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Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

Lawyer's Right Hand

Tips on career, excellence and work/life balance for legal secretaries, served up with a dash of humor and the occasional gentle rant.

Post Frequency: 0.4/day

Last Entry: July 04, 2008 at 00:04:28

Bye, y?all

Posted on July 04, 2008
Lawyer’s Right Hand has retired. It was a good run. I’ve learned a lot about running a blog, and I hope I’ve helped someone out here and there. But after I made the blog reader-driven, it became clear that there wasn’t enough reader interest to justify continuing...

Asking your employer to be your lawyer

Posted on June 05, 2008
How does one ask for legal representation? I’ve worked for over 20 years for very large, prestigious law firms as a paralegal. I’ve worked on many high profile cases and have gone to trial on media heavy cases for some of the nation’s power attorneys...

Johnny Come Lately, Esq.

Posted on May 20, 2008
Marcia exhorts: How do you get your attorney to notice deadlines that you place on his calendar and follow that deadline up with a 2 week reminder that all but get ignored until the DAY of the deadline and more likely than not, the required pleading is due 2 counties over which needs to be hand...

The Hand goes reader?s choice

Posted on May 18, 2008
After more than a year of faithful blogging, Lawyer’s Right Hand is going reader’s choice. From this point on, any new posts will be in response to reader questions only. So now is the time to make your request! .

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Getting started as a legal secretary

Posted on May 05, 2008
A gentle reader writes: At 53, can I successfully begin a career as a legal secretary? I have heard that law is one profession that exhibits a very low level of age discrimination. I possess 25+ years of varying degrees in office administration. Over the past 6 years, I have been a Human...

Legal secretary pride

Posted on May 02, 2008
The other day, I stumbled across Carol Ann Wilson Story’s article, Proud to Be a Legal Secretary. It’s just about the best encapsulation of what a legal secretary does and why it’s important as I’ve ever seen. She begins: A voice on the telephone recently asked me,...

Occupational outlook for legal secretaries

Posted on April 28, 2008
Amid the many job-related Web sites out there, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook often gets overlooked. Yet it’s probably the best all-around resource for credible information on employment and salary statistics — not to mention projections about the...

Behind every good lawyer?

Posted on April 28, 2008
A recent Daily Report article features profiles of seven legal secretaries nominated by their bosses as paragons in the venerable tradition of Perry Mason’s right hand, Della Street. I’m going to squelch the many snarky comments that came to mind as I read this article...

Get the insider track on job hunting

Posted on April 26, 2008
The Brazen Careerist has treated her readers to Three tips for job hunting, all taken from Cynthia Shapiro’s latest book, What Does Somebody Have to Do to Get a Job Around Here?: 44 Insider Secrets That Will Get You Hired. These tips are not your usual tried-and-true, heard-it-all-before...

Cool link roundup #6

Posted on April 25, 2008
Above the Law reports Jerry Springer will be this spring’s commencement speaker at Northwestern University School of Law. As ATL notes, it would be fun if Springer were to “bring Northwestern students with secrets and unresolved conflicts up on stage, then have them confess and...

Bad . . . who?: Figliolo or Richards

Posted on April 25, 2008
According to Law.com, New York firm Bivona & Cohen has filed a pre-emptive declaratory judgment suit against legal secretary Windy Richards (a/k/a Wendy Ogando), who had offered to drop allegations of rape against partner Joseph Figliolo in exchange for $9 million...

In which your stingy boss might give you a gift because he?s too craven not to

Posted on April 23, 2008
Above the Law has a rather disheartening open thread on what lawyers are doing for their secretaries for Administrative Professionals Day. One can only hope ATL’s commenters represent a minority of the legal profession as a whole. I’m thinking they do...

Good lawyer: The Uncivil Litigator

Posted on April 23, 2008
While trolling the Web, I stumbled across this four-year-old blog entry by The Uncivil Litigator: A word about legal secretaries. This Uncivil Litigator dude is one of the good guys. He not only understands the value of a good legal secretary: He understands the role of the lawyer in retaining...

Rant: Flowers-in-a-Box

Posted on April 23, 2008
Perhaps nothing puts a secretary in her place better than a gift that makes extra work for her. If you don’t respect your secretary, don’t think she contributes anything to your business, and/or you resent yet another occasion on which you are expected to give her a gift, then, by all...

