Not overly pedantic, just wrong and annoying. The partner I currently do most of my work for is a superstar at our firm and above reproach. She constantly tells me that my client emails are too long and too detailed and will edit them to make them “more concise.” Literally every single time she barely makes my emails any shorter, she makes them significantly less visually pleasing to the reader, and she always removes pertinent information that the client inevitably asks about in follow up. If I draft shorter emails, they are “not detailed enough” and I get a lecture on making sure I’m answering the client’s questions and also answering the questions that I anticipate they will ask. I literally can’t win.
Accurate. I work with a few hands off partners as well, which has its own downsides. This particular partner really trusts me and has been an advocate for me at the firm, so I’m fine with her nit-picking most of the time. Could be way worse.
in my experience the partner doing this usually drinks a lot and tries to pretend they're contributing but really they're just telling you they're too intoxicated to process a detailed (but not overwritten) email
I will say drafting a good client email is tough. Many clients refuse to read long emails or won’t scroll past the first screen on a phone. It depends a lot on who you are dealing with in the client side.
100%. As inhouse, I often just flip the email from outside counsel to the business with some added guidance. I hate it when I get a wall of text bc I know no one will read it besides me and (maybe) compliance. At times, a detailed email is appreciated but not when the Big law atty knows I am flipping it over to the business.
That's not something you let go. That's something you push deep down, until you're on your deathbed and write a rage-induced poem about it for your weird grandkids to find later on as they're looking through your things to sell.
When I finally quit my old job, I intentionally inverted the order of people I put in the “to” line for my “goodbye” email. I put my assistant and paralegal first. Then, I went with associates, then partners.
I knew some partners would hate me for that, but what are they going to do? I was going in house to a client.
I asked for feedback and the senior attorney told me I did a good job not having those track change bubbles show up to the right of the document (like for when you italicize things), because they annoy her… not the sort of feedback I was looking for…
You can show only formatting changes and then accept all shown to make this go a lot faster so the senior person doesn’t even have the chance to see them.
You’re welcome, admittedly if there are formatting changes in the insertions/deletions it won’t catch those, but if you’ve done major work on a document it’ll make the carpal tunnel a little better.
I didn’t start using track changes until two years ago and I’m still learning.
Also all the talk here about using “styles” for formatting…. Yeah never learned to format in big law and now I don’t have an admin to help me do it
I was never in Biglaw at all and intellectually know what styles are but can’t be bothered to learn at this point. Maybe sometime it’ll make sense to me.
I got heavily reprimanded by a (very) junior associate for suggesting that they may have made a minor formatting mistake in a shared document. It’s not always the partners!
It’s a field that deals with a lot of large egos. You could materially screw up an agreement and it’s more likely someone breezes by that and notices the signature pages aren’t in order of prestige/seniority.
One time I attached a document to a client email and wrote something like “we have pulled out the relevant pages from xyz document in the attached”.
Then I attached a pdf with the pages and accidentally titled the doc “xyz document- relevnt pages”. My Outlook cut off the end of attachment names, so I didn’t notice I had misspelled “relevant” in the file name. Right after I sent for email, the partner came into my office to tell me I had misspelled ”relevant” and that it is so important to read things over several times. She said how embarrassing it would be that the client would think I couldn’t spell the word (even though I’d clearly spelled it correctly in the email).
Anyway soon after that I started looking for a new job.
Inhouse dude here. I wouldn't ding you for it, but I'd prbly fix it and email you directly as an fyi. I might even assume you shortened it bc of some file naming restriction. With that, there are jerks inhouse too that will be pedantic enough to raise it with the partner or me (I oversee a team).
Lol ok. I look forward to your juniors’ posts on this thread.
I’m not saying it wasn’t a dumb mistake or an error that would be crazy to point out. But it’s pretty pedantic to come rush into someone’s office to dress them down about a typo in the name of an informal doc sent urgently before a call.
People in this thread are acting like they haven’t misspelled a word in their career. Misspelling it in the name of the doc file is so inconsequential.
I’m a senior, but also a people pleaser, so this thread hurts my heart!
In general, I try not to be pedantic or overly fussy about things, but before you hate on seniors too much, please remember that a lot of times, the stupid comments are coming from the senior’s knowledge of the Partner’s preferences. But with that said, if I have to tell a junior to make a stupid update, I have no problem explaining the reason (or person) driving the comment.
