Boomer partners and IT...what’s your best story?
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Had a partner call me (and several other associates) on a Saturday to go to the office, find a hard copy of a UCC filing in his physical file, and email it to him. UCC filings are available online from anywhere.
LOLs
Went into a Partner’s office, glanced at his computer and realized he was using a clean draft he had just done to make a redline using Word. No, not the comparison feature in word, but manually highlighting red and crossing out omissions and highlighting additions as blue. He drafted comments into a document, then created a new document that looked like a redline. I taught him how to run a redline and I’m sure his billing dropped 50%
Gen X equity partner sending a mass practice group email on the weekend asking if someone can convert a Word doc to a PDF for him.
I’m sure that partner got at least 50 responses from first-years.
Had a partner who would have his secretary print emails, he would respond on the hardcopy, and she would type and send them out. I've actually heard that this story is not unique somehow
Older attorneys swear by paper.
I was the unofficial IT support in an office that had none...We had a doc review platform that wasn't compatible with internet explorer. P wanted access. After being completely baffled by his belief that he couldn't get online, I realized I had to explain that the MSN homepage isn't the gateway to the internet and yes, you are still on the internet even if you're using chrome, and both browsers have access to the same internet (IE compatibility excepted). Eventually was asked to set the chrome default page to MSN.
I also was apparently the first person to email an internal link to a document instead of the static copy and had to explain that it wasn't a virus and how and why I did it.
Well, mostly at my old firm, WSGR Palo Alto, we had one awesome IT lady whose sole job was to help partners with their IT issues at work in person and home IT setup. She got to see a lot of sweet houses and deal w hilar requests.
A ton of ppl i work with also insist on printing word documents and then scanning them to make pdfs...no idea why ppl dont like to save as pdfs digitally.
Partner routinely prints webpages to a printer and has them scanned so he can email them.
Following this thread in anticipation of some great stories ☕️
Ditto
Had someone ask me if there is a way to bold text in excel.
Calling global IT for assistance with document formatting
I've seen some pretty cringey reply alls..
Partner replied all, including client, with “I hate my job and life.” I almost had a heart attack and it wasn’t even my fault.
Probably not that outrageous but my former partner would make us write our dockets in a binder then the legal assistant would spend hours entering them into the software. Also, we were required to print every email for the client’s physical file.
A partner in my group (in his/her 50's—not even that old!) doesn't know how to attach files to emails unless they're already attached to another email he/she has received. I literally have to email this person the attachments for emails he/she wants to send out, even if they're in our main document database.
Ok. He’s officially a dumbass boomer.
I am aware of several biglaw partners (not at my firm) who make hand edits and fedex them to their associates when they are traveling.
There were two partners at my last firm that had a funny (or horrible, depending on how you look at it) experience with this. So the first was a shareholder that very rarely came into the office, so she didn't know faces/names if she didn't work directly with you. She saw a new associate sitting at a computer that was usually reserved for IT if they needed to be in our office (it was his first day so he didn't have a dedicated space yet) and asked him to help her with a tech issue. He didn't know she thought he was IT so he agreed just wanting to make nice on his first day. Well, another partner in our division was totally tech illiterate. He was a very very nice man and a great partner but very head-in-the-sand about the day-to-day of the firm, too (didn't know who was hired/fired outside of his division). He had to upgrade from one iPhone to a new one once and he asked the same associate to do it because he thought he was IT since he'd seen the other shareholder using him for IT tasks. Associate spent 4+ hours in his office helping him with his iPhone. A few months later, we lost an associate and needed to ask the other division of the firm for one of their associates to fill the gap until we hired another attorney. Partner 2 was sent an e-mail saying "Attorney Smith will be working with you on your case load to pitch in." Attorney Smith was the one he'd been using as IT help...he had no idea they were the same person until Attorney Smith showed up asking for assignments. Oops.