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captainsblogAfter the two previous days of out-of-office follies taking up most of my time, today was almost entirely in-office but with mountains of crapola needing to be cranked out and, then, cleaned up. The last of those efforts finally reached their intended destinations about 20 minutes ago. The wine is now flowing to settle down the system that really isn't used to this sort of thing anymore.
At some point yesterday, I had to call another lawyer who is, for technical reasons, "my client" on a collection case. (He's actually the bankruptcy trustee of someone who really is my client, and I wind up representing the other lawyer as the named party rather than the actual person holding the claim.) He's owed me a signature on a document since mid-month, so I called his office to check on it.
Ringringring. The receptionist, at the fancyass Big Firm he's a partner at, answered:
"Who, Whatsit and Which, how may we help you?"
Instantly, I picked up the stench in the air. WW&W, LLP, has been visited by the worst scourge ever to visit itself on the legal profession: the marketing consultant. The current Flavor of the Month, apparently, is to emphasize the firm's "team" approach by making everybody, including the overworked underpaid receptionist, say "we" in all their communications with actual or potential clients.
Well, young miss, I think but do not say. You can help the "We" here at Me, Myself and I (Not Incorporated) if you (or youse, or all'yall, depending on your dialect) just cut the crap and return my signed papers so this We can provide service to your We instead of wasting time on reading your (plural) fucking (not necessarily plural) marketing manuals.
In fact, if you're in the legal profession, or any other service business, here are some simple tips to enhance your marketability without needing to hire consultants, design a new logo or come up with a catchy new slogan:
1) Return your damn phone calls. Study after study points to this as the single biggest failing among service professionals. All the gurus in the world aren't gonna help you if you won't help the people who are either paying your bills or (as in this case, where the WW&W lawyer has at least two prior inquiries from me) trying to get both our bills paid.
2) Don't play games hiding as The Man Behind The Curtain. Most of these firms operate on a system that over-rewards "rainmaking" by over-the-hill fogeys and under-rewards performance by the grunts and minions who actually do the work. To perpetuate this nonsense, many of the fogeys hide the identities and excellence of the people in the trenches so they can continue get all of the credit, financial or otherwise. If you're a fogey, be honest about what your role really is; and if you're a grunt/minion, don't hesitate to make obvious how essential you are to the transaction/case/whatever.
3) Be true to yourself above all else. If you can't make a deadline or a commitment, make that known as early as possible and forgiveness will almost always flow to you. Don't compromise your integrity or your reputation for the sake of someone or something who, months from now, will turn on you like a right wing on a hockey rink if it means saving their own ass.
I could add to these, but there's probably a seminar in it if I come up with much more of an outline.
----
On the way back from downtown yesterday, I wound up in an odd detour off the 33 and through a soon-to-be-extinct piece of local history. I was routed off the Harlem Road exit ramp, over to Genesee, and finally back up Harlem past a local landmark of sorts which is entering a new and final phase of its own existence: the Buffalo Drive-In, which opened almost 60 years ago with one screen showing Disney's Song of the South and will be demolished after its final 2007 season to build Yet Another Medical Building to service our dwindling, dying population.
Buffalo has remained one of the few remaining vestiges of this one-time national craze. I remember going to a few of them growing up on Long Island (some owned by Sumner Redstone, the gagillionaire later to acquire CBS and the rest of the Viacom empire, who started out as a drive-in owner on the Island and elsewhere), and there were a couple on the outskirts of Ithaca when I was in school there. All of those are long gone, as is the one hanger-on from my first few years in Rochester (Easta Rach's Washington Drive-In), but Buffalo kept the faith longer in years, and longer into each fall and early winter, than just about anyplace. We still have a big one on the way up to Lockport, and a few in the hinterlands, but the Buffalo Drive-In, barely a mile from the city line, was always speshul as a throwback to another day.
I have more meta-memories than actual ones of the experience. Someone's parody of the Clash on Dr. Demento called "Lock the Snackbar." A Cheech and Chong bit called "Pedro and Man at the Drive-In" where Buggery on the High Seas was the feature of the night. Vague memories of 70s sitcoms, before the advent of in-car broadcast audio, where characters drove off with the speakers still attached to their station wagons. And of course every Flintstones episode ended with a gay-all time at the local drive-in. Do you remember the movie that was "now playing" there forever and all time? I'm sure somebody will.
Some time this summer, I will pile the kid and a bunch of her friends into the biggest beater car we can find and check out some serious ill horror flick at the Buffalo Drive In, to say goodbye to a friend I never really had but will still miss anyway. And if some indy filmmaker out there wants to make my year, before the end of this summer they will come up with the ultimate drive-in flick, that will debut in late September and play all winter and maybe, on Harlem Road, forever and all time:
CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.
At some point yesterday, I had to call another lawyer who is, for technical reasons, "my client" on a collection case. (He's actually the bankruptcy trustee of someone who really is my client, and I wind up representing the other lawyer as the named party rather than the actual person holding the claim.) He's owed me a signature on a document since mid-month, so I called his office to check on it.
