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Scott Benton: Hi everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. And today we’re going to look at a goldmine of sample documents.
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Scott Benton: Today, in order to help assist your overall use of the success cycle, where performing legal services is concerned, we’re going to look at a goldmine of sample documents. What would happen if you went to law school, took out an absolute ton of student loans, then graduated with flying colors, studied for the bar, took the bar, and passed on the first round, took the ethics class, got sworn in, and finally got your bar number to then start your first day at a law firm, and you go and you sit down at your desk.
Now, after the meet and greets and some onboarding and training are completed, you’re handed your first cases to work on, and in fact, You’re asked to complete a couple of small tasks that really aren’t that complicated. Maybe one’s a form that needs to go to some county [00:02:00] property tax office and another is an 850 filing that’s going to go to the local courthouse.
The problem is that you’ve never heard of either of these documents let alone seen them and even if you did you wouldn’t know how to fill them out and this is only your third day on the job.
Since you don’t want to look like you don’t know what you’re doing, this is when you need to go figure out who you can go talk to that would be a good resource. But then there’s the other thing that would help if you didn’t already know about it. On the main drive of that firm, where all of the case files live and where you’re going to soon be contributing your own files, and that is meticulously organized to make it easy for all of the attorneys and all of the staff to find any document that they need, it’s going to be a folder of sample documents.
For you who just started as a fully licensed attorney, this is going to be an absolute goldmine that you’re going to use throughout your career as an attorney, whether it’s here at the first law firm that you work [00:03:00] for or the 10th law firm that you work for.
If you end up working for that many, 30 years later. So the first thing you do is you find the sample documents for that form that you need to fill out for the county tax authority and then you look for any 850 petitions and you familiarize yourself with the overall process by asking your supervising attorney or maybe a paralegal or both.
Now, whenever you’ve got forms to fill out, or documents that need to be put together, or standard letters to write to a client or an opposing counsel, the first thing that you’re going to want to do is open the main drive and pull up sample documents, because that way you can see what your own documents should probably look like.
Now, at the very least, You now have a context for how to complete the legal services that you’re going to be billing for once you’ve completed the task. But as far as sample documents go, your interaction with the drive isn’t going to merely stop there. In fact, you’re probably going to go look at documents in the main [00:04:00] drive. several times a day as you work on your legal services, so you’re going to want to become familiar with how this drive is organized and what kind of folder system the cases use and how to go about finding documents that you’re going to need. This is what’s called the document management system and it’s the entire backbone of a well run law firm.
So chances are that when you step into your new role as an attorney, one of the first things that you’re going to want to do is get very, very familiar with their document management system. Now chances are that they’re going to teach you about it anyway, and someone’s going to sit down with you and go through the firm’s document management system and how it’s organized, how to use it, how to find anything that you need.
If that training doesn’t happen, then you definitely need to find someone who’s going to take some time to show you how to use their system. Without understanding this part of the firm’s inner workings, you really put yourself at a significant disadvantage, and you’re just not going to [00:05:00] be a productive revenue generating contributor to the legal team.
In fact, you’re going to be a drain on their resources until you get up to speed, and chances are pretty good you’ll have a difficult time reaching your minimum billable hours. But with the deep knowledge of using the firm’s document management system and assuming that you know how to use the drive and find all the documents that you’re going to need, this is now going to free up your focus on delivering legal services to the cases and to the clients that you’re handling, which in turn, is going to help you reach and exceed your minimum billable hours.
So you don’t want to get bogged down not knowing how to use the firm’s document management system and really, really well. Again, this is the backbone of the firm’s organizational structure and it’s also going to be your backbone for your ability to practice law and advance your career. And it all starts on the first day that you join the firm and get trained on how to use their internal systems.
So you want to make sure you know [00:06:00] going in that a law firm is going to have a document management system. And you might already know this, but what’s important to know is that they’re all going to be set up differently. So even if you know one document management system like the back of your hand at one firm, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’re going to know the document management systems at all law firms.
That means you really need to learn the system that you’re going to be working with wherever you are as quickly as possible.
There are going to be folder structures, and they’re going to be file naming conventions for your documents that you’ve really got to get down pat. And there might even be metadata or keywords that you need to include to make searching for them easier. There also may be other attorneys or paralegals or law clerks that will need to find those documents as well at some point.
So the metadata and keywords will also help those documents to be easily located by other people. So as you can see, starting out by finding sample documents and then later graduating to full understanding of using the [00:07:00] document management system is mission critical in developing yourself into the excellent and highly capable attorney that I know you are destined to become, and it all starts with a thorough understanding of how to successfully navigate the document management system.
I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out this episode. Now if you like this podcast and you’d like to get more information about us You can always go to our website at classroom2courtroom.
com That’s classroom the number two courtroom. com where you can send us a message to keep in touch with us You can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs We have available for law school students If you like you can apply to come and work with us.
And as always don’t forget to share like and subscribe to stay on top of all of our latest episodes and until next time We hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place One client at a time.
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