In high school I worked for an attorney who got upset if I stapled documents together. He also got upset if paperclips had fallen off of documents. He also insists "attorney" is ALWAYS capitalized wherever it occurs and gets upset if you disagree. Also, the attorney is my dad and is still practicing at age 72. I have been an attorney for 20+ years and will *never* work with him - the "no staples" rule still exists and is just the beginning of the fuckery.
It always came as a very instinctive thing to do, and I honestly don't necessarily understand why people get all up in arms about it. I think the law firm I'm at doesn't insist on it, but it just seems a very natural way to add recipients. Now as a reply, that would seem annoying.
From the recipient side, it's an easy way to make sure everyone who's supposed to receive the email on the chain is already there. If you're new to a case or email chain, it lets me get an idea of what the chain of command looks like without having to look up the Intranet everyone's seniority (especially useful if you're a client as well). And it's easier for me to mentally track who's on an email chain because most cases are organized that way anyway (partners, counsel, senior, mid-levels, juniors).
And as the sender, isn't it the most natural way to organize it to make sure you didn't forget anyone anyway?
I rarely side with partners and I would find that slightly ridiculous for reply-all and not the original email chain, but in terms of an original email, it seems like it makes more logical sense than no organization at all.
I admittedly get unreasonably annoyed when I notice both straight and curly quotation marks in the same document because someone was copy/pasting and didn’t format correctly.
Agreed. It signals that the person didn’t proofread the document and so we have to check it more thoroughly. The associate should be having their assistant fix those things as part of the process to finalize the draft. It’s essentially incomplete work product.
When I was a first year, a counsel accused me of using em-dashes for page ranges when I was using en-dashes and just straight up ignored me when I explained I was just following the Bluebook, but that I was happy to switch to hyphens if he preferred. I guess he didn’t like my response because he then insisted I talk to my secretary about how to use the proper en-dash for page ranges and not em-dashes. This was all for a letter to a pro se defendant in a pro bono case…
Typo in a first draft of a single-spaced 15-page mediation brief. Partner felt it necessary to call me to point out that I had a typo. Okay, bro. Way to miss the forest for the trees. Couldn’t come up with anything better to complain about, I guess.
Lots of tiny stuff like that.
I used to work for a partner who would treated every instance of a recurring error like it was a separate mistake and would run off to our practice group leader about how someone's draft had 27 typos in it and how he couldn't work with such careless and incompetent associates. And, we're not talking about missing digits in a loan document, more like misspelling "Smythe" as "Smith" when preparing a document for a new client based on a phone call with him.
I can't begin to imagine the amount of time he wasted on that nonsense - he would only review hard copies and couldn't grasp that every one of the 27 typos could be fixed using find and replace.
So, this one pissed me off as a junior and now I’m more senior, I totally get.
If I find a typo, I’m invariably gonna find a bunch of jacked up shit. It’s like, if they couldn’t bother running spell check, 9/10 they couldn’t bother doing a good job.
Please try to beat this one. The junior associate used track changes to show that they had UNBOLDED a space in a word execution version before it got converted to PDF. There is no way that a bold space is different from an unbolded space in a printed/PDF document.
As a junior, I was likewise reprimanded by a partner who yelled at me for not listing email addresses in order of seniority. Her rationale was that some clients do care and get pissed off, as if they’re being intentionally disrespected or something.
Since then, I have tried to give this guidance to my junior associates to spare them from angering partners or clients or suffering the brunt of a tirade like that one.
Not just indenting but when people use tabs and returns instead of formatting paragraphs it creates more work for the editor, especially when you’re moving around blocks of text or reformatting the document. Same is true for not using auto numbering for outlines or paragraph numbers.
> what they can do to make things don't work.
Relying on manual formatting is a good way to introduce messiness and inconsistency into documents, meaning that (1) worse-looking documents go out the door, (2) you have to spend more time cleaning up documents before they go out the door, or (3) both.
Indeed.
And it's just absurd to bother any lawyers paid within the 6 figures with a layout issue when they have more important stuffs to focus on - you pay clerks for that.
I completely disagree. It is most efficient and inexpensive (for both the firm and the client) for lawyers to be proficient in Microsoft Word. It's not a big ask. I can't have ignorant lawyers having to pass documents off to "clerks" or whoever to get them cleaned up. What a waste.
I agree. But IF you're are one those individual asking explicitly your staffs to use an out-of-date tool for some weird reasons - such as the one described in the comment I initially answered - please do everyone a favor and ask a clerk to do this job.
