There we were all in one place, a generation lost in space....

[captainsblog]

Long ago, in a galaxy far far away, I dated a woman in law school who had a memorable mnemonic on her bathroom mirror. It was a picture of some retro ingenue- Audrey Hepburn, perhaps?- with an exhortation, in her own rather distinct handwriting: Try to be better looking.

I never did figure out what her plan was to achieve this goal, but I thought of it today, when I tried putting a similar plan of my own into action: Try to be better organized.

Early this afternoon, I had a routine hearing with a bankruptcy client- for him, as for most of them, the only one he will ever need to attend. In my many years of doing them, they've gone from quick and rote to extended inquisitions about the client's past, current and (to an extent) future financial affairs.  I've done hundreds of these, and by my conservative count, you can now not get through one of these without exchanging close to a dozen different documents with the hearing officer either before or at these five minutes of "fame" (and that's counting the bankruptcy "petition" as a single document when it in fact consists of at least a dozen subcomponents all by itself).

For the sake of those waiting for their own cases to be called, and for the sake of your own sanity, you pretty much have to have a system for passing these back and forth. Today was my first in almost two months, and I was determined to be READY, dammit. I had the pre-signed forms all in a stack, with the to-be-signed documents on top. The verification documents (identification, title, bank statements) were all backed-up to the stack, for ease in handing off and reclaiming- all with the goal of having them all in order so it wouldn't take extra time to present them and, more important, I'd have them all reclaimed and put into a convenient envelope so the client would have them all to take with him when the hearing was done.

All of this went exactly as planned.... except for the "take with him" part. Hours later, I retrieved his file and some other stuff from my back seat, and saw The Dreaded Envelope sitting on the seat next to it-all. Yup, all in order and complete, just like I'd planned it.

I called him, and he was quite nice about it, despite me having enough of his identity in my possession to clone him seven times over. I will make sure it gets back to him quickly and securely, but when it comes to good intentions, I've got a long way to go before ever being mistaken for Audrey Hepburn. Audrey II might be more like it:P

Comments

[audacian.livejournal.com]

Don't you send all of that to the Trustee before the 241, or is that just how we do it here? I know we used to do it with the 2 tax returns and 3 months of pay stubs, at least.

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Some you send ahead, but some you just don't get until right before the hearing (like filing-date bank statements), and some you can't sign until the hearing (we have a "Declaration of Electronic Filing" form that must be signed in the trustee's presence). But they don't want to be stuck with the documents cluttering their files, and I could open a used car lot with the titles I've wound up stuck with over the years, so you need a system to get all of it back to the client.

System, yes. Back to the client, still working on:P

[horizonchaser.livejournal.com]

Ack. I usually resort to tying things to my hands to remember, but Mel mentioned using a phone "Nag" app to try and get organized. I don't remember what it's called, but you tell the app what needs to be done when, and it calls you to remind. Might be helpful?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

Installing such an app would immediately result in my loss of the phone. Probably into a toilet, or worse.

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Perhaps her plan was to Twilight-Zone her way into looking precisely like the woman taped to the mirror?

I'm working on the organization thing myself - schedule ALL the things! - and it's difficult. Trying new productivity software this week. We'll see how that goes.

Also, that's a lot of documents. No wonder they sometimes go missing! But at least they were all together and sorted properly, if...sort of in the wrong person's hands?

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

"Number Six looks just like you!"

I'm being nagged to death my All Teh Software this week- the billing software company keeps threatening that my unsupported 2006 installation is going to die at any moment and then where would I be? (Answer: THAT's when I'll order it, suckas, and my multiple redundant backups of the data will transfer to it just as well then as they would now.) My "maintenance" for the main specialty productivity software runs out at the end of October, but the pre-nags began in July and now every login has an annoying one. Throw in the near-daily "deals" from Lulu and the crafty Continuing Ed providers who call and email almost daily about having my credits up to date by my birthday over a month from now (thank you, Bar Poobahs, for making THAT the expiration date, and oh, btw? I TEACH the damn things for another company and get beaucoup 3-times-the-time preparation credits for those, which mean I'll still be authorized to practice five years after I'm dead).

As for the stack of documents? They were in the right person's hand- mine. They just stuck to it about two minutes too long:P

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Sheesh. What a nag, what a drag!