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Does anyone at a big firm do this to help check for typos and formatting? I just worry the partner will see the charge and think I'm being lazy as shit. I have a hard time catching my own typos.

Anonymous User wrote:Does anyone at a big firm do this to help check for typos and formatting? I just worry the partner will see the charge and think I'm being lazy as shit. I have a hard time catching my own typos.

NO. Ask your secretary, Associate, or a Partner who you are close with (possibly a mentor) to read your work.

Absolutely not. No way. That's what your secretary or the firm's word processing service is for.

Uh yeah handing out memos and other documents (which may contain confidential information) is a huge no-no.

Sorry poor word choice on my part. The proofreading service is our document processing department. I'm not talking about sending to some random company.

I'm just wondering if it's appropriate for a purely internal memo from me to my partner.

Anonymous User wrote:Sorry poor word choice on my part. The proofreading service is our document processing department. I'm not talking about sending to some random company.

I'm just wondering if it's appropriate for a purely internal memo from me to my partner.

Ask the partner/senior associate who you're working with about their general WPC policy/preferences. At my firm, we usually only process documents that a client might lay eyes on, but YMMV and it doesn't hurt to ask.

I've heard of people doing this and was surprised that it was a thing.

I've always sent things to doc services. Not sure what the fuss is about.

It depends,

Some firms add document services only to overhead, in which case you can use it unlimited. While other firms have the doc services bill to the client. If it is the latter you may get push back for internal memos.

Read closer when you edit. Not only will you catch typos, it will improve your writing.

Read it in reverse order. Start at the last word and work to the first word. It forces your brain to look at the individual words instead of trying to form the sentences.

arizonairish wrote:It depends,

Some firms add document services only to overhead, in which case you can use it unlimited. While other firms have the doc services bill to the client. If it is the latter you may get push back for internal memos.

The funny thing about this logic is that the client will end up paying for two hours of junior associate time instead of doc processing time to do the same thing, because no one wants to turn over even internal work product with typos.

Thanks guys. I found out they don't charge the client so I'm going to start using them as a sort of last line of defense. I'm going to start the backwards word by word also. And I'm keeping a list of typos I frequently make to check.

Another thing you can do is use a ruler to cover the text to make sure you are reading slowly and line by line. When it is your own writing and you know what you were trying to say, it is really easy to skip through stuff really quickly when you are trying to proof, and that is how you miss your errors.

I'm a little late to this party but here are my two cents. Use the firm's word processing department to help with proofreading, but not as a crutch. They are not attorneys, so they don't read your document from that perspective. I have had them either "catch" things that aren't really errors, or miss sentences that appear technically correct but don't make sense to someone who knows the law. (On the first one, my most recent experience with WPS is when they changed my sentence from, "It was error for the lower court to apply X..." to "It was an error for the lower court to apply X..." Mine was a very natural sentence to attorneys and judges, not to others.)

On the other hand, they are great for fixing annoying document issues or partner preferences. ("Hey, guys, Word keeps screwing up the header formatting. Can you make it work?" "Can you change this from one space after a period to two?")