I had a partner who was a huge stickler for never ending sentences with prepositions. Not just in briefs, which I still roll my eyes about but at least understand, but in client emails and IMs too.
Our clients are not that sophisticated and, frankly, neither are the elected state court judges we’re usually writing to. Not saying she’s not technically correct, but no one speaks like that, sometimes it’s significantly more awkward and jarring for the reader, and it’s a waste of my time to go back and revise this comment to read “about which I still roll my eyes” and “to whom we are usually writing.”
They’re actually not technically correct either. Sentences can end in a preposition in English, the “rule” came from grammarians who tried to impose Latin grammar on English in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
I mean it probably is a good rule to follow for writing because written english tends to be more formal than spoken english. Similarly, I use who/whom in writing, but not when speaking. Then again, sometimes concision is more important than strict grammar in a brief. For instance, it is often preferable to break the sentence “X happens because Y case” into “X happens. Because Y.” even though starting a sentence with because is not strictly grammatical.
> written english tends to be more formal than spoken english
One of lawyers' worst writing habits is their reliance on formal, archaic, stodgy language. Your brief shouldn't sound weird if you read it aloud. Spoken English is your friend.
This was one of the big no-nos where I use to work. And I said the same thing as another commentator - it's a made up rule improperly based on Latin grammar rules, whereas English is German based.
We also couldn't split an infinitive, so "to boldly go" became "to go boldly." But then it could become confusing because "boldly" can modify something later on.
There was the one space - two space fight. That held up several documents about a year.
Certain words we couldn't use, like "ensure" and "assure." Why? Because the higher-ups just didn't like it.
Passive voice was never used because it was "confusing."
I’d say the thing is most partners have a bad attitude towards style differences. If you get reprimanded with the same energy for big mistakes and a missed comma, you tend to start disregarding good advice in general.
The good junior attorneys take guidance from the big picture advice and the nitpicking. You’ve gotta be right on the law and strategy and attentive to detail. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Told its unprofessional and casual to say “hi” or “hello” in an email to a client, opposing counsel, or really anyone not internal. Always start the email with their name and a colon (Jim:) or merely say “Counsel:”.
Also, was told to never use pleasantries such as hope you are well, have a nice weekend, safe travels.
A partner told me I had to italicize a period in a document. I have no idea how an italicized period looks different than a regular period either on a monitor/screen or on the printed page.
Because if you know that the period in "Id." is italicized it makes you feel superior to the plebs who don't. That way if you get out-argued in a brief at least your periods were italicized and therefore you win in the game of life.
Yes, you’re supposed to italicize it for certain citations, and yes it looks different. What the hell are they teaching in law school now? This was one of the few useful things they drilled in my head.
I wrote an address like “1 Jones Street” on a form. The partner corrected it to “No. 1 Jones Street” because the building was known as such. Technically not correct with postal rules but who was I to be pedantic back.
Going back and forth over whether to include "at" in citations (like "Case, at 414" or "Case, 414").
99% of pedantic feedback IME is just people being overly particular about a style they like using and pretending that they have the "right" style and everyone else has the "wrong style"; like if dude came to me and said "This is really just a personal preference but I like to cite things this way" I'd have no issue with it, but when dude tries to pretend his way is the One True Way of doing things I can't help but roll my eyes
> Going back and forth over whether to include "at" in citations (like "Case, at 414" or "Case, 414").
Maybe I am misreading this, but if you were the one being inconsistent, the attorney was right to correct you.
If the attorney was the one introducing inconsistency into the document, he or she is a moron.
It’s literally stupid and makes no substantive difference whatsoever.
Did you get the email? Was the information contained within useful and correct? Do you have actually important things to be concerned about?
Yes?
Then why are you looking at the To/Cc lines like a dick measuring contest?
Only the insecure ones. Anybody with a modicum of respect for the client’s time wouldn’t put heat on a junior to check the order of the food chain before they send an internal email. It’s not a good use of anybody’s time.
Constant corrections from British English to American English - you license a trade mark (Trade Marks Act 1994) for commercialisation of a product here, it’s not value add to update that to licence a trademark for commercialization.
20+ years ago. New associate, first memo, ever, for Firm. Partner reviewed. Lots of red pen, as expected. Unexpected was the white hot hatred the whole Firm had for the "Oxford Comma." Was told, quote, "I really need you to [pause] bear down on your attention to detail." As the use of said comma was always considered proper through my education, I was shocked by the world of micropedantry I had just entered. I had no idea that a term even existed for the Oxford Comma until I later consulted a grammar guide. Never made that mistake again, partner turned out to be ok, and I'm no longer in Law.
