Technicalities
The physical desk set up for the legal professionals at Clifton Kok is really something to be impressed by. Just like how my friend Claire's firm is set up (you can check out her blog at cclairekim.blogspot.ca), everyone usually gets two monitors- including the lawyers. The only exception to this is the office manager and myself, since I'm working off a laptop and she only has one monitor.
There isn't anything overly high-tech about the computers themselves, - if anything I would say the software is fairly dated, but that's mainly because I'm working with Microsoft Office Suite 2010 and we don't use half of the software that was taught at Conestoga. Which if you ask me is a shame because Clifton Kok works in many areas of law, but only have Teraview and Conveyancer for Real Estate. When working on corporate matters, and having to draft up resolutions for companies we use old precedents which takes much longer than just getting FastCompany to generate the documents. Having specialized software would also benefit the firm because then when doing new tasks, the legal assistants wouldn't have to rely so heavily on the lawyers providing us with example documents. Or, in the case of an amalgamation between two companies we had to resort to finding a template online and just customized it for the matter. This seems like a much more lengthy progress, especially if the template wasn't worded right or left out important details.
The best thing about Clifton Kok is that they at least understand the annoyance of this process and they have all their electronic templates sorted in such a beautiful way. I have included a screen shot of the lien templates folder, since I have done the most work with them, but you can see how the beginning process is folder 1, the documents needed after are in folder 2, and so on. It is so easy to learn about new topics, since they often have instructions already made up.
The templates at Clifton Kok are really nice to work with though, especially for the liens that we process, as they all have standard wording and all I have to do is input information for the new lien. I haven't gotten to do much of Real Estate documents as I had previously hoped, but we have a closing on April 21, 2017, so I'm eager to see the process. I have gotten some projects that don't often take me that long to complete- though I had to compile a table of the owners and shares of co-op ownership apartment building (basically every tenant owns a portion of the property and they appear on the parcel register- which this one was 13 pages long), along with updating some schedules within the same matter.
I feel much more comfortable around the people here at Clifton Kok, the work never scared me, but making a good impression did- nearly hyperventilating whenever discussing files or projects with the lawyers isn't something I have done all week! Mostly because everyone here is already so relaxed with each other and they have all been super nice to me, so it feels silly to be worked up over it. I'm also getting more comfortable just walking into Carolyn's office without knocking so that I can hand her invoices from Teraview and letters to be sent that day.
Besides, these are really the only people that I get to intact with. Not many clients actually come into the office unless they have a meeting with Mark or Michael, or the Purolator man shows up with packages. Each phone is reached by an extension number, and since I'm at the spare desk no one calls, my extension hasn't ever been on the directory, nor is there a shortcut for it on the office phones.
There isn't anything overly high-tech about the computers themselves, - if anything I would say the software is fairly dated, but that's mainly because I'm working with Microsoft Office Suite 2010 and we don't use half of the software that was taught at Conestoga. Which if you ask me is a shame because Clifton Kok works in many areas of law, but only have Teraview and Conveyancer for Real Estate. When working on corporate matters, and having to draft up resolutions for companies we use old precedents which takes much longer than just getting FastCompany to generate the documents. Having specialized software would also benefit the firm because then when doing new tasks, the legal assistants wouldn't have to rely so heavily on the lawyers providing us with example documents. Or, in the case of an amalgamation between two companies we had to resort to finding a template online and just customized it for the matter. This seems like a much more lengthy progress, especially if the template wasn't worded right or left out important details.
The best thing about Clifton Kok is that they at least understand the annoyance of this process and they have all their electronic templates sorted in such a beautiful way. I have included a screen shot of the lien templates folder, since I have done the most work with them, but you can see how the beginning process is folder 1, the documents needed after are in folder 2, and so on. It is so easy to learn about new topics, since they often have instructions already made up.The templates at Clifton Kok are really nice to work with though, especially for the liens that we process, as they all have standard wording and all I have to do is input information for the new lien. I haven't gotten to do much of Real Estate documents as I had previously hoped, but we have a closing on April 21, 2017, so I'm eager to see the process. I have gotten some projects that don't often take me that long to complete- though I had to compile a table of the owners and shares of co-op ownership apartment building (basically every tenant owns a portion of the property and they appear on the parcel register- which this one was 13 pages long), along with updating some schedules within the same matter.
I feel much more comfortable around the people here at Clifton Kok, the work never scared me, but making a good impression did- nearly hyperventilating whenever discussing files or projects with the lawyers isn't something I have done all week! Mostly because everyone here is already so relaxed with each other and they have all been super nice to me, so it feels silly to be worked up over it. I'm also getting more comfortable just walking into Carolyn's office without knocking so that I can hand her invoices from Teraview and letters to be sent that day.
Besides, these are really the only people that I get to intact with. Not many clients actually come into the office unless they have a meeting with Mark or Michael, or the Purolator man shows up with packages. Each phone is reached by an extension number, and since I'm at the spare desk no one calls, my extension hasn't ever been on the directory, nor is there a shortcut for it on the office phones.
Megan!
ReplyDeleteIt is always nice to have templates to work with, makes things easier!
Megan - thank you for sharing the image of the file management system for liens. Do you find that since so much emphasis was put on file organization and file name protocol, it is easy to adjust to this organized system? Where do you file the documents you prepare? Is there a file-naming protocol at Clifton Kok?
ReplyDelete