Ringringring. The receptionist, at the fancyass Big Firm he's a partner at, answered:
"Who, Whatsit and Which, how may we help you?"
Instantly, I picked up the stench in the air. WW&W, LLP, has been visited by the worst scourge ever to visit itself on the legal profession: the marketing consultant. The current Flavor of the Month, apparently, is to emphasize the firm's "team" approach by making everybody, including the overworked underpaid receptionist, say "we" in all their communications with actual or potential clients.
Well, young miss, I think but do not say. You can help the "We" here at Me, Myself and I (Not Incorporated) if you (or youse, or all'yall, depending on your dialect) just cut the crap and return my signed papers so this We can provide service to your We instead of wasting time on reading your (plural) fucking (not necessarily plural) marketing manuals.
In fact, if you're in the legal profession, or any other service business, here are some simple tips to enhance your marketability without needing to hire consultants, design a new logo or come up with a catchy new slogan:
1) Return your damn phone calls. Study after study points to this as the single biggest failing among service professionals. All the gurus in the world aren't gonna help you if you won't help the people who are either paying your bills or (as in this case, where the WW&W lawyer has at least two prior inquiries from me) trying to get both our bills paid.
2) Don't play games hiding as The Man Behind The Curtain. Most of these firms operate on a system that over-rewards "rainmaking" by over-the-hill fogeys and under-rewards performance by the grunts and minions who actually do the work. To perpetuate this nonsense, many of the fogeys hide the identities and excellence of the people in the trenches so they can continue get all of the credit, financial or otherwise. If you're a fogey, be honest about what your role really is; and if you're a grunt/minion, don't hesitate to make obvious how essential you are to the transaction/case/whatever.
3) Be true to yourself above all else. If you can't make a deadline or a commitment, make that known as early as possible and forgiveness will almost always flow to you. Don't compromise your integrity or your reputation for the sake of someone or something who, months from now, will turn on you like a right wing on a hockey rink if it means saving their own ass.
I could add to these, but there's probably a seminar in it if I come up with much more of an outline.
----
On the way back from downtown yesterday, I wound up in an odd detour off the 33 and through a soon-to-be-extinct piece of local history. I was routed off the Harlem Road exit ramp, over to Genesee, and finally back up Harlem past a local landmark of sorts which is entering a new and final phase of its own existence: the Buffalo Drive-In, which opened almost 60 years ago with one screen showing Disney's Song of the South and will be demolished after its final 2007 season to build Yet Another Medical Building to service our dwindling, dying population.
Buffalo has remained one of the few remaining vestiges of this one-time national craze. I remember going to a few of them growing up on Long Island (some owned by Sumner Redstone, the gagillionaire later to acquire CBS and the rest of the Viacom empire, who started out as a drive-in owner on the Island and elsewhere), and there were a couple on the outskirts of Ithaca when I was in school there. All of those are long gone, as is the one hanger-on from my first few years in Rochester (Easta Rach's Washington Drive-In), but Buffalo kept the faith longer in years, and longer into each fall and early winter, than just about anyplace. We still have a big one on the way up to Lockport, and a few in the hinterlands, but the Buffalo Drive-In, barely a mile from the city line, was always speshul as a throwback to another day.
I have more meta-memories than actual ones of the experience. Someone's parody of the Clash on Dr. Demento called "Lock the Snackbar." A Cheech and Chong bit called "Pedro and Man at the Drive-In" where Buggery on the High Seas was the feature of the night. Vague memories of 70s sitcoms, before the advent of in-car broadcast audio, where characters drove off with the speakers still attached to their station wagons. And of course every Flintstones episode ended with a gay-all time at the local drive-in. Do you remember the movie that was "now playing" there forever and all time? I'm sure somebody will.
Some time this summer, I will pile the kid and a bunch of her friends into the biggest beater car we can find and check out some serious ill horror flick at the Buffalo Drive In, to say goodbye to a friend I never really had but will still miss anyway. And if some indy filmmaker out there wants to make my year, before the end of this summer they will come up with the ultimate drive-in flick, that will debut in late September and play all winter and maybe, on Harlem Road, forever and all time:
CLOSED FOR THE SEASON.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 03:30 am (UTC)Have I mentioned I despise him?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 01:54 pm (UTC)You can help the "We" here at Me, Myself and I (Not Incorporated) if you (or youse, or all'yall, depending on your dialect) just cut the crap and return my signed papers
That sir. Was most excellent. It could only be improved on if yall had said signed fucking papers.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 03:03 pm (UTC)We have 2 drive-ins within driving distance, and it is my hope that someday one of them will show "Rocky Horror" so I can jump out of my car and Time Wharp.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 05:37 pm (UTC)Ahem.... Mememememeeee....
I think I hear my friend from Porlock.
PS: What the Flintstones had, I believe, was a "gay ol' time."
no subject
Date: 2007-03-30 09:38 pm (UTC)yes, yes and YES.
helllooo... integrity? honesty? ethics? taptaptap, anyone out there?