Bad scare

A client called today. I had no idea who she was or what her case was about, but she wanted to know whether we would be filing her case by Friday or not since the statute of limitations was approaching. I told the client that I would find her file and call her back. I dropped everything and looked for the file -- it was nowhere in my office. The Bird Lady couldn't find it right away, either.

The file turned out to be in the Eager Young Law Clerk's office -- I had given it to him to refer out for review. I never heard about it again until just now. Eager Young Law Clerk recently dropped the ball on one of Happy Bachelor Lawyer's cases (with whom the blame for this ultimately rests is somewhat unclear to me), and now I need to step in and make sure the same thing doesn't happen on any of mine.

This chills my bone marrow to sub-glacial temperatures. I should have a better handle on when statute dates are coming up than that. I should have a better idea of what's going on with the files I'm handling than to need a reminder call from my own clients. So, I'm begging the Great Man to give me some support. When I asked before, his idea was that I could be assisted by the paralegal (who I just met yesterday) who has been working for Son-Of-The-Great-Man, but she has indicated that she needs as much as sixty days to get caught up on all of his cases before she can help me with anything. So I'm not getting the help I need to do my job. It's very frustrating and now, more than a little bit scary since this happened.

I'm trying to get Bird Lady and Bad Attitude Paralegal to help with my lobbying efforts here. Eager Young Law Clerk may well whine about it, but this isn't about him -- and his political star is not exactly in the ascendant right now. I'm going to have to make sure I don't get in a similar position. This is about making sure I don't let down any of my clients.

Tomorrow there will be a comprehensive review of everything I've got and what I want done with it all. I don't much care how things got the way they are but I do care how they progress in the future. I have no idea what to do if I don't get the support I need.