Follow-up: ATL Horror Stories
On Wednesday, we reported on a D.C. paralegal/legal assistant/assistant seeking advice at Slate.com. We were disappointed in the letter writer's horror story, and solicited readers for better stories. Here's the cream of the crop:
How about working 1.5 years with a Federal judge who hasn't bothered to learn my name?Short, sweet, and to the point.
A few years ago, I was an associate in a mid-sized firm in a mid-sized Southern city. One day, there was a notice in the break/lunch room about a State Board of Health inspection of the facilities. I was a little surprised, so I mentioned it to another associate. They laughed and said that it was because a partner's secretary made a complaint to the Board of Health about the partner's habit of picking his nose and wiping it on documents before handing them to the secretary.Ewww. Gross.
I worked at a V2 firm. There are sooo many good ones. A sampling…. 1) A female attorney nicknamed “Satan’s Spawn” who only made comments in purple pen and refused to use any other tape flag besides purple. She would also chew Grape Trident late nite to stay awake and sometimes wore binder clips in her hair. HOT! Of course she made partner.2) Once, a Partner threw a chair in the general direction of two paralegals and his partner secretary. The chair broke. The Partner was still popular with them because he’d take them out drinking.
3) Not to be outdone, I also heard (right after it happened, from the source) of a Partner who had told his secretary to hold all calls. Well, an important C-level client called and said he must speak with Partner X. The secretary demurred, but the caller was insistent. So, cute, kind secretary knocked, popped her head in and said, “Partner X, I know you said to hold all calls, but Important C-level client really needs to…” Partner X whirled around from his desk to face her and flung his pen toward her head, just like a dart. Luckily, not having played darts for a while since he was a V2 partner and all, the pen whizzed right by her ear and LODGED IN THE WALL.
This commenter had a total of eight stories. We took the top three. See the rest here.
8: approx. number of associates I know of, self included, who have had some version of the "talking with a partner about case and he walks into the bathroom and keeps talking to me, sits down in the stall and continues talking about the case" scenario.The level of horror of this story varies, depending on how long one has to stay in the bathroom and how stinky it is.
Thanks for your horrific contributions. We hope we don't have nightmares tonight.
Earlier: ATL Seeks REAL Horror Stories
(41) Comments
first, once again!
Second?
That way you can bill for taking a crap. sounds like a good idea...
People who make it through law school without learning not to capitalize common nouns deserve to have horrific experiences.
Kashmir, whatcha doing tomorrow night? Wanna watch a movie and maybe grab a beer, afterwards?
ABB = Always Be Billing.
What is a "C-level" client?
3:43- it wasn't the [s]outhern firm associate who had the bad experience. People who nit-pick atl posts deserve to have horrific experiences.
Like a C-list celebrity.
C-level = ceo, cfo, coo, etc - top execs in a company
but what's a v2 firm?
v2=vault 2?
Love the unintentional irony, 3:55. "Southern" is arguably correct; I was referring to "Federal" and "Partner" in the other submissions.
People who criticize other ATL commenters while misapprehending the basis for their comments deserve to have horrific experiences.
3:55 - unintentional
3:55 - unintentional?
4:05 - looks intentional
Deep Fried Frank is expanding.
I bet the same losers who eat this kind of shit from their bosses are the ones who didn't think you could just say "pass" when called on in law school.
In other words, 99% of law students/lawyers. What a pathetic bunch of risk-averse pussies.
At my firm, one male associate of questionable sexual orientation would ALWAYS pick the middle urinal. Mind you, there were three, and the one closest to the door was the most popular. If the first urinal was taken, naturally, the last urinal is the appropriate one to use. Not this guy. Always felt like he was trying to take a peak.
04:20, why not just go into a stall if it made you so uncomfortable? Admit it: YOU are Mr. Middlestall, right?
I once saw a Deep Fried Frank in the middle stall.
Small firm in the midwest. Lawyer I worked for constantly reminded everyone how he was president of the law review, turned down a top firm, and that his credentials were really "too good" for us.
Whenever I dared to (politely) question something he did or said, he would dismiss me as a "typical white person" and predict that my "chickens would come home to roost."
Several years after I left the firm, I got an email from him on the afternoon of 9/11 saying, "Told you so. God DAMN America!!"
Swell guy.
4:20 you worried?
@3:43, since when is "federal," capitalized or otherwise, a noun?
Lawyer I worked for would constantly get caught peeling his banana. For some reason always by me. I didn't say anything b/c I thought he'd fire me if I told. We're now happily married.
Nightmares? I think most of the blog's commenters would help keep the scary partners away while you sleep, Kash.
The losers trying to e-flirt with the average looking Kashmir Hill are the same ones who don't think twice about pulling an all-nighter or getting a phone thrown at them.
