Bad day - calling all attorneys

I'm a legal secretary, and currently a floater on top of that.

I am tired of being treated as if I were an idiot!!! Some of the attorneys in the firms that I have and do work for talk to me as if I were a child, or worse, do not have a brain.

HELLO, I may not be as educated as you, make as much $$ as you, but I occupy the same earth as you... can you give me a little respect please - I am not the second class citizen you think I am!!!

I'm not saying that you ladies do this, but could you maybe pass the word on to your colleagues that do!

Thanks for letting me rant!!!

This is why I refuse to work for a law firm... unless I get paid BIG buks. And I do computer network stuff... so I wouldn't even have to deal with the lawyers on an everyday basis.

Doesn't matter though. Lawyers suck.

(Well except for the lawyers on this site... they are cool).

Hey! I'm a lawyer and I don't suck! In fact, I actively dislike most lawyers too!

I totally hear you about how the lawyers treat people in firms...they are so condescending and they have huge egos and they think they are sooooo great and that you are a meaningless stupid bug. They treat the first year associates (me at the time) the same way! I think it's because they are so miserable themselves due to stress and their schedules that they feel they have the right to act like that as their only perk!

Just for the record at my old job (and new job) the only people I hang out with are the legal secretaries and assistants because they are young and cool and fun!

Thank you KP, I was not including any of the lawyers on this site in my rant. But it is good to hear that I am not crazy, at least not when it comes to this.

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Posted by pinky424

I am also a legal secretary and I too had the same problem while I was floating.

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I feel like handing out a copy of my resume at every desk I sit at... see, I've been doing this for 9 years... I know my stuff.

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Posted by Kriss2c

HELLO, I may not be as educated as you, make as much $$ as you, but I occupy the same earth as you... can you give me a little respect please - I am not the second class citizen you think I am!!!

Thanks for letting me rant!!!

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If it makes you feel any better, you probably make more money than I do! I don't have a secretary or a paralegal. I do all of my own work and make all of my own phone calls. We have an intern right now, and I feel bad asking her to do things for me, although when there's something I really don't feel like doing, i.e., calling a difficult client, I ask her to do it (but I always feel a little guilty). I have been a secretary to many people in the past. I don't know how I'll act when I get one, if I ever do at some point in my life, but I have a feeling I won't be the type of person to treat him or her badly. Without secretaries and paralegals, most busy lawyers would spend their days banging their heads against the wall. And when they mess up, it's always the secretary who runs to fix the mistake, and then the attorney gets the credit.

I feel your pain.

Signed,
A sympathetic attorney

I'm a law librarian in NYC and while I don't feel like the atty's think we are stupid (it seems to me that they pretty much treat all the support group pretty well) they do ask alot of us at times.

Actually I have more of a problem with the paras here where I work.

I do get a kick when attys think we can pull anything off the internet. Not all treatises are on the net. Not all decisions/briefs/motions are on the internet. Courts close at 4pm and they don't keep documents at the court going back 10 years - they dont' have the room. And procuring documents from govt agencies takes time (days or even weeks). I can't do anything to make the process faster and they can't understand why. Sigh. Gotta love em.

However I did get an atty today tell me that he's amazed at how much the lib's know in terms of where to find things. If only they knew how much stress we are under to find things for them.