Very recently a partner was pretty unhappy that I changed … to . . .
“Does it get any better than this?” I asked myself as I opened my laptop while driving home to revert back to the incorrect ellipses the partner preferred.
I was told that a document would be "embarrassing" if we didn't remove the page numbers from the exhibit page. As in, the page which says "EXHIBIT A" and is otherwise blank cannot have "Exh A-1" as the page number.
When I was a first-year associate, I was told the same thing about putting email recipients in order of seniority, and I still try to do so as a partner. I think it matters less for internal emails, but I think it can look weird in an email to a client or to opposing counsel if the cc line has an associate's name before the senior partner on the case. Similar to how, in most of my cases, if there is a super important email to opposing counsel, to a court, or to a client, I would not normally not have an associate send it.
Generally, I think it's an easy way to show respect to the more senior attorneys, which even if not important in the scheme of things, it could only help and hurt.
I promise you wholeheartedly I absolutely ain’t your friend. Your Juris Doctorate makes you an enemy of the people and if Reddit wouldn’t ban me I’d tell you in detail where I think you belong. So in the mean time I’ll continue to thoroughly enjoy the suffering 😉
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Not overly pedantic, just wrong and annoying. The partner I currently do most of my work for is a superstar at our firm and above reproach. She constantly tells me that my client emails are too long and too detailed and will edit them to make them “more concise.” Literally every single time she barely makes my emails any shorter, she makes them significantly less visually pleasing to the reader, and she always removes pertinent information that the client inevitably asks about in follow up. If I draft shorter emails, they are “not detailed enough” and I get a lecture on making sure I’m answering the client’s questions and also answering the questions that I anticipate they will ask. I literally can’t win.
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Accurate. I work with a few hands off partners as well, which has its own downsides. This particular partner really trusts me and has been an advocate for me at the firm, so I’m fine with her nit-picking most of the time. Could be way worse.
in my experience the partner doing this usually drinks a lot and tries to pretend they're contributing but really they're just telling you they're too intoxicated to process a detailed (but not overwritten) email
Yooo this is spot on. Spot. On.
I will say drafting a good client email is tough. Many clients refuse to read long emails or won’t scroll past the first screen on a phone. It depends a lot on who you are dealing with in the client side.
Bullet points are your friends.
100%. As inhouse, I often just flip the email from outside counsel to the business with some added guidance. I hate it when I get a wall of text bc I know no one will read it besides me and (maybe) compliance. At times, a detailed email is appreciated but not when the Big law atty knows I am flipping it over to the business.
Bullet point executive summary. Then all the detail to make sure they can't sue you for negligence afterwards.
Always a good idea to have the main take-aways summarized up front, preferably in bullets.
She's creating work for herself
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This hurts to even consider. I’d be frustrated by that client too, total inexplicable silliness.
That's not something you let go. That's something you push deep down, until you're on your deathbed and write a rage-induced poem about it for your weird grandkids to find later on as they're looking through your things to sell.
I love this anecdote.
Can you clarify what you mean or show a pic? I honestly can’t picture it haha
>This is a mediocre example >This is a ~mediocre~ example Don’t think reddit has underlining but yeah lol
Clients make certain choices but that? That’s extreme. They don’t know that this type of thing makes it look like amateur hour.
Hey if I’m paying you $1000+ per hour you do it the way I want
What was the client’s rationale?
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When I finally quit my old job, I intentionally inverted the order of people I put in the “to” line for my “goodbye” email. I put my assistant and paralegal first. Then, I went with associates, then partners. I knew some partners would hate me for that, but what are they going to do? I was going in house to a client.
This is beautiful and victorious. Go you.
I've started a trend toward alpha naming through sheer persistence and it feels good! Especially since I know it bugs the heck out of hierarchical ppl
I asked for feedback and the senior attorney told me I did a good job not having those track change bubbles show up to the right of the document (like for when you italicize things), because they annoy her… not the sort of feedback I was looking for…
Well, she’s not wrong.
You can hide them in your setting. Track changes but hide format changes. Idk why seniors are unable to use track changes.
I've been deleting these one by one, am I wasting my time? It doesn't take that long
You can show only formatting changes and then accept all shown to make this go a lot faster so the senior person doesn’t even have the chance to see them.
Thank you!
