How to Keep Your Legal Assistant Happy, Part 2

Last week we announced that we will be incorporating more information into the Dwyer Williams Cherkoss PC blog to help make it a great resource for new and prospective personal injury lawyers.

Our first such blog series is about fostering great relations with your Legal Assistant, and our first post in this series suggested that you start to “keep your legal secretary happy” by providing them with:

  • All Incoming Mail
  • Concise Directions, and
  • Clear Project Parameters

Three More Ways to Keep Your Legal Assistant Happy

We polled the legal secretaries in our office and came up a list of nine top areas in which we personal injury lawyers can help empower our assistants and keep them happy in the office.  Here are the fourth through sixth agreed-upon suggestions:

  1. An Open-Door Policy
    Our legal assistants agreed that they would collectively appreciate a more open-door policy for asking questions of their attorneys.  Our support staff felt that some attorneys, who make it clear that they do not appreciate interruption, create a chilling effect on their support staff asking questions.  Legal Assistants need to be able to ask questions of their attorneys without fear of chastisement or reprisal.
  2. Attorney Lists
    If attorneys are out of the office for an extended period of time (3 or more work days), support staff suggested that it would be very helpful for attorneys to provide them with lists of what they anticipate to happen on any given case during their absence.  Statements as simple as “Smith case – waiting for Answer to Complain before sending out Request for Production” or “Black case – waiting for phone call from Dr. Joe before deciding to take the case” would provide Legal Secretaries with a status awaiting their attorneys’ return.  It was also unanimously agreed that it would be helpful for attorneys to leave lists of what they expect their Secretairs to do on any given case or matter while the attorney is out of the office.
  3. Phone Calls
    When asking Legal Assistants to make phone calls for you, our support staff suggests that you develop and utilize some sort of tracking system for streamlining what can otherwise become a time-consuming and frustrating task.  Your assistant needs to know Who to call, When to call them, and What the call is about.

Check back later this week to read our final post in this series.  Remember, also, thatwe will be sharing more advice like this in the future.  From our office to yours!

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