Work email culture–there’s always tomorrow

From Law Donut 17/05/13:

Accessing work-related emails is no longer just confined to the working day. According to a new report, small business employees are checking their work emails at all hours of day and night – even at social occasions that include weddings, school events and family get-togethers.

Excuse me?  What’s new about this?  Hasn’t this been a widespread problem for several years now?

The survey, conducted by Opinion Matters on behalf of GFI Software, polled 500 employees in small business workplaces across the UK. It found that technology has blurred the boundaries between home and work. Three quarters of respondents said they check their work email at the weekend, 44% check work email after 11pm and 54% keep on top of work email on holiday.

I’ve long regarded email at work as being both a symptom and a cause of the growing OCD epidemic. No, seriously. 

There was a time that I would regularly check my work emails outside of the working day. Over the last couple of years, though, I’ve found a little work-life demarcation has been in order and have made a conscious effort to only check work emails during working hours. It can be tough at first to break old (unhealthy) habits but it’s well worth sticking with.  I also removed my work mail accounts from my smartphone and, funnily enough, my cold sweats and panic attacks immediately subsided.  ;-)  Sometimes life’s too short to tolerate these things.  Remember: that vitally important email will still be safely in your inbox on Monday morning. 
Who said there’s no such thing as 9 – 5 legal practice any more? 

The report also found that email is used at the office more than any other form of communication:

• 48.8% of respondents use email for work more than any other communications format
• 25% still prefer face-to-face meetings
• 23.6% prefer to pick up the phone

Don’t get me started: there’s nothing more disruptive than a telephone call.

Email gets a quick response from the majority of respondents – with 75% saying they typically reply to emails within one hour during work hours and almost a third replying within 15 minutes.

And for the record, anybody who sends an email and then follows it up with a phone call within a matter of minutes is blatantly asking for a smack in the mouth!

Studying for a law exam - a cry for help

It’s been a while since I did a mailbag feature, so here’s to turning that around. ;-)

The following email plopped into my inbox a couple of weeks ago from a law student panicked by the prospect of open book exams:

Just found your law blog after having a complete mare over open book exams.
I appreciate this is a completely cheeky and out of the blue question,
but I don't suppose you happen to have those old company law notes you
mention in your revision entry do you?! Completely terrified about it,
have no idea what I'm doing or how to answer question from the second
semester, and generally worried I'm not going to get a 2:1 and thereby
miss my TC offer!

Totally understand you telling me to piss off, but thanks for the
hints and tips anyway :)

Jodie G

For those wondering, my “revision entry” was this post back in 2009.

I stand by the techniques I propounded there – certainly for closed book exams, anyway – and there isn’t really much I can add.

Open book exams are a bit of a different animal. Quite obviously, they call for a slightly different focus with less of the course material committed to memory and more focus on meticulous organisation and knowledge of your permitted materials. But that’s not to say you don’t need to be able to recall a large proportion of the content without being reliant on your books.

Your permitted materials are an aide memoire – not a memory replacement.

Jodie’s email didn’t really inspire me to respond (nope, not even to tell her to piss off). Amongst other things, the experience of a law degree is about trying different study methods to see what works for you, learning from your mistakes and emerging the other side richer for the experience.

As I said to a student colleague recently, “I don’t want to rob you of the learning experience”. I think the subtext there is blatantly clear.

For what it’s worth, I did have the revision notes of which I spoke in the post but they were a) tailored for my course and not Jodie’s, b) the fruit of my exam-time labours (why should I share them) and c) let me ask you this: would you, even as a desperate law student, risk asking a complete stranger on the internet for revision notes of which you have no assurance of quality, accuracy or anything else?

Who’d do that? It’s scary that someone who’d risk trying that has a training contract offer. (Sorry, that’s how I feel).

Btw – “a complete mare”. Excuse me? Is this new street talk?

Update: I’ve Googled it and thanks to Wiktionary, it seems it’s a colloquial contraction of “nightmare”.

(UK, colloquial) (Shortening of nightmare) A nightmare; a frustrating or terrible experience.

I'm having a complete mare today.