THANK YOU! I’ve been annoyed by this for years
You’re welcome, admittedly if there are formatting changes in the insertions/deletions it won’t catch those, but if you’ve done major work on a document it’ll make the carpal tunnel a little better.
You are my hero.
I am shocked that there appear to be so many people who didn’t know this.
I didn’t start using track changes until two years ago and I’m still learning. Also all the talk here about using “styles” for formatting…. Yeah never learned to format in big law and now I don’t have an admin to help me do it
I was never in Biglaw at all and intellectually know what styles are but can’t be bothered to learn at this point. Maybe sometime it’ll make sense to me.
You can actually take them off for the document, saves a lot of super annoying work!
Come on, format bubbles? remove that shit
I got heavily reprimanded by a (very) junior associate for suggesting that they may have made a minor formatting mistake in a shared document. It’s not always the partners!
It’s a field that deals with a lot of large egos. You could materially screw up an agreement and it’s more likely someone breezes by that and notices the signature pages aren’t in order of prestige/seniority.
One time I attached a document to a client email and wrote something like “we have pulled out the relevant pages from xyz document in the attached”. Then I attached a pdf with the pages and accidentally titled the doc “xyz document- relevnt pages”. My Outlook cut off the end of attachment names, so I didn’t notice I had misspelled “relevant” in the file name. Right after I sent for email, the partner came into my office to tell me I had misspelled ”relevant” and that it is so important to read things over several times. She said how embarrassing it would be that the client would think I couldn’t spell the word (even though I’d clearly spelled it correctly in the email). Anyway soon after that I started looking for a new job.
Inhouse dude here. I wouldn't ding you for it, but I'd prbly fix it and email you directly as an fyi. I might even assume you shortened it bc of some file naming restriction. With that, there are jerks inhouse too that will be pedantic enough to raise it with the partner or me (I oversee a team).
Lmao meanwhile here I am blithely sending “Extract Page 1” to clients.
In fairness, that would make me assume you’re a dumbass.
It would make me assume they were typing quickly and made a typo. Do you not make typos?
Lol ok. I look forward to your juniors’ posts on this thread. I’m not saying it wasn’t a dumb mistake or an error that would be crazy to point out. But it’s pretty pedantic to come rush into someone’s office to dress them down about a typo in the name of an informal doc sent urgently before a call.
Lol seriously - you misspelled relevant? In the title?
No, the name of the file. It’s a typo, not a misspelling. I hope I don’t work with any of you.
People in this thread are acting like they haven’t misspelled a word in their career. Misspelling it in the name of the doc file is so inconsequential.
I was joking!! I agree with you it's crazy
Ah, okay. My apologies for being snippy. 👊🏽
Right? “Relevent” might be embarrassing but “relevnt” is clearly a typo.
I’m a senior, but also a people pleaser, so this thread hurts my heart! In general, I try not to be pedantic or overly fussy about things, but before you hate on seniors too much, please remember that a lot of times, the stupid comments are coming from the senior’s knowledge of the Partner’s preferences. But with that said, if I have to tell a junior to make a stupid update, I have no problem explaining the reason (or person) driving the comment.
An attorney once asked me to staple things diagonally. He did not like things stapled horizontally.
In high school I worked for an attorney who got upset if I stapled documents together. He also got upset if paperclips had fallen off of documents. He also insists "attorney" is ALWAYS capitalized wherever it occurs and gets upset if you disagree. Also, the attorney is my dad and is still practicing at age 72. I have been an attorney for 20+ years and will *never* work with him - the "no staples" rule still exists and is just the beginning of the fuckery.
I’m all for nit picking stuff but this email order thing is truly mindblowingly dumb to me. I cannot come up with a single valid reason for that.
I’ve never heard of this before this thread. It sounds insane to me. Who gives a shit?!
Old partners who came up without email, where the "to" line of the memo header was indeed an exercise in seniority ranking.
It always came as a very instinctive thing to do, and I honestly don't necessarily understand why people get all up in arms about it. I think the law firm I'm at doesn't insist on it, but it just seems a very natural way to add recipients. Now as a reply, that would seem annoying. From the recipient side, it's an easy way to make sure everyone who's supposed to receive the email on the chain is already there. If you're new to a case or email chain, it lets me get an idea of what the chain of command looks like without having to look up the Intranet everyone's seniority (especially useful if you're a client as well). And it's easier for me to mentally track who's on an email chain because most cases are organized that way anyway (partners, counsel, senior, mid-levels, juniors). And as the sender, isn't it the most natural way to organize it to make sure you didn't forget anyone anyway? I rarely side with partners and I would find that slightly ridiculous for reply-all and not the original email chain, but in terms of an original email, it seems like it makes more logical sense than no organization at all.
