Barb:
I suggest you lighten up and let the "market" control. Smart secretaries
will learn, and be more useful to their principle. This, incidentally
relieves you of these tasks, and let you spend your time on more
challenging and/or creative duties where you have the opportunity to
shine.
Secretaries not up to the tasks will fail, and won't be asked again.
Giuliano Chicco
Manager - Legal Information Resources
General Electric Company
giuliano.chicco@law.ge.com
----------
From: Barb Avery[SMTP:m.m@ix.netcom.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 1997 1:04 PM
To: 'law-lib@ucdavis.edu'
Subject: Secretaries doing library research
I am troubled by several recent instances of attorneys at our law firm
suggesting that their secretaries do library research to keep them
"challenged." I am about to communicate my concerns re: quality control,
professional education and experience, the complexity of many library
materials, etc. to the attorneys. But I am wondering if anyone has been
through this before, and might have established some "boundaries" for what
kinds of information requests can/should be handled by secretaries.
We have willingly trained our secretaries to do look-ups in
Martindale-Hubbell, the court directories, Switchboard on the Internet,
pulling and photocopying cases from the reporters, etc., but, beyond this,
I get really nervous. I want to rein in this trend before it gets out of
control.
At the most basic level, I guess I am just really annoyed that the
attorneys think just any Tom, Dick or Harry can do things like locating
parallel citations, Shepardizing, etc. Maybe I'm just being snobbish, but,
as the one responsible for the quality of the information service, I've got
a real problem with this--and it's not because I'm feeling threatened. I'm
not.
Anybody have any sage advice for me? TIA
Barbara Avery, Librarian
Marshall & Melhorn
Four SeaGate, 8th Floor
Toledo, OH 43604
(419)249-7228
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