Good lawyer(s): Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley

Posted on April 22, 2008
Law.com reports that small California firm Fitzgerald Abbott & Beardsley has foregone an ostentatious celebration of its 125th anniversary (yes, 125th!) in favor of donating $125,000 to the Alameda County Community Food Bank. Sure, they just got a huge PR boost for their money in the form of...

Get the lowdown on employment discrimination

Posted on April 21, 2008
Employment discrimination comes up with fair frequency for legal secretaries, but unless you work in labor and employment, those matters can be a source of confusion. It doesn’t help when friends and family think they know your rights but really don’t...

Cool link roundup #5

Posted on April 18, 2008
Bad lawyer Adam Reposa only spent a few hours of his 90-day sentence in jail. Okay, maybe 90 days was a bit much for a “masturbatory gesture.” Maybe. Reader’s Digest (by way of the ever-helpful Lifehacker) 15 Ways to Maximize Your Lunch Hour...

Hide your weaknesses by cheating

Posted on April 14, 2008
Recently, out of the blue, my baby lawyer complimented me on how I always “get” all his handwritten revisions. He never has to make a revision twice or point out something I missed. I’m embarrassed at how much this compliment made me glow...

A disgruntled paralegal

Posted on April 10, 2008
The Disgruntled Workforce blog is open for any employee to anonymously post negative feedback about her job or boss. When I began to read this entry, I felt I knew the poster’s job even before he mentioned lawyers. Here was all I needed to tell me this poor writer is a paralegal: Now that...

Good lawyer: Yolanda Eisenstein

Posted on April 09, 2008
Dallas, Texas, attorney Yolanda Eisenstein has carved out her own unique niche in that lawyer-filled city. Animal law is her specialty. Whether it’s litigating the matter of a poisoned family dog, defending someone wrongly accused of animal cruelty, or lobbying for the enactment of stronger...

Protect your privacy at work . . . sort of

Posted on April 07, 2008
Repeat after me: “I have no privacy at work. I don’t even have a legal right to privacy at work.” There. Now that that’s out of the way, we can rationally discuss the few small measures you can reasonably take to become somewhat less vulnerable to being spied upon at...

Cool link roundup #4

Posted on April 05, 2008
Above the Law has released the long-awaited results of its job survey of lawyers’ favorite firms. This is relevant to assistants under my theory that firms who keep lawyers happy are probably keeping assistants happy, too. Got Word 2007? I don’t, but this nifty tip from the How-To Geek...

Lawyer not loving you enough?

Posted on April 04, 2008
Today, Above the Law linked to a Dear Prudence advice column at Slate.com, in which a young legal secretary poignantly ponders: I’m an ambitious recent college graduate. Six months ago, I moved to Washington, D.C., and was lucky enough to land a well-paying job with great career prospects as...

This is a family blog [almost].

Posted on April 03, 2008
Created by OnePlusYou No mean accomplishment considering what it’s about. .

An open secret about legal recruiting firms

Posted on April 02, 2008
Pssst! Most of the job openings advertised by legal staffing agencies — whether on their Web sites, in the newspaper, or on Monster, are “representative samples” of the types jobs they generally have on offer. The listings don’t necessarily correspond with actual,...

Talking to the April Fool

Posted on April 02, 2008
A nice little anecdote crossed my radar today. A former legal secretary recounts how, one April Fools’ Day past, it was her first day on the job, and she encountered a rude client on the telephone. Fortunately, her boss (also her dad) took it all in stride...

Free online PDF conversion

Posted on April 02, 2008
Zamzar is a free online file conversion service that doesn’t require sign-up. You upload your document, select the format you’d like it converted to, and enter your e-mail address. In a few minutes — it took about 30 for mine — you receive an e-mail containing a download...

April fool your lawyer!

Posted on March 31, 2008
Wired Magazine has posted its Top 10 April Fools’ Pranks for Nerds. The best part is, you don’t have to be a nerd to do some of them. Don’t be fooled by the first three: Many of the pranks are simple and doable for us mere mortals. Such as: 4...

What if your lawyer?s client is wrong?

Posted on March 31, 2008
A provocative post at Overlawyered, Lawsuit abuse kills puppies, reveals the nasty underbelly of our jury system. It seems some SPCAs are refusing to adopt puppies out to families with children for fear of being sued should the dogs ever bite the children...

MS Word: Protect your customizations

Posted on March 31, 2008
Most of us put a lot of thought and effort into customizing our Word configuration so that it has the styles, macros, and toolbar buttons we need at our fingertips. The problem is we do all this on a computer we neither own nor have control of. In my office, updates are rolled out, PCs [...