Filing documents in Court has always annoyed me. Lawyers like to pretend this mundane activity is some kind of complex religious ceremony. They’ll sombrely tell clients that Court forms are being “produced” or “deposited with the Registry” or (the ultimate liturgy) “sealed by the Court.” It all sounds highly venerable. Except; it’s a load of utter rubbish. 

This holy ritual typically consists of a secretary printing out copies of the papers on a cheap laser printer. The papers are then either sent to the Court Registry, or walked to the front counter by the firm’s work experience slave.

Upon receipt of said documents, a (typically comatose) public servant will either:

1. Throw all the papers in some tatty manila folder (otherwise known as “The Court File” – queue organ music). Or more likely;
2. Loose all the documents because picking his nose took priority over actually doing any work that day.

Can we also get over this nonsense about “sealing” documents too? No actual bloody seal has been involved for at least 200 years. It’s a stamp. I know it’s a stamp, you know it’s a stamp, and the stupid client knows it’s a stamp. Usually, it’s a fairly cheap and nasty one too. I’ve seen nightclubs with more elaborate stamps than the ‘seals’ of most Superior Courts of Record.

Thankfully, many Courts have recognised how inefficient and archaic this whole process is. There are now websites which allow documents to be ‘filed’ online. Sadly, most of them are still paper-centric, since they expect PDF documents to be created (web forms anyone?). Still, at least it’s a start.

I recently attended a PowerPoint presentation for the launch of one such site. For reasons I cannot comprehend, Decrepit Partner also thought he would come along - despite the fact that he still thinks it’s funny to say that he can’t “drive” a computer.

Here are some choice quotes:

“What if Hackers break into the site and steal the documents I’ve filed? How would the police get them back?”

“What about the filing fees? So we just scan the cheque in and “upload” that as well do we?” [You could hear the inverted commas]

“OK I get it now. After we print out the documents we scan them back into the computer and send them using this website. It’s just like a fax machine.”

“Does this thing have voice activation? My son got one of those new iPhones and you can just talk to it and it does things. This thing should use that.”

“Wait, so clients themselves can check if documents have been filed? I’m not sure if I like that…”

“What was the site address again? [Proceeds to take out a piece of paper and a pen] H…T…T…P… colon…”

One of the more irritating things about paper is that it takes up a lot of physical space.

My firm now stores so many boxes of paper that I’ve recently been forced into an uncomfortable office-sharing arrangement with Time-Wasting Senior Consultant. Basically, the paper gets better office privileges than I do.

To add insult to injury, I’m now surrounded by useless pieces of paper in my own workspace. Time-Wasting Senior Consultant can’t get enough of the stuff. It’s everywhere. In a misguided act of kindness he even keeps trying to foist it upon me. 

“I’ve put a fresh stack of timesheets on your desk.”

I don’t write on paper timesheets. I use software to track my time.

“Here’s a nifty little thing. It’s a spike that you put your telephone message notes on. I find it’s great so that you don’t forget them!”

Thing is, I don’t use paper telephone messages. It’s quicker to log them on a computer.

“You’ll love this. It’s a bent piece of metal that holds all your scrap paper. Then you can just tear off any notes you make while you’re on the phone or whatever.”

Wow, really? Rusted metal and paper? It’s like I’m living in the future!

“Oh and I noticed you didn’t have a phonebook in here. Don’t worry I’ve put one on your desk.”

So you’re the reason they still print those things…

I’ve noticed that old lawyers don’t retire. Upon reaching a certain age, they continue to haunt law firms as “Senior Consultants.” The benefit of being a ‘consultant’ is that you get to retain your large office - but spend all your time making personal phonecalls and generally faffing about.  

Senior Consultant called me into his office today to discuss some boring commercial matter he was handling for a friend pro bono. Rather than simply giving me the file, he thought it would be a good idea if we worked on it together that afternoon. Senior Consultant hasn’t had to fill in a time sheet for 40 years, so I suppose the concept of spending an entire afternoon on unpaid work means very little to him. 

As part of this fun-filled-afternoon we had to draft an e-mail containing advice. I asked Senior Consultant if he’d like me to get on his computer and type the letter. 

Apparently I hurt his pride. With a look of bewilderment he replied: “Why would I want you to type the e-mail?!”

I couldn’t think of a polite way to say: ”Because you’re an old shithead who wastes my time and types slower than someone with cerebral palsy wearing oven mitts.”

After two hours of hunting and pecking, an e-mail containing six paragraphs was sent. 