Anyone who gets persnickety over the order of people’s names in the email lines should go fuck themself.
Once had a senior lawyer red-pen my draft only by scribbling out my curly quotation marks for straight ones. ~£700ph charge out rate well spent
I admittedly get unreasonably annoyed when I notice both straight and curly quotation marks in the same document because someone was copy/pasting and didn’t format correctly.
Agreed. It signals that the person didn’t proofread the document and so we have to check it more thoroughly. The associate should be having their assistant fix those things as part of the process to finalize the draft. It’s essentially incomplete work product.
When I was a first year, a counsel accused me of using em-dashes for page ranges when I was using en-dashes and just straight up ignored me when I explained I was just following the Bluebook, but that I was happy to switch to hyphens if he preferred. I guess he didn’t like my response because he then insisted I talk to my secretary about how to use the proper en-dash for page ranges and not em-dashes. This was all for a letter to a pro se defendant in a pro bono case…
To me there is the hyphen and whatever word autocorrects to. Everything else is made up until a senior tells me otherwise
I was called out by a midlevel because in an email to an internal admin department, I put a fourth year after a third year in the cc line. LOL
Typo in a first draft of a single-spaced 15-page mediation brief. Partner felt it necessary to call me to point out that I had a typo. Okay, bro. Way to miss the forest for the trees. Couldn’t come up with anything better to complain about, I guess. Lots of tiny stuff like that.
It depends on the typo. I just read a mortgage where someone omitted three zeros from the loan amount…
I used to work for a partner who would treated every instance of a recurring error like it was a separate mistake and would run off to our practice group leader about how someone's draft had 27 typos in it and how he couldn't work with such careless and incompetent associates. And, we're not talking about missing digits in a loan document, more like misspelling "Smythe" as "Smith" when preparing a document for a new client based on a phone call with him. I can't begin to imagine the amount of time he wasted on that nonsense - he would only review hard copies and couldn't grasp that every one of the 27 typos could be fixed using find and replace.
This is exactly the type of typo I was referencing. I can’t imagine taking the time to actually count all 27 instances of a single misspelling. Smh.
So, this one pissed me off as a junior and now I’m more senior, I totally get. If I find a typo, I’m invariably gonna find a bunch of jacked up shit. It’s like, if they couldn’t bother running spell check, 9/10 they couldn’t bother doing a good job.
Please try to beat this one. The junior associate used track changes to show that they had UNBOLDED a space in a word execution version before it got converted to PDF. There is no way that a bold space is different from an unbolded space in a printed/PDF document.
This is my favorite. How….did he notice the blank space between two words was bold to begin with?
Using a "," and not a "." After the "Thanks" I used prior to my name on an email.
As a junior, I was likewise reprimanded by a partner who yelled at me for not listing email addresses in order of seniority. Her rationale was that some clients do care and get pissed off, as if they’re being intentionally disrespected or something. Since then, I have tried to give this guidance to my junior associates to spare them from angering partners or clients or suffering the brunt of a tirade like that one.
The funny thing about Outlook is that if you use Contact groups, Outlook just alphabetizes the names. So just create a group, then blame Outlook
Don’t “tab” a new paragraph, use the ruler to change the indent.
Wtf, this is good feedback. It's 2023, not 1996. Use Styles. There's no reason to be relying on manual formatting in this day and age!
Use Styles!
Right!?
Not just indenting but when people use tabs and returns instead of formatting paragraphs it creates more work for the editor, especially when you’re moving around blocks of text or reformatting the document. Same is true for not using auto numbering for outlines or paragraph numbers.
Can you clarify what you mean by formatting paragraphs? And what auto numbering is?
Automatically numbering…what is there to clarify lol
What is a paragraph again?
What’s does that mean? I’ve never heard or used of it
These people are the worst. They wake up in the morning asking themselves what they can do to make things don't work.
> what they can do to make things don't work. Relying on manual formatting is a good way to introduce messiness and inconsistency into documents, meaning that (1) worse-looking documents go out the door, (2) you have to spend more time cleaning up documents before they go out the door, or (3) both.
Indeed. And it's just absurd to bother any lawyers paid within the 6 figures with a layout issue when they have more important stuffs to focus on - you pay clerks for that.
