morning (to learn how to work the office equipment before she starts her job with the firm next Monday). The case is worth over four million dollars.
***
And that would be my Coherent Thought limit for today. Being that I was still on a summer-bum schedule up until yesterday, I am currently experiencing a sense of disorientation not unlike jet-lag (double negative - Orson Welles is frowning at me right now).
There is, for one thing, a very easy-going atmosphere. If you are a receptionist, you are allowed to spend the majority of your working hours planning your wedding. Alternately, you may schedule interviews with people who want to hire you after you quit being a receptionist. In fact, the lawyers may give you referrals for said interviews, even though it means that they will be losing a competent worker and gaining the useless daughter of one of the partners. She has never had an office job in her life and doesn't know how to work the stamp machine.
The lawyers spend the majority of the day returning telephone calls, faxing documents, and arranging meetings. It is the receptionist's job not to let any client know that the average lawyer has 20 other clinets at any one time. Fees go into the commual account and are re-distributed more-or-less equally, although the better lawyers do get a bit more. All of the terribly ambitious lawyers who objected to supporting the dead-weight eighty-year-old lawyers have long since split off from the firm to form their own firms. These new firms share office space, supplies, and receptionists with the old firm.
The original firm was recently forced to move from its rent-controlled offices to nicer but far more expensive offices following the expiration of its housing agreement. It has rented out more space than it needs and is now sub-letting space to other law firms, an accounting consultant, an international graphic design house, a woman representing the Shiites, and the Student-Pet Alliance, which is run by Amnesty International's former student coordinator for the United States. Two lawyers have just lost cases; one worked on both cases and cheers herself up by getting sushi for lunch and putting it on the firm account. She complained about her case to a co-worker at the restaurant: this is a business lunch.
Towards the end of the day, a brief will come in. This brief (a short statement of cause in a lawsuit summarizing relevant facts) is the joint effort of two lawyers and must be mailed out to the judge and opposing council before the end of the day. Heavy editing is necessary, but is confined to serious grammatical mistakes in the interests of time. Later, the union lawyer faxes another copy of the brief with "corrections" which must then be included. It is several hours overtime before the lawyer finally leaves the city for an extended weekend.
The brief was edited for grammar by the useless daughter of one of the partners who originally came in just for the morning (to learn how to work the office equipment before she starts her job with the firm next Monday). The case is worth over four million dollars.
***
And that would be my Coherent Thought limit for today. Being that I was still on a summer-bum schedule up until yesterday, I am currently experiencing a sense of disorientation not unlike jet-lag (double negative - Orson Welles is frowning at me right now).