During this time, I ignored Senior Consultant’s inane ramblings. Instead, I thought of a clause I could include in an employment contract. I would use this contract in the fictitious law firm I run in my head. 

Typing Related Work Offences

Employees will be summarily dismissed if they:

1. Ask “Where’s the dollar sign?”
2. Don’t understand how the CAPS LOCK and SHIFT keys work.
3. Use the backspace button by depressing it rapidly (and loudly) in succession to delete a long line of text. 
4. Justify text by      pressing     the    space   key    lots     of     times.
5. Type like they’re Mozart by audibly smashing the keys.
6. Try to find a key by waving their index finger over the keyboard like they’re playing Whac-A-Mole.
7. Create a page break by 
   pressing
   
   
   ENTER
   
   
   sixteen times. 
8. Ask “How come those little knobby things are on the F & J keys?”
9. Use two spaces after a full stop.   Inconsistently varying the number of spaces used after a full stop will also result in summary execution. 
10. Underline things for emphasis.
11. Do not understand what any of the following key combinations do: CTRL+C, CTRL+X, CTRL+V.
12. Don’t understand the difference between “Copy and Paste” and “Cut and Paste.”

The vast bulk of the work a lawyer does is mundane, boring, and could be undertaken by a trained monkey with the appropriate professional indemnity insurance. 

Unfortunately, people are reluctant to pay lesser primates $350 an hour. To justify their charge-out rates, lawyers often pretend they’re wizards practicing some arcane art few people could master. Flourished signatures add to the illusion. Watch your lawyer’s lips the next time he signs something. I bet you can just make out the word “abracadabra” forming under his breath.

Sadly, most people fall for the illusion. I often deal with clients who believe that signatures are the only way to magically make anything ‘official.’ The thing is, when you think about it, paper signatures are stupid. 

The whole point of a signature is to verify your identity. You sign something to tell the world that you, specifically, endorse whatever it is you just signed.

But few people have signatures like John Hancock:

In fact, most signatures are just generic scribbles:

What does the above signature tell me about the identity of the person who signed? They have a Zorro fetish? They just had a seizure? Nothing really. 

Even if you do use a highly unique signature, somebody can scan it and produce a fairly convincing forgery with a cheap home printer. I print my signature on unimportant letters to save time. Nobody in the office has noticed yet. When they do, I’ll probably have my magic wand confiscated. 

It is true that some legal forms still require a manual signature. However, most jurisdictions allow lots of documents to be signed electronically. I’d trust the most basic e-mail signature over the printed variety any day. While not foolproof, e-mail headers give me far more information about a person’s likely identity than some chicken scratchings on paper.

Fun story: 

I once sent someone the terms & conditions for a small Internet venture, and sought confirmation in a return e-mail that they agreed to the terms.

A simple e-mail saying “I agree” would have sufficed as evidence of their approval to this particular contract (plus it was obvious from their conduct that they did).

Instead of replying electronically, they printed out the agreement, signed the bottom, and faxed 86 pages to me. 

Funner story: 

My secretary scanned each page of the signed agreement back into our document management system.

$350 well spent.

Z: “Since you’re so good with that kind of stuff, can you get on the computer and try to find X for me and print it out?”

Where:

X = Something trivial that would take anyone with half-a-brain two seconds to type into Google. 

Proving:

Z = An ass-hat.

An alternative theory is occasionally postulated whereby the same conclusion is reached:

X = Something that could only be ‘found on the computer’ if the computer was a magic box that could answer any question posed to it. Examples include the whereabouts of client where only their first name is known, the meaning of a dream a Partner had last night, or which stationary company is “the best one.”

Proving:

Z = An ass-hat.

In my ongoing quest to eliminate all paper from my life, I removed a filing cabinet from my office today. This apparently required consultation from three paralegals with a cumulative age of about 850. With extreme age comes extreme wisdom - at least in furniture removal and interior design. 

In their expert opinions, it was essential that a hideous pot-plant be moved from one side of my office to the space once occupied by the filing cabinet. I’m not sure why. It may have something to do with feng shui. Possibly they just like annoying me with their inane chatter about unimportant nonsense.

Upon lifting the ugly plant, we discovered that the carpet beneath was totally rotten and full of a strange looking fungus:

Disinterested Partner was responsible for the plant. He has a thing for plants. Faffing about with office greenery is another way he can avoid doing any work. The thing is; he forget to put anything under the pot plant (or rather, he would have assumed that was his secretary’s job). 