Well, there you go.

To kill a mockingbird - I wish someone had killed me

Anything would have been better than reading that thing!

You’d have had to been holed up somewhere for your entire life to not be familiar with the award winning novel by Harper Lee. It’s often cited as being a must-read novel for aspiring lawyers and listed amongst the top 10 legal reads of all time.

I read it at school years ago as part of a GCSE English assessment. And I absolutely hated it. Every last word.

I’m not going to hold back here; I simply cannot recall a book I liked less. I found it utterly depressing, entirely un-compelling and am thankful I had no interest in a career in law at that point. It might have put me off for life. Even the copy I was dished up with at school stunk to high heaven of the wretched fish glue that bound it. That kind of literary experience takes some bouncing back from, believe me.  The fact our English teacher raved about, served only to heighten my disinterest. 

Adolescence and GCSEs is a tough combination at the best of times, but having to wade through a novel like that nearly finished me. Just over a third of the way through I gave up with that sucker and never looked back. Thank God for York Notes – that’s all I can say.

Anyhow, that’s enough of the schoolboy reverie. This post was intended to have some bearing on copyright (honest).

From the 1709 blog 05/05/13:

[The author of to Kill a Mockingbird,] Harper Lee, now aged 87, does not own the copyright to her book. That is owned by Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee's former literary agent, and a company he allegedly created. The author has now filed a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan, to re-secure the copyright and claiming unspecified damages[.]

The 87-year-old author alleges that in 2007, in a "scheme to dupe”, Pinkus took advantage of her declining hearing and eyesight to get her to assign the book's copyright to him and a company he controlled.

The lawsuit bids the court to assign any rights in the book owned by Mr Pinkus to Lee and asks that she be returned any commission he took from 2007 onwards saying

"The transfer of ownership of an author's copyright to her agent is incompatible with her agent's duty of loyalty; it is a gross example of self-dealing".

For all those interested in copyright law, this might be one to keep an eye on. To all students studying to kill a mockingbird, you have my profound sympathy.

Thief aping Santa Claus found dead in chimney at law firm

(And who said I was lousy at coming up with blog post titles?!?) :p

From the Telegraph 03/05/13:

The body of a serial burglar was discovered wedged in the chimney of a Grade II–listed building after staff at a solicitor's office noticed an unpleasant smell.

He wasn’t dressed in a red tunic with white fur was he? Any sign of a herd of reindeer having landed on the roof in the recent past?

Police are investigating whether Kevin Gough attempted to break in to the building in St Mary's Gate, Derby, and became trapped.

It is thought the 42-year-old's body had been in the chimney of the Grade II listed building for several weeks. It emerged today that he is a serial burglar with a history of breaking into premises.

Officers were called to the firm of solicitors on Wednesday afternoon after staff reported a sickening smell wafting throughout the Grade II listed building.

Mr Gough's body is understood to have been significantly decomposed, which attracted an unusually high number of flies.

Don’t decomposing bodies usually attract a high number of flies? 

Mr Gough, who had no permanent address, has a string of previous convictions for targeting businesses.

It sounds like staff might need to vacate the premises while it’s fumigated. I wonder if the firm handles private client matters. Having potential business arrive on your premises beats chasing victims in ambulances I should think. 

I know, I know – these cheap jibes are in very poor taste.

An enclosure you won’t forget

From the Metro 02/05/13:

[W]hen one angry Greater Anglia rail passenger was denied a refund on a ticket for a cancelled train he decided not to take rejection lying down.

He tightly rolled up the letter he had received from the company’s customer services department and enclosed it with his reply telling an advisor it would make it easier for him to ‘stick it up your arse’.

Well, there you go.  It’s to the point.  Actually, I’ve been tempted on occasions to respond with a similar suggestion when drafting a defence.  Sadly, I fear it wouldn’t sit too well with the Overriding Objective. 

Love it.

Stress is still lawyers’ biggest concern

From Legal Futures 19/04/13:

Three-quarters of lawyers in the UK and Ireland report being more stressed than they were five years ago but two-thirds are reluctant to report their concerns to employers, a survey has found.

