Images

Some Office Policies Lawyers Can Live By

By AMY GOODUSKY

As I was eating my 12th mini-Baby Ruth of the day, and thinking about such scintillating subjects as the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, I got an e-mail from a friend, wanting to know what a particular slang expression meant. I was not equipped with my Super Friends’ Impecunia the Intellectual thinking cap, and therefore had to ask for help. After I got the answer, I sent Cindy, the paralegal who had given it to me, an e-mail. I asked whether, in light of the fact that I had learned something new, I could go home.

She said it would be fine with her. She interposed a new suggestion. In addition to the time-honored maxim, “If you learn something new, you can go home,” she indicated that if my pen ran out of ink, I could also leave work as this was evidence that I was working very hard. This was particularly true, I thought, in light of the fact that handwriting was my worst subject in grade school; and moreover, that I use the computer keyboard the way some people use amphetamines: it helps me think.

So, I thought. What I thought about was not about how to plead the plaintiff in question into legal oblivion. Instead I entertained a vision of some law office policies and procedures which would include items of the type Cindy had suggested. My ideal office manual would contain the following items.

1) The dress code would not incorporate any requirements for uncomfortable footwear. This would prevent many needless emergency bunionectomies, thus reducing health insurance premiums, and would totally eliminate absences occasioned by painful corns.

2) If anyone learned anything new, he or she could leave the office and take the rest of the day off to celebrate. This would encourage learning, especially in the morning. Some proof that the learner had actually acquired new knowledge would have to be provided.

3) Anyone who won a case would be given a large cake of his or her choice of flavor to be shared among the office. This would facilitate team spirit.

4) An attorney who loses a case would be placed in time out. This would keep him or her from having to discuss the painful subject with the insurance representatives, clients and other interested persons invested with a ghoulish desire to find out what went wrong. The length of the time out would be arbitrary depending upon how quickly the injured ego of the losing lawyer healed. This would have to be determined by a team composed of the attorney’s family members, managing partners, treating psychiatrist(s) and at least one secretary.

5) Periodically, everyone would have to help with filing, copying and typing labels in hopes that a genuine appreciation for the tediousness of the work would result in better presents for the staff on Administrative Assistants’ Day.

6) If you lose your parking receipt, we will pay you anyway.

7) Anyone breaking the copier would be required to pay $10 into a fund used to purchase a gift for the repairman.

8) Any attorney required to try a case in the first or second chair should be granted the same number of weeks’ vacation as the trial lasted, including, but not limited to, the appeal, over and above whatever period of vacation time that person had earned.

9) Singing in the office should be liberally permitted, but no “Kumbaya,” John Denver or commercial jingles. Anyone who sings, hums or plays the BumbleBee tuna song on a kazoo, comb and tissue paper or other percussion instrument will be asked to leave the building.

10) No boring meetings. Meetings should take place among any grouping no more often than once every five years, and must involve food, preferably of the salty, cheesy, pizza goodness variety.

11) If you break your computer … good luck with that. •

Amy F. Goodusky, a former paralegal, rock ‘n’ roll singer and horseback riding instructor, is of counsel at O’Brien, Tanski & Young in Hartford.