Senior Partner II

I had been working on the project assigned in the meeting (that eventually got underway) called by Mr. Senior Partner. While working on it, I ran across an error someone had made, and I corrected it. But more than that, a short while later I found something very good for our side. Something which quite literally was incredibly important to the case, and only I had it.

So I checked and rechecked, and I printed out the information and blew up a few graphics so they could see it better, and I went to my supervising attorney and showed them. They looked it over, looked at me and said ‘This is fantastic…’ and then he wandered out of the room just leaving me there without another word. I was quickly finding my immediate boss was not blessed with a plethora of social graces, or maybe they reserved them for more important people. I honestly didn’t care, I got along with them decently at this point and I was happy they were happy with what I had found.

The supervising attorney wanders back in a little later and wants me to email them everything I had. And then he starts emailing it to.. well… crap. A lot of people. It seemed like there was suddenly a bunch of people interested in what I had found. But, I had finished work on the project and handed over my file folders. The case they were working on was not assigned to my boss (which is a very important distinction apparently); and this type of thing seemed to be about all they trusted the associates to handle unsupervised. Anyway, my boss hands me the files at the end of the day and asks me to put them on the angry paralegal’s desk for Mr. Senior Partner. It was well past time when the paralegals and other hourly works had left, so I just put them down somewhere obvious and called it a day.

I should have known it wouldn’t be as easy as that. The next day, as I am working on nothing horribly important in my office, the angry paralegal walks in with all of the files I had placed on her desk, plus several more. (hmm… odd). And she hands them to me and says ‘You need to give these directly to Mr. Senior Partner… he has some questions for you.’

Well, that’s ominous. But maybe he just wanted me to give him a quick run down on the project parts so he didn’t have to waste time reading it. The paralegal waddles back out of my office leaving me with the files. So, without knowing why she felt the need to chastise me as opposed to my supervising attorney, I head over to my supervising attorney’s office with the files.

He takes them from me and puts them on his desk and says he’ll take care of it. And I head back to my office. Fast forward 3 hours. The angry paralegal reappears with the files and places them on my desk again. And reiterates almost identically as before… ‘Mr. Senior Partner wants you, personally, to give them to him. He has some questions.’

Now to reiterate something I had mentioned before… I could very possibly have wadded up a piece of paper and lobbed it through the door or my office and into Mr. Senior Partner’s office while standing in my office doorway. But instead, the files had become some strange hot potato to keep handing off. And the paralegal had decided since I was the neophyte, I got to deal with the crap. The supervising attorney was 5 steps away… but she decided to bring them to me. So… I thanked her. And after a minute or two, I got up took the files and walked over to Mr. Senior Partner’s office…. and he wasn’t there. Because… obviously? Why would he be.

So I went back, defeated, set them on the corner of the desk and went back to my work. At some point later, I got up to go talk to my boss; And lo and behold Mr. Senior Partner is in his office. Holy crap. I can finally dump the files that were supposedly so important and now appear to have taken up residence on the corner of my desk. So I quickly grab the hot potato before he mysteriously disappears again and head into my supervisor’s office.

I put them down on the desk and say ‘here are the project files’.

No response. My boss hands Mr. Senior Partner the evidence he seemed so excited about. Mr. Senior Partner was staring at it and then said… ‘this is great. Who found this?’

I spoke up,’ I did.’

Silence.

Then my supervisor speaks up and says ‘Azrael did.’ Only then did Mr. Senior respond, ‘Ah. good.’

Then his brow furrows a bit and he says.. ‘no this is not right here. It was different in the file.’

I respond,’Yes, someone input it incorrectly into the file but I fixed the error and that led me to find this.’

Silence.

So my supervisor speaks up… ‘Azrael identified an error and corrected it. This is the right information.’

Mr. Senior, ‘Oh that is very good.’

It was getting eerie. It was like I was a ghost. I surreptitiously caught the attention of my supervisor and I discreetly motioned that I was going to leave his office. He equally discreetly waved his acquiescence as he remained with Mr. Senior, who apparently couldn’t see nor hear me as he continued speaking only with my supervisor.

I have made it a high priority to have as few as possibly actual dealings with Mr. Senior Litigator as humanly possible. Which considering I am apparently invisible to him, shouldn’t be too difficult.