My fingernails are too long. They keep getting stuck in between the keys on my keyboard. However, that’s neither here nor there. This post is about the fact that I HATE working litigation stuff at work. I don’t like it AT ALL! Give me my boring estate work back!!
Litigation stuff has hard deadlines. Litigation has specific requirements for word counts and font usage. Litigation requires you turn things in electronically by 5 p.m. rather than the more generic “end of day” (which for me is 6:30 p.m.).
Today Mr. BIL was working on a litigation case and intended to submit some documents first thing this morning. That changed to “this afternoon” when he decided to make a change. But then that change became a small re-write. And next thing I knew it was 4 p.m., Mr. BIL was heading into a meeting, and he asked that I finalize everything, figure out how to log in online to the court’s case assignment page, and submit the three soon-to-be final documents.
You know – cuz I do that all the time.
NOT.
Of course, the two paralegals who DO do that all the time aren’t here today. I attempted calling the cellphone of the one not in court and got her voicemail. All ten times I called. Finally, at 4:30 p.m. I sat down to try and figure it out for myself. At 4:45 p.m. I found where I needed to be at the website and began attaching the documents. At 4:50 p.m. my computer locked up and the screen went white. From 4:50 p.m. – 4:53 p.m. I stopped breathing entirely. At 4:54 p.m. I hit “refresh” (even though before the screen went blank it specifically said NOT to hit refresh) and began praying harder. At 4:55 p.m. it said my documents were submitted. At 4:56 p.m. I decided to double-check and make sure my three documents were all submitted properly. At 4:57 p.m. I saw that one of my documents was, in fact, corrupted and unviewable. At 4:58 p.m. I began resubmitting the document – the largest PDF of the three I needed to turn in before 5:00 p.m. At 5:02 p.m. my screen switching from “submitting” to “submission confirmed.” And I started breathing again.
Seriously, people. I can’t take that again.
Oh gosh – I’ve had those days with proposal writing…and in the pre-pdf days of speeding down to the courthouse in order to get my package stamped in time, or otherwise it would be THROWN IN THE TRASH!
cristans last blog post..New technology at the library!
Yeah, at least you can upload those documents. I had to hand deliver a proposal in Washington, DC, on the day it was due. I left our office at 3pm to give me 2 whole hours to make the drop. Because the building I was going to was on a one way street, I had a hard time getting to it because of the no left turns at all intersections. In panic, I finally just turned left anyway and immediately got pulled over by a cop. I pleaded my case and was let go with a warning and directions. I walked into the building at 5pm and delivered the proposal to the locked door of the office at 5:05pm.
We lost the bid, but not because it was turned in late, fortunately.