Tuesday’s Tip: Treat Your Secretary Like Gold

Beginning this week, each Tuesday I will share a career tip that may help you further your legal career. Today, I’d like to focus on your secretary.

Most people acknowledge that secretaries are an invaluable part of the legal team. But what many new lawyers, law clerks and paralegals don’t realize is that your secretary can make or break you.

Your secretary is your right hand. You depend on her (or him) to draft routine correspondence on your behalf, to file documents in a manner that will allow you to quickly locate them, to accurately enter your time and bill clients, to schedule meetings, depositions and other events, to file documents with the court and administrative agencies and to handle the myriad of other details necessary to make your practice run smoothly.

It is important to make your secretary your ally. Why? Because secretaries hold a potent power: they can make you look very bad to your clients, peers and supervisors.

I’ve often seen law clerks and new lawyers treat their secretary in a curt or condescending manner. These individuals often don’t last long in the law firm or organization because getting ahead is not just about rainmaking and legal acumen, it’s about how well you “play with others” and fit in with the firm.

Newbies who don’t have a full understanding of the political nature of legal environments assume that those low in the organizational hierarchy have little clout. However, your secretary may be politically connected to those in power in ways you don’t realize. For example, a new attorney at my former company didn’t realize that the secretary he routinely mistreated moonlighted as the CEO’s administrative aid. Needless to say, his career at the company was short-lived.

Do you have any comments on this career tip? Do you have any tips of your own that you'd like to share? Feel free to comment here or on the legal careers forum.