LEGAL ASSISTANT’S CORNER: Time is Always of the Essence

Legal assistants have chosen a career where time is always of the essence. We understand that
the matters we work on daily are often among the most important problems that will occur in our
clients’ lives. Everything in our work world comes with strict deadlines and a lot of pressure to
get it done right, on time and without unnecessary expense to clients. In a word, we deal with
loads of stress every single day.

In a perfect world we would be able to drop everything we were working on and handle only
your matter to a satisfactory conclusion without delay or red tape but, I’ve got some unfortunate
news for you, this isn’t a perfect world. Despite the fact that it is not a sustainable business
model for most law firms to take and handle only one client/matter at a time, most clients seem
to assume that this is the case (pardon the pun). As a result, legal assistants are regularly
juggling more matters at any one time than is comfortable and our interactions may seem
dismissive, uncaring or just plain rude.

Please note that we are sorry. We have not forgotten about you. We do understand. We do care.
We will do what we can as soon as we can. We promise we are doing our best for you and your
case. You do matter – perhaps just not right at this very minute.

© 7/24/2018 Heather M. Carr of Hunt & Associates, P.C. All rights reserved.