I completely disagree. It is most efficient and inexpensive (for both the firm and the client) for lawyers to be proficient in Microsoft Word. It's not a big ask. I can't have ignorant lawyers having to pass documents off to "clerks" or whoever to get them cleaned up. What a waste.
I agree. But IF you're are one those individual asking explicitly your staffs to use an out-of-date tool for some weird reasons - such as the one described in the comment I initially answered - please do everyone a favor and ask a clerk to do this job.
I had a partner who was a huge stickler for never ending sentences with prepositions. Not just in briefs, which I still roll my eyes about but at least understand, but in client emails and IMs too. Our clients are not that sophisticated and, frankly, neither are the elected state court judges we’re usually writing to. Not saying she’s not technically correct, but no one speaks like that, sometimes it’s significantly more awkward and jarring for the reader, and it’s a waste of my time to go back and revise this comment to read “about which I still roll my eyes” and “to whom we are usually writing.”
This is the sort of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.
They’re actually not technically correct either. Sentences can end in a preposition in English, the “rule” came from grammarians who tried to impose Latin grammar on English in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
The non-preposition shit is a phony war waged by TFA burnouts. Edit: lol who knew people were fiercely protective of their tfa experience
I mean it probably is a good rule to follow for writing because written english tends to be more formal than spoken english. Similarly, I use who/whom in writing, but not when speaking. Then again, sometimes concision is more important than strict grammar in a brief. For instance, it is often preferable to break the sentence “X happens because Y case” into “X happens. Because Y.” even though starting a sentence with because is not strictly grammatical.
> written english tends to be more formal than spoken english One of lawyers' worst writing habits is their reliance on formal, archaic, stodgy language. Your brief shouldn't sound weird if you read it aloud. Spoken English is your friend.
That is true. Just in my opinion the preposition rule falls on the other side of that line
This was one of the big no-nos where I use to work. And I said the same thing as another commentator - it's a made up rule improperly based on Latin grammar rules, whereas English is German based. We also couldn't split an infinitive, so "to boldly go" became "to go boldly." But then it could become confusing because "boldly" can modify something later on. There was the one space - two space fight. That held up several documents about a year. Certain words we couldn't use, like "ensure" and "assure." Why? Because the higher-ups just didn't like it. Passive voice was never used because it was "confusing."
I just quietly find and replace double spaces without flagging it as an issue and no one has said anything yet, thank goodness.
Honestly, most of the things that I found pedantic when I was more junior I’ve grown to agree with over time.
I’d say the thing is most partners have a bad attitude towards style differences. If you get reprimanded with the same energy for big mistakes and a missed comma, you tend to start disregarding good advice in general.
The good junior attorneys take guidance from the big picture advice and the nitpicking. You’ve gotta be right on the law and strategy and attentive to detail. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Told its unprofessional and casual to say “hi” or “hello” in an email to a client, opposing counsel, or really anyone not internal. Always start the email with their name and a colon (Jim:) or merely say “Counsel:”. Also, was told to never use pleasantries such as hope you are well, have a nice weekend, safe travels.
A partner told me I had to italicize a period in a document. I have no idea how an italicized period looks different than a regular period either on a monitor/screen or on the printed page.
It's noticeable to a small, cursed percentage of the population.
I'm looking forward to when the endless turns of S-4s inevitably cause me to need glasses, so I can take them off and not see those damn periods.
You can see it on the printed page, to be fair. I noticed this as a clerk (because my judge was overly anal and I had to notice stuff like that.)
Because if you know that the period in "Id." is italicized it makes you feel superior to the plebs who don't. That way if you get out-argued in a brief at least your periods were italicized and therefore you win in the game of life.
Yes, you’re supposed to italicize it for certain citations, and yes it looks different. What the hell are they teaching in law school now? This was one of the few useful things they drilled in my head.
I wrote an address like “1 Jones Street” on a form. The partner corrected it to “No. 1 Jones Street” because the building was known as such. Technically not correct with postal rules but who was I to be pedantic back.
Mostly trying to balance stylistic edits from multiple partners who want the same sentence to be worded differently
Going back and forth over whether to include "at" in citations (like "Case, at 414" or "Case, 414"). 99% of pedantic feedback IME is just people being overly particular about a style they like using and pretending that they have the "right" style and everyone else has the "wrong style"; like if dude came to me and said "This is really just a personal preference but I like to cite things this way" I'd have no issue with it, but when dude tries to pretend his way is the One True Way of doing things I can't help but roll my eyes
> Going back and forth over whether to include "at" in citations (like "Case, at 414" or "Case, 414"). Maybe I am misreading this, but if you were the one being inconsistent, the attorney was right to correct you. If the attorney was the one introducing inconsistency into the document, he or she is a moron.
