No idea what I'm doing in my BigLaw job. Please advise. Thx. Forum

[fats provolone]

yea one spacers should be gassed

[Desert Fox]

yea one spacers should be gassed

Literally all professional printing uses one. HTH

[lacrossebrother]

I think I saw some local rules the other day in some dumb place asking for two spaces. Maybe in california state court. I could be wrong.

[NotMyRealName09]

Single spacing is for cowards.

[seizmaar]

my judge adheres to two spaces and he actually goes back and inserts 2 spaces at the end of all my sentences when i forget. i'm afraid i won't be able to stop if i learn this habit.

[BeenDidThat]

yea one spacers should be gassed

Literally all professional printing uses one. HTH

Good. We know where to start.

[rickgrimes69]

yea one spacers should be gassed

We are not having this debate again.

[Anonymous User]

OP here. Really amused by the direction this thread has gone. I'll say that I've never really been that worried about double spaces - that was just an example - but the intensity of this discussion has somehow made me feel better about the persistent feeling of drowning / dumb-assery that is my general working state.

[hdunlop]

You can set word to give you grammar error squiggles if you don't double space after a period.

Why would you want Word to highlight doing it the right way.

Because you work for people from the past.

[Anonymous User]

Or send it to your secretary. Wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about spaces.

*sends it back with more typos than before*

Depends on the secretary I guess. Have them do it in track changes and see if they spot anything.

In any event, I lose no sleep over spaces. Have lost some sleep over, say, getting caught between two partners with conflicting instructions, but not spaces.

can a SA send memos to a secretary for this help?

[5ky]

Or send it to your secretary. Wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about spaces.

*sends it back with more typos than before*

Depends on the secretary I guess. Have them do it in track changes and see if they spot anything.

In any event, I lose no sleep over spaces. Have lost some sleep over, say, getting caught between two partners with conflicting instructions, but not spaces.

can a SA send memos to a secretary for this help?

depends on the assignment. if the assignment is to write a memo or email, sure, have your secretary take a look for double spacing consistency and typos.

but if part of the assignment is to help proof-read/check for consistency/style check then no, i would not do that, unless you do it all yourself and then give it to the secretary as a double-confirm.

[Anonymous User]

does anyone here actually work in biglaw? LOL at sending emails to your secretary to proofread. secretarys are basically there for the partners, not the first year associates, and especially not the summer associates. don't get me wrong, you can give them substantive work, but expect it to take them 10x as long as you would expect and expect them to prioritize your work last. besides filling out expense reports and printing stuff out on letterhead (which you would think takes 5 min but actually for some reason takes them about 2-3 hours) I don't give them anything. give work to paralegals or the word processing dept if you have to but LOL at expecting your secretary to do anything even minorly substantive for your deals. some people give their secretarys comments to turn, but again, easier to just give to word processing or a paralegal.

[alicrimson]

does anyone here actually work in biglaw? LOL at sending emails to your secretary to proofread. secretarys are basically there for the partners, not the first year associates, and especially not the summer associates. don't get me wrong, you can give them substantive work, but expect it to take them 10x as long as you would expect and expect them to prioritize your work last. besides filling out expense reports and printing stuff out on letterhead (which you would think takes 5 min but actually for some reason takes them about 2-3 hours) I don't give them anything. give work to paralegals or the word processing dept if you have to but LOL at expecting your secretary to do anything even minorly substantive for your deals. some people give their secretarys comments to turn, but again, easier to just give to word processing or a paralegal.

Yeah, the proofreading thing seemed kind of odd to me as well. I'm a first year, and I've had my secretary do a lot of things, but they were all indirectly for the shareholder she works with as well. Like, I've had her make fancy binders and such with shit I made for a shareholder, I've had her make phone calls to confirm the accuracy of something company x's legal department told me (long story, but weird), she's scheduled client calls, and has sent documents to opposing counsel in doc production. Other than that, I can pretty much do everything. She has other stuff from the shareholders. I would not expect timely proofing at all. Especially as a summer. I was not formally assigned a secretary as a summer. One was told to help out and keep an eye out for me, but I would not imagine giving them proof reading assignments. It seems a little presumptuous, IMO. SA gigs aren't that busy (admittedly, I had three all nighters during my gig as an SA, but I've heard that's unusual. I think the activities were a catalyst for those all nighters. Other than those couple of occasions, things were pretty chill.). You can proof your own stuff. If not, see if there's another SA that will exchange with you. I did this for some longer assignments, and it worked out pretty well.

[Desert Fox]

Your secretary will do anything you want them to. But proofreading proably isn't their wheelhouse. Send it to word processing.

[KidStuddi]

does anyone here actually work in biglaw? LOL at sending emails to your secretary to proofread. secretarys are basically there for the partners, not the first year associates, and especially not the summer associates. don't get me wrong, you can give them substantive work, but expect it to take them 10x as long as you would expect and expect them to prioritize your work last. besides filling out expense reports and printing stuff out on letterhead (which you would think takes 5 min but actually for some reason takes them about 2-3 hours) I don't give them anything. give work to paralegals or the word processing dept if you have to but LOL at expecting your secretary to do anything even minorly substantive for your deals. some people give their secretarys comments to turn, but again, easier to just give to word processing or a paralegal.

Yeah, the proofreading thing seemed kind of odd to me as well. I'm a first year, and I've had my secretary do a lot of things, but they were all indirectly for the shareholder she works with as well. Like, I've had her make fancy binders and such with shit I made for a shareholder, I've had her make phone calls to confirm the accuracy of something company x's legal department told me (long story, but weird), she's scheduled client calls, and has sent documents to opposing counsel in doc production. Other than that, I can pretty much do everything. She has other stuff from the shareholders. I would not expect timely proofing at all. Especially as a summer. I was not formally assigned a secretary as a summer. One was told to help out and keep an eye out for me, but I would not imagine giving them proof reading assignments. It seems a little presumptuous, IMO. SA gigs aren't that busy (admittedly, I had three all nighters during my gig as an SA, but I've heard that's unusual. I think the activities were a catalyst for those all nighters. Other than those couple of occasions, things were pretty chill.). You can proof your own stuff. If not, see if there's another SA that will exchange with you. I did this for some longer assignments, and it worked out pretty well.

Partial necro here, but my experience has been exactly the opposite. My secretary is goddamned amazing at stuff like this. She's got a journalism degree + a graduate degree in English and is getting a second masters at night (admittedly she's more educated than most in my office, but she's not the only secretary with a graduate degree and all of them have at least a bachelors). She's more than qualified to proofread my shit, and not just for mechanical errors either; the woman has a better grasp on grammar and usage than 85% of the attorneys on staff. I send her stuff all the time and what she sends me back is camera ready and invariably better than what I sent to begin with. I think that anyone can benefit from having a regular editor who knows your style, preferences, and oft-made mistakes and I'd much rather use the one person in the office permanently assigned to me rather than sending stuff off to a random person in word processing, a paralegal pool, or trying to get another associate to do it when they can't bill for it (if they're not on the same matter).

Now if you've got an aged boomer secretary whose formal education ended with high school and who is barely computer literate, sucks for you and yeah maybe you're better off looking elsewhere. But if your office hires young, college educated secretaries as tends to be the trend nowadays, they're probably bored out of their minds doing administrative stuff and would love a chance to engage with something more substantive.