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Legal Secretary or Legal Super Woman?

By Lynne DeVenny

The former legal secretary for the Fernley City Attorney's Office in Nevada used to wear a lot of hats, including receptionist, office manager and legal researcher. Don't worry, she didn't have a nervous breakdown and quit.

But the City Manager took a closer look at everything she had to do - by herself - and concluded that the title of "legal secretary" was too restrictive.

Here's the part where you guys go "uh-oh," and wonder if by too restrictive he thought she could do more, and tried to assign six more attorneys to her support load, or decided she could sort the mail for all the city offices while she was just sitting there doing crosswords at her desk.

The opposite happened (I know you skeptics out there are shocked). The City Manager recognized the more substantive work she is doing, and recommended a change in title to "legal assistant" and an increase in the position's pay range to $43,046 - $54,867.80 (the .80 really makes a difference, whew). The City Attorney vouched that the proposed pay range was reasonable.

But a City Council member (I'm guessing she never wore all the hats in a law office by herself) moved for a lower pay range of $18.84 - $24.79 per hour, or assuming the legal super woman works a 40-hour week, $39,187.20 - $51,563.20. The Council voted unanimously to approve both the title change and the lower pay range.

Maybe they should have put the vote on ice for a week, and let the City Council member run the City Attorney's office by herself, while the legal super woman takes a much-deserved paid vacation. I suspect if she spent a week in the newly minted legal assistant's shoes, she'd be convinced that the higher recommended pay range wasn't nearly enough.

Source: Reno Gazette Journal

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on August 31, 2010 (boomark / email).