In other words, dudes with no life, no woman, and no balls.
Not really a horror story, but just an example of how outrageous some partners really are. I was a project assistant at a midsize firm before I went to law school. Fairly successful partner (but not a true BSD) and a total d-bag to all staff and associates equally, comes to me one day and says he has a "very important" and "highly confidential matter" that he wants me to work on. Being the ambitious litte turd that I was, I jumped at the chance. Turns out, he was trying to unsuccessfully litigate his own uber-bitter divorce case pro-se on firm time and using firm resources to do it. During the timeframe I was involved, he had a team of me, his assistant and two junior paralegals working 3/4 time for a month straight trying to wade through a fairly large document production and review. There was even an associate involved at one point. Well, someone finally got wise (probably when the time reports went out for the month) and figured out what was going on. The executive committee shut his little operation down post haste. Not long after, he left the firm to start his own firm, and presumably, took his "portable business" with him.
The justice in it all is that I heard the ex absolutely took him to the cleaners when it was all said and done. Then, the douche tried to pursue an appeal all the way to the state supreme court. When he wasn't granted cert, he claimed the ex paid off the justices to deny the petition. I swear I am not making this up.
After the smoke cleared, I got reprimanded. One of the junior paralegals that was helping conceal the whole thing got canned.
5:03-
Was this at Jenner & Block in the Chicago office? Because I remember the partner there who did that.
5:03, that story was too boring and too long.
No, it was not Jenner. I can't say where it was for confidentiality reasons since I now work at the same firm.
5:17, like I said, not intended to be a horror story. But, it's pretty funny when you see what some of these pricks try to get away with.
"Satan's Spawn" seems incredible. I would very much like to marry a woman with these habits and attributes.
How about a thread for horror stories of things secretaries/legal assistants/juniors, etc have done?
5:01 -
Agreed. The e-flirting is pretty pathetic.
Let's see...
-- Young male and female associates going on "dates" in unused conference rooms. Funny when someone suddenly has to grab the conference room. Interesting choices in...taste, or lack thereof. I suppose Mr/Ms. Right Now takes on a different meaning when you work in a hive and everyone reeks of strees acne, Chinese food and sweat.
-- One junior partner who was in a LTR with a call girl, who everyone knew was a call girl, that had progressed from him paying for her time to her marveling at how much he billed for his.
-- Litigators dating each other. On/off/living together/flying phone and binder followed by string of expletives.
3:43 - Without question gets the douche of the week award. So what exactly is a "federal?"
2:01,
I second your nomination.
How about staff horror stories?
On the subject of doing partner's personal stuff...I had a boss that called me at 11pm to go back to work to check on Westlaw (yeah, I didn't have my password at home with me) to see if discharging a firearm in the city limits of the state where his kid went to college and had just been arrested was a misdemeanor or a felony. He and his wife were both lawyers. I think they could have figured it out for themselves or waited for the next day, whatever....
I'm a midlevel in the SoCal office of a large Chicago firm, and here's my staff story for the day. My first secretary was brand new and was fired after his six month probationary period for placing a small TV under the ledge at his desk and watching it with headphones all day while pretending to be taking dictation, and refusing to do any work for the lawyers he was supposed to be working for. He would tell each of us (or at least two out of three) that he was buried doing something for the others, every time we asked him for anything, no matter how trivial. Of course, he was only let go after much painful drama, including my being dressed down for yelling at him after he literally refused to do a 10 minute expense report for two weeks, and having it mentioned in my review that I was having problems with the staff (this being the only one). I learned the hard way that if you get a crappy secretary, your only answer (at least at my firm) is to live like you don't have one, because complaining will only get you labeled as causing problems, no matter how outrageous the secretary's behavior. I ended up entering my own time and otherwise wasting a ton of what would have been billable time, not using a secretary at all, for years, and in fact still barely use one to this day.
Partner story: I moved near the office so that it would be easier to get to work and I could bill more and spend less time commuting. One morning shortly thereafter I came to work and got yelled at by a partner that I had been seen across the street from my office in casual clothes walking my dog, and that I should not be anywhere in the neighborhood of the office in casual clothes. When I pointed out that I lived only a few blocks away, that the post office was just on the other side of the office, that I was not at work at the time, etc., the partner said in total seriousness that I should walk exclusively in the other direction if not in business attire.
Jim in L.A.,
I am not surprised by either story.
1:09, I've got plenty more, and worse. I guess I *shouldn't* be surprised either, but damn, I really wonder if some of these people are self-aware. (Do partners knowingly become a-holes, do they one day realize they've transformed and then decide they're ok with it, or do they really fail to realize that they're unpleasant and just not nice people?)