People have been watering this thing for about 12 months now. In the process, the carpet underneath has developed its own bacterial ecosystem. My office now smells like a cross between a compost heap and a penicillin factory. These strange white spores also keep rising out of the floor and flying around the room.

My secretary has suggested I place the old filing cabinet over the rotten carpet in case the spores are toxic. I have refused. I may die today - but at least I’ll die with one less filing cabinet full of paper to worry about. 

Here’s a handy little Martha Stewart tip for anybody working in a law firm:

• Take ten plain Manilla folders, and about 3 reams of plain white paper.
• Bend and fold the Manilla folders to give them a ‘worn’ look.
• Place uneven quantities of paper into each one of the folders.
• Liberally scatter folders (now full of paper) across your desk. 

This will give the appearance that you are very busy doing lots of work. It’s great at preventing exchanges like the one I had today.

Disinterested Partner: Oh hey, you don’t look busy, can you <insanely complicated matter that should have been handled a month ago and the limitation period expires tomorrow>?

Me: I’m actually really busy today.

Disinterested Partner: No you’re not, there’s not a thing on your desk! You should see the amount of work on my desk.

Me: All of my work is on the computer. I have about twenty windows open, and I’m composing three different urgent e-mails right now. All that crap is on your desk because your secretary is sick today and you’re too lazy to put it away yourself.

Disinterested Partner: I have no idea what that means, but you don’t look busy to me. I bet you just play around on that computer all day. Anyway, if you could have this finished for me before the end of the day that would be great. Also, can you arrange to have counsel appear in the matter tomorrow?

Me: …

Disinterested Partner (walking away): Anyway, I have to rush off to an important conference, thanks.

Me (yelling): I assume by “important conference” you mean you’re going to the pub downstairs?

Disinterested Partner: *door slam*

Today, I had a conversation with the Desiccated Partner in the office kitchen. 

Actually, it was more of a monologue. I spent the whole time silently wondering if I could order pizza directly to my office in order to avoid socializing with colleagues at meal times. Desiccated Partner did all the talking. He explained that he was very busy, having “spent all day sending lots of e-mails.”

There are a few caveats with this claim:

1. By ‘all day’ he means between the hours of 11:00 and 1:00 (before golf starts).
2. By ‘sending e-mails’ he means loudly ordering his secretary to send e-mails.
3. By ‘lots of e-mails’ he means that more than 2 were sent. 

Desiccated Partner was exhausted from this because he treats e-mail like it’s an alternative postal service. I’ve noticed a lot of lawyers do this.

Every day, I send a metric crapload of e-mail. I often feel guilty if I don’t reply to an e-mail on the same day I receive it. This is because I know that most people expect a prompt reply to a form of instantaneous communication.

In contrast, it takes Desiccated Partner about a week to send a single e-mail (at best). He dictates all his replies, and has someone type them into a Word document. This document is then printed on letterhead, and placed on his to-do pile. He then signs the document, or makes necessary changes for editing. Another person then scans the final ‘letter’ as an attachment to an outgoing e-mail.

Once, I even overhead Desiccated Partner dictate the phrase “We refer to your latest electronic mail transmission.”

I seriously contemplated murder on that day.

I asked another lawyer if we had a template for a certain kind of document today. He stared at me blankly and asked:

“You mean a precedent?”

I had to restrain myself from beating him to death with one of the framed motivational posters hanging on his office wall. He knew what I meant. The whole world knows what a ‘document template’ is. Lawyers, however, insist on calling these things “precedents” in their silly little language. They probably like the fact it’s confusing, since that word also means something else.

The firm where I work thinks they have one of the most sophisticated repositories of ‘precedents’ known to man. This is an example I fetched from the garbage:

Ordinarily, I might be worried that posting something like this would be violating my firm’s intellectual property. However, I’m not sure if they can claim copyright over the word “Dear” (they would probably try).

Here’s the fun part: This isn’t even stored as a proper word processing template. They print reams of these things off, put them in a big folder for each lawyer, and expect us to dictate letters by reading aloud the contents of the page. Because I’m not suffering from a collapsed brain; I don’t do this.

I once mentioned to a colleague that I don’t use our precedents. She told me that I was being inefficient because I would have to write everything from scratch. There weren’t any motivational posters hanging on her wall, but I’m pretty sure I could have bludgeoned her to death with an ugly lamp sitting on her desk.

I have tried to show my peers the time saving benefits of creating proper electronic templates ’precedents.’ However the words “database” and “variable” were used, and I think a few people starting having nose bleeds. 

God I hate those motivational posters.