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Was that wrong? Should I have not done that? I tell you I gotta plead ignorance on this thing because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing was frowned upon, you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices and I tell you peope do that all the time.
Ahh, The Costanza Defense.
I guess I've been naive or led a sheltered life. I had one boss who referred in meetings to all of his sales reps as his n words. Wasn't gender specific. We were all that because he owned us and he could make us do whatever he wanted or he'd fire us. He was fired about 3 months after I was hired. He called me and asked if I'd be a reference for him. Lol.I know of a young woman who had cameras set up and found a fellow attorney who had been masturbating on her spare clothes and desk.Well, apparently the guys who take the actions think they're innocuous, I guess. But no, normal people who are conscious of what's right and wrong in the workplace would not.
That's good news for your wife. I'm sure that I know someone who hasn't had an issue, but every time the issue comes up every woman in the discussion has similar stories. For some reason I'm still surprised. The women I know tend to be professionals, so we are definitely talking about the white collar world, albeit in some cases (like mine) in fairly male-dominated worlds. I do think it might be worse in places like factories, or at least it seems so from the big class-action and other cases I've been privy to.
It's probably better than it was in the 50s or whatever, but I wouldn't say the awareness, training, etc. that most companies do has been overwhelmingly effective.
Oh, I remembered that I was wrong when I said I never did anything about it. When I was a young (probably 4th year?) associate at a large law firm I won't name (but it rhymes with "Irkland"), I had a situation that got to the point where I just didn't know what to do. I was working on an IPO and, because we were working so closely together, at some point they just set up a second desk and the client's CFO shared my office with me. We actually worked together well aside from the constant sexual harassment, but I reached a point where I felt like I couldn't take it any more, so I went to the junior partner and asked him what I should do. Not "I'd like to bring a claim" but literally "I need help to get this to stop and I don't know what to do". His answer? The IPO will be over in several weeks so just wait it out.
Yup. That'll do the trick.You told him what he wanted to hear.ETA: To answer your original question: If you want to get off of the list, tell him he has a gambling problem, to start saving money, grow up, and that you honestly care about his well-being and genuinely want to see him succeed in the long run.How did you get off of it? I told him to sign up for a bunch credit cards, take cash advances on them all then invest it all in HEMP. Somehow that got me on it.
You'll be off the list before sunrise.
I'm not saying every office is filled with sexual harassment, but most women who have worked multiple jobs have been subjected to it at least at one of them.
I think the legal field is miles better than it used to be a generation ago, and it's still miles better than the financial services field which remains filled with men who think they're living embodiments of The Wolf of Wall Street. On the other end of the pay scale, I certainly wouldn't want to be a female working in a heavy industry like construction, most manufacturing, longshoreman, etc., even as an office worker.Well, apparently the guys who take the actions think they're innocuous, I guess. But no, normal people who are conscious of what's right and wrong in the workplace would not.
That's good news for your wife. I'm sure that I know someone who hasn't had an issue, but every time the issue comes up every woman in the discussion has similar stories. For some reason I'm still surprised. The women I know tend to be professionals, so we are definitely talking about the white collar world, albeit in some cases (like mine) in fairly male-dominated worlds. I do think it might be worse in places like factories, or at least it seems so from the big class-action and other cases I've been privy to.
It's probably better than it was in the 50s or whatever, but I wouldn't say the awareness, training, etc. that most companies do has been overwhelmingly effective.
Oh, I remembered that I was wrong when I said I never did anything about it. When I was a young (probably 4th year?) associate at a large law firm I won't name (but it rhymes with "Irkland"), I had a situation that got to the point where I just didn't know what to do. I was working on an IPO and, because we were working so closely together, at some point they just set up a second desk and the client's CFO shared my office with me. We actually worked together well aside from the constant sexual harassment, but I reached a point where I felt like I couldn't take it any more, so I went to the junior partner and asked him what I should do. Not "I'd like to bring a claim" but literally "I need help to get this to stop and I don't know what to do". His answer? The IPO will be over in several weeks so just wait it out.
This sounds like it's an unavoidable problem. Take him to lunch and explain the situation to him.
Tell the attorney you'll pay his rate to do these things, so that they're done right, or ask him if there's another paralegal you can work with. Truly great paralegals are mostly people who can't pass the bar and/or disbarred attorneys, with some exceptions. If they were unbelievable at their jobs, someone would tell them to become lawyers. They shouldn't be awful, though.
In my experience, truly great paralegals are paralegals that came from a firm or practice group that was serious about training them and serious about giving them real work that a monkey couldn't do. And they often want no part of the debt, hassle, or stress of being an attorney.
Yeah, that's fair. I've never had a great one. Take RHE's advice over mine.
I figure we want to stray from war stories, but I'll attest that being a public defender is never boring. Got a few favorites.
The depositions are going to be what's critical in this case, not interrogatory responses. Provide the minimum information necessary to answer the interrogatories adequately, assert the appropriate objections to protect your client, and be done with it. When in doubt, ask yourself if you could convince a judge with your argument as to why you answered (or couldn't answer) an interrogatory the way you did.
The only thing that they're going to take seriously in an assault and battery case in interrogatory responses are the medicals. Everything else they're going to be thinking "yeah sure" until they hear the live witness testimony.
Ditkaless Wonders said:
" I made sure to wink with the eye away from the jury box.
Now this kind of lawyer story I like. LolDitkaless Wonders said:
Depends. If their client is saying your guy was the aggressor and you're saying you've got three witness statements backing up that he had a beer bottle broken over his head before he even got up from the tablr, attorneys tend to start reevaluating.T Bell said:
DW, the old woman may have been right about you being a pendejo. But, dammit, you are our pendejo. :sniffle:Keep the stories coming.
I was asked to "help" out on a state appellate brief on some zoning decision (after the partner had taken the assignment and forgotten about it for month). I know absolutely no zoning law, but was told it would simply be a matter of putting some polish on local counsel's brief (he had done zoning law for 30 year). I was told it would be 40 hours, max. I had other billing work, but no urgent deadline so I put it aside.
That's complete bull#### by your partners. That kind of stuff really pisses me off.
You didn't get credit for written off time? That's a pretty harsh policy, one that basically should prevent any and all first year associates from meeting their hours.
Yeah, I should have been more accurate. It wasn't "written off" because that would have made the partner look bad. It was also moved into business development. Which was worse for me than being written off because I had already maxed out the BD/pro bono hours that could be counted toward the billable target.
That does suck. My current big firm has a policy that any partner who tries to write off more than 10% of the hours an associate spends on a project is required to go through a huge bureaucratic hassle. Which of course leads to partners demanding the associates cut their own time in the manner you described. Crappy system.
That type of stuff is why I left my junior partnership at a 75 lawyer firm.
The entire incident is on video. Altercation begins in the bar (due to an ongoing work feud between client and assailant and fact my client put his arm around assailant's wife). Assailant grabs my client's arm and challenges him to a fight. My client makes his way to the exit. As my client is at the exit doors assailant runs up from behind, past security, and lands quite possibly the most vicious uppercut I've ever seen. Assailant has already pled guilty in the criminal court. So, factual disputes are really about what led up to the incident (my client's intoxication, assailant's intoxication, my client's potential provocation, etc.).
