confidential?

You may recall that our little 3 atty law firm merged with the family division of a quite large firm with over 40 attys and 2 offices.  To say the transition has been something of a challenge is vast understatement.  Our little firm ran a tight ship document-wise – the theory was that you could put your hand on any document in a reasonable, if not short, amount of time.  That documents would be scanned and saved in electronic versions that were also very accessible.  And, as long as our erstwhile receptionist/voice of god worked for us, we were reasonably successful.  Then he moved on and up and things went to hell quite suddenly.  But, nevermind.

The new firm ran, shall we say, a loose ship?  We brought our new state of the art binder filing system with us and while viewed with skepticism at first, have been embraced enthusiastically.  It’s not so much the filing system that poses the challenge, however, but the underlying philosophy of the practice of law and the clash of personalities of the powers that be.  To the extent that a consultant has been summoned.

Next week, he will spend 2 days in one of the conference rooms on the 14th floor interviewing all the members of the family law division.  Emails have been sent, appointments are sacrosanct.  Instructions have been given to all that we are to be completely candid as everything will be confidential.

Do they think we are idiots?  For instance, suppose you disclose a situation that exists because of a certain personality that causes you to want to set fire to something or someone on a distressingly regular basis AND that is completely unpredictable as to frequency and duration?  So, if you share, then the situation is brought up to the suspect personality, how is it that they won’t know who complained?  How is that confidential? I’m sure the corporate gods are paying a really high price for this “fix.”  So, I’ve decided that while I’ve been keeping my head down and dazzling the new firm with my extraordinary document organizational skills (2 years of discovery that was scattered to hell now indexed into 2 binders and corresponding folders at your fingertips), I’m going to tell this guy just what I think:  that I can’t tell you what is driving me (and about 10 other people) crazy because there is nothing you can do about it and there is no way it can be fixed short of a frontal lobotomy of the person in question.  So, biding my time until my secret goal:  retirement next summer.  And that piece of information is CONFIDENTIAL!

The above notwithstanding, for the most part everyone at the new firm is just lovely and friendly and welcoming.  With some notable exceptions.  But isn’t that the way it always is?

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