However, while seven out of ten said their work environment was stressful, almost half also described their workplace as friendly.

I would be interested to know what proportion of responders worked in law firms versus in house.  Very interested indeed.

Results from the latest survey by LawCare – the independent charity which helps lawyers with problems such as stress, depression and alcohol misuse [all lawyers, then] – which consulted around 1,000 lawyers of all stripes across the UK and Ireland, mirror the preliminary findings reported by Legal Futures last August.

More than 57% of those who responded were English and Welsh solicitors. Almost 15% were solicitors in Scotland and more than 11% were Irish barristers.

No, “there was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman” jokes please. Ahem.

Being overloaded with work (60%), poor management – including lack of appreciation (53%) [diddums]– and feeling isolated and/or unsupported (53%) topped the list of causes of stress, although many respondents skipped this question.

Erm – where’s “unreasonable and unrealistic clients” on that list? And why isn’t the “work overload” figure higher?

Strange.

Long hours (41%), poor pay (30%) and having unattainable targets (30%) were also cited, along with lack of job security, being asked to do work beyond their expertise and being bullied.

And just in case you hadn’t had your daily dose of the bleeding obvious, here’s a corker of an observation.

Hilary Tilby, LawCare’s chief executive, said […] “Lawyers are, as a rule, high achievers who have high expectations of themselves. They do, therefore, have to be careful that they do not become stressed as a result of trying to live up to those expectations.

Thanks, Hilary. ;-)

Surely the bigger concern is why so many lawyers are suffering with stress in the first place and why more isn’t being done at an earlier stage to combat it (i.e. the LPC or professional skills course)?  Thank goodness I managed to avoid using the phrase “grass roots level” there.

Parliamentary Privilege: Frivolous Personal Injury Claims

Frivolous? Well, how else would you describe someone filing a claim for tripping over their umbrella, ripping their crotch bending over to plug in a computer or getting their glasses bent when they failed to open a door before trying to walk through it.

Ah yes – stupid. That’s the word I was looking for. ;-)

From the Telegraph 22/04/13:

The House of Commons paid £95 to an employee who tripped on an umbrella and £90 to another who ripped their trousers as part of more than £40,000 handed out in compensation over five years.

Between January 2008 and January 2013 employees have received a total of £44,609.49 in compensation, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

"Personal injury compensation" for "slips, trips and falls" accounts for £42,550 and the rest relates to property damage.

You’ve gotta watch out for those slips and trips. Personally, I’d remove all stairs, cushion all doors and install high grip flooring throughout parliamentary premises. MPs have a proven track record of having difficulty with anything which doesn’t involve being chauffeured around whilst sat on their fat behinds.

This property damage includes £435.50 for five "ripped suit jackets" and £688.80 for an incident in March 2012 when a "security road blocker rose up under the rear of a car while waiting for the preceding vehicle to exit through gates".

Crikey. Let’s just be thankful that a skirt-wearing female wasn’t stood over that bollard before it rose to the occasion. A damaged [car] undercarriage seems a small price to pay by comparison.

An employee who incurred "damage to glasses due to a problem with door" was awarded £240 and £90 as handed out for "trousers ripped whilst connecting IT equipment under the table".

I sincerely hope the problem with the door wasn’t the person failing to open it before trying to walk through. More to the point, how much does a tailor charge to sew up a crotch? Actually, when you put it that way, £90 sounds quite reasonable.

Matthew Sinclair, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: "It is deeply depressing that the compensation culture has even found its way into the House of Commons.

"It's frankly ludicrous that taxpayers are footing the bill for when someone snags their clothing in Parliament.

Now, hold hard, Matthew. A ripped crotch is a ripped crotch and someone’s got to foot the bill. If I was the employee who’d trousers had split when plugging in a computer, I would have tried to bring an action against the House of Commons for the negligence of their canteen staff serving such highly calorific food.

A spokesperson added: "The House of Commons, like the Civil Service, self-insures for employers' and public liability.

The exemption from holding employers' liability insurance comes from the Employers' Liability (Compulsory Insurance) Act 1969.