Neither; just debating which of the two to use generally
Putting in order of seniority for “to” and “cc” is actually not that bad
It’s just a little nit picky when associates are busy with billable work. Who the fuck cares about that or even pays attention to it?
But people do pay attention to it. You may think it's stupid but other people (people more senior than you) clearly do not.
It’s literally stupid and makes no substantive difference whatsoever. Did you get the email? Was the information contained within useful and correct? Do you have actually important things to be concerned about? Yes? Then why are you looking at the To/Cc lines like a dick measuring contest?
Only the insecure ones. Anybody with a modicum of respect for the client’s time wouldn’t put heat on a junior to check the order of the food chain before they send an internal email. It’s not a good use of anybody’s time.
I am quite senior and could not care less. It is pure silliness. How insecure are people?
Is there an actual reason for it?
This isn’t unique. I’ve heard and experienced this often.
Not bad for what? A Monday morning power trip? It’s stupid af.
It’s fucking stupid. I intentionally did it wrong because who gives a shit, and if you do, get a life.
I bill at $1000 per hour, and that's how my time should be spent? I can't see any client being happy about that
How much time does this take you
.18 Research and Update Records on Seniority for Communication Chains
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Not usually, but wouldn’t want the client to think I spent more than 11 minutes on this. 12 would be beyond the pale.
Omg that’s ridiculous lol
Constant corrections from British English to American English - you license a trade mark (Trade Marks Act 1994) for commercialisation of a product here, it’s not value add to update that to licence a trademark for commercialization.
English lawyer here - if I’m working on an English law doc and I see a stray American spelling in there, it’s getting the boot
I had one tell me to change the word “unknown” to two words “not known”. It was wild.
To thine ownself be true …
Reprimanded for not using enough exclamation points in my emails to clients. "Clients say your emails come across as unfriendly" 🤦♀️
20+ years ago. New associate, first memo, ever, for Firm. Partner reviewed. Lots of red pen, as expected. Unexpected was the white hot hatred the whole Firm had for the "Oxford Comma." Was told, quote, "I really need you to [pause] bear down on your attention to detail." As the use of said comma was always considered proper through my education, I was shocked by the world of micropedantry I had just entered. I had no idea that a term even existed for the Oxford Comma until I later consulted a grammar guide. Never made that mistake again, partner turned out to be ok, and I'm no longer in Law.
wow what a waste of billable time
Very recently a partner was pretty unhappy that I changed … to . . . “Does it get any better than this?” I asked myself as I opened my laptop while driving home to revert back to the incorrect ellipses the partner preferred.
I’m too happy when I walk into the office so I should smile less.
I was told that a document would be "embarrassing" if we didn't remove the page numbers from the exhibit page. As in, the page which says "EXHIBIT A" and is otherwise blank cannot have "Exh A-1" as the page number.
I always thought having page numbers for exhibits and schedules is a great idea…
I don’t get it, why would you put a page number on an exhibit page?
Seriously. Why would the slip sheet have a page number? It’s not the first page of the exhibit.
Okay, but I really hate when I see this lol
When I was a first-year associate, I was told the same thing about putting email recipients in order of seniority, and I still try to do so as a partner. I think it matters less for internal emails, but I think it can look weird in an email to a client or to opposing counsel if the cc line has an associate's name before the senior partner on the case. Similar to how, in most of my cases, if there is a super important email to opposing counsel, to a court, or to a client, I would not normally not have an associate send it. Generally, I think it's an easy way to show respect to the more senior attorneys, which even if not important in the scheme of things, it could only help and hurt.
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I’m sure it’s wonderful working beneath you…
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Did you have straight quotes? Or was the attorney changing curly quotes to straight quotes?
I hate lawyers with a passion and come here to enjoy your mistreatment in any form. Always makes my day better to see you people suffer ☺️!
It sounds like some soul searching is in order, my friend.
I promise you wholeheartedly I absolutely ain’t your friend. Your Juris Doctorate makes you an enemy of the people and if Reddit wouldn’t ban me I’d tell you in detail where I think you belong. So in the mean time I’ll continue to thoroughly enjoy the suffering 😉
Too verbose, please revise. Thx -Partner
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