Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Paralegals & Legal Secretaries Blogs -> Practical Paralegalism

Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

: Practical Paralegalism

Don't Depart in a Blaze of Bad Grammar

By Lynne DeVenny

Above the Law's April 1, 2010 post "When Paralegals Burn Bridges" was, unfortunately, not an April Fool's joke. (I kept holding off on the publication of this post, hoping Elie would announce, "Gotcha!")

The final email from a disgruntled and allegedly mistreated paralegal departing a small Atlanta firm, sent to the entire office, and single-mindedly intent on highlighting a supervising attorney, "Attila's," perceived lack of professionalism, has already been thoughtfully addressed by Robert Mongue at The Empowered Paralegal. He sympathizes with what seems to be an untenable situation, and to some extent, so do I.

We've all had at least one moment in our career when turning in our written notice seemed like the happiest day of our life, but perhaps we never unleashed our joy quite so openly - and irretrievably:

I have never been happier than today when I get to tell you goodbye! I would like to say it?s been a pleasure but it has been anything but that. Maybe if you hadn?t have been a rude, moody, hateful, and condescending banshee on a power trip then things would be different, but their not. You have shown a mass amount of disrespect to each and every employee in this department.

While I am a bit impressed by the writer's descriptive powers (how often does anyone use the word banshee anymore?), you know what really made me wince and desperately wish this post wasn't about a paralegal?

I was terribly embarrassed to see all the grammatical errors committed by an erstwhile paralegal (and let's not even talk about the overuse of exclamation points).

This was more appropriately a "Dear Diary" moment (or a written exercise best done in the confidential environment of your therapist's office). If it had to see the light of day and be immortalized forever in a national legal news blog, it should have been proofread much more carefully.

The paralegal triumphantly closes, "...you don't got nothing on me!"

Well, I guess not.

Source: Above the Law

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on April 04, 2010 (boomark / email).