Practice News

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. I am a new administrator with my law firm. I am also the first administrator that the firm has had. Do you have any suggestions as to where I should start? What are my priorities? A. As a first administrator you will face a dual challenge. You will have to justify the new position as well as yourself and your performance. You will be second guessed and partners will from time to time question whether a legal administrator was necessary or wise. There will be problems with role clarification. Suggest that you insist on a job description for yourself and a governance plan that outlines the authority and responsibility of the administrator, the managing partner, the executive committee, and the partnership. This will set the boundaries. On your first day at work suggest that you start by meeting with all of the personnel. Meet individually with the partners and associates and get to know them, their desires and hidden agendas. Initially conduct a get acquainted meeting with the staff and then meet with each staff member individually. Discuss their jobs and their duties. Ask for suggestions. Work with the bookkeeper and get up on the accounting operations as quick as you can. Learn the office computer system. Initially your two biggest priorities will usually be personnel and accounting. Read the minutes of firm meetings and office administrative files. If you are weak in accounting and computers obtain whatever additional training that is required.

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin will ask a bipartisan screening committee to meet again to assist in selecting a Federal District Court Judge for the Central District of Illinois. At the end of February, Judge Joe Billy McDade took senior status, creating a third vacancy in the Central District. The other two vacancies were created by the announced retirements of Judge Michael Mihm and Judge Jeanne Scott, and Senator Durbin has previously submitted names to the President to fill those vacancies. Click here to apply for the federal judgeship. The application is nearly identical to the one used by the Senate Judiciary Committee and will help provide insight into potential nominees’ backgrounds and qualifications. The deadline for submission of completed applications is May 17, 2010. The screening committee will review the applications, interview applicants and references, and make multiple recommendations to Senator Durbin as quickly as possible.

By Peter LaSorsa Google recently rewrote its browser-based word processing and spreadsheet software. There isn’t much difference on the outward appearance but the internal changes are significant and worth mentioning. The new changes include allowing documents imported from Microsoft Word to retain their layout, and a new ruler for adjusting margins. But the real change is in the collaborative editing. Under the old version, a 15-second delay was the norm for two or more people working on the same spreadsheet or document. With the new version, changes are instantaneous. On the down side, Google’s new applications do not allow work while offline. This will only affect people sitting on airplanes or in some remote location where Internet access is not available. To digress, cloud computing is Internet based computing, where shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on-demand. In other words, the word processing or spreadsheet software does not reside on the individual computer. One big advantage of cloud computing is that people with three or four computers don’t have to purchase the same software for all three or four computers. And with cloud computing you have the ability to work on documents no matter what computer you have in front of you as long as you can connect to the Internet. For those attorney’s who have a need to collaborate on documents with multiple people in various locations, the new revised Google docs and spreadsheet are worth a try.  This link will answer any additional questions and get you started.

Sure, you could keep up with agency-made law by reading each issue of the Illinois Register. And if you need a break, you might follow it up with something lighter -- say the tax code. Or you could read The Flinn Report instead, which is JCAR's Cliff's Notes (Gilbert's?) version of the Register. Not familiar with The Flinn Report? Read Bill Price's article in the May Administrative Law newsletter.