By: Jamie Collins

Helllllooooo, my paralegal friends! Finally, at long last, you made it through yet another ultra-fabulous work week. Congratulations! Perhaps, not quite a miracle, but definitely a notable achievement nonetheless. As a reward for all of your hard work and dedication to the super serious legal squadron, I hereby dedicate this paralegal humor post to you. Yes, you! Keep reading.

The Day I Lost My Mind (Officially).

One day not too long ago, I walked to the law firm fridge to pull a cold bottle of iced tea from the thing because I was parched after a long day spent paralegaling. I opened the door to the fridge and this is what I saw:

Now, I realize that to most of you, this does not appear to be anything too odd. It’s a bottle of tea. And it’s clearly Jason’s bottle of tea, right?

But what you need to know is this: This is yet another side effect of working as a crazy paralegal spinning papyrus in the legal trenches, for half crazy people, being half crazy yourself when the clutches of insanity begin to set in. This is apparently what happens when you’ve ghost written one too many letters for the boss in any given day. You become him. But you aren’t him. Because you’re you. And that is not his damn tea – it’s mine. I’m guessing I probably wrote about 15 letters that day and put his signature block on the bottom of all of them. Hell, I was Jason.  #WritingLettersLikeABoss #BelieveIt

I probably left to grab a bite for lunch and decided to stow what remained of my tea in the refrigerator for later. I thought it would be a good idea to label the bottle, so people would know it was mine, grabbed a post it off my desk, and wrote “Jason” on the thing. But I’m not Jason. I’m his paralegal. I’m Jamie. (At least I used to be.) And I’m losing my mind, as clearly evidenced by the fact that I not only wrote his name down, but affixed it to the front of my tea, obviously had to look at it while writing his name on the thing, walked it down the hall, and sat it in the top shelf of the fridge and shut the door without ever taking notice of everything that came before this line of text. In all fairness, at least I got the first two letters right, people. J-A…Please do send letters to the asylum.

I have officially lost it. And I’m still Jamie. I still write letters like a boss. And I clearly need to pre-write some post its. The end is near.

(If you have EVER done anything like this, I must know. Do tell…)

The Day I Became a Size Ate.

So I made the mistake of visiting the bakery at O’Malia’s the other morning, while returning a few Red Box movies to the beloved kiosk. It started out innocently enough. As I slid the movies into the slender slit of suction, I realized my stomach was grumbling (uh, probably because I was standing in the middle of a grocery store and hadn’t had breakfast yet, as it was before the work hour), so I proceeded to peruse the bakery aisle to see if they had my favorite pistachio muffins. (Sounds gross, I know, but the green confections are nothing short of delicious, I assure you.) To my disappointment, they only had 2 boxes, both of which looked dried out and unfit for picky paralegal consumption, so I opted, instead, to pick up a box of donut holes laying nearby; ones rolled in sugar and filled with a smidge of raspberry jelly. This was my first mistake of the day. One that shall hereinafter be referred to as “the dawn of gluttony.”

The damn things were delicious. And I don’t mean regular delicious—I mean fresh baked, perfect amount of filling, make-verbal-donut-commercials-while-you-eat-them type of delicious. The co-worker and I took turns popping those delectable bites into our hungry mouths, all the while, unintentionally rolling our next take for the O’Malia’s donut commercial. “Oh my God, these are SO good.”  “These are the best donut holes I’ve EVER had.” “They are so crisp, and have the perfect amount of filling in them.” (You get the idea.)

In case anyone is counting—the box started out with 18 donut holes, before the dawn of gluttony ensued. Nom, nom, nom. By the time I looked back down at the box on my desk an hour later, prior to the co-worker’s arrival, I’m pretty darn sure 12 were gone. (Don’t judge.) (Uh, they’re tiny.) It was in that moment that I began to do that thing where you survey the size of the donut holes, individually, and then collectively. And then you attempt to (fake) visualize in your mind to develop a special assessment and/or rolling mental thesis regarding how “it really would take about 6 of them to make one regular sized donut, so in reality, I only ate about 2 donuts worth—it just sounds like more.” Ha. It totally happened. Just wanted to share the day I became a size ate. It was a Tuesday. It was on the dawn of gluttony. I remember it fondly.

The coworkers are now begging me to bring the donut holes in to work with me every week. Please send aerobic tapes to the fearless founder immediately. (If any talent agents would like to book me for the next O’Malia’s commercial, do ring me.)(And if anyone tells me I spelled “ate” wrong, I’m totally blocking you from the blog, for life.)

Games That Clever Paralegals Play

I’m a career paralegal—a person who actually takes the job real seriously and views it to be her actual career path in life; you know, proud and happy about it. As a career paralegal who has spent nearly two long, long, long, long, long decades in the crazy, crazy, crazy legal trenches, I occasionally work to create new ways to amuse myself working in the confines of a law firm. Most of you know I started out writing a humor post here or there. Then I graduated to writing photo posts sprinkled with humor. Then I made an idiotic video of myself hiding from attorneys. It seems I try to find creative outlets for my incredibly ridiculous thoughts, er, creativity, as evidenced by darn near everything I’ve admitted to publicly or written in the past 4 years.

The other day I came up with what might be my favorite one yet. I often send reminders or to-do’s to the boss via outlook. I’m sure you often do the same thing. (You know, I send it, he has to accept the task or date, and it then sends me the response to acknowledge that he has read my incredibly brilliant entry and is truly amazed by my scheduling prowess, thereby further acknowledging that the hiring Gods were smiling down on him the day I arrived at the firm a long, long, long time ago.) Ahem, so on this blessed day, I needed to send him a reminder about a particular event in a case. I type it up, as I usually would. But I was apparently in a mood that day. (A rare event, I know. I am super stoic and serious at all times, as you’ve come to know and expect from me.) What I type, with enough editing made herein to cover my tracks was this:

[insert the date here] – Jason needs to hire a NEW PARALEGAL because [insert name of something] is happening and Jamie is SO not doing it. She flat out refuses. She’s out.

Now, while the man often does not send the read receipts for my stellar notes for some period of time, on this particular occasion, he accepted it almost immediately. (And it truly was hilarious to see this sitting on the calendars like a regular to-do, I assure you.) I’m not sure if I should start dusting off the resume or scouring Hawaiian pamphlets. But what I will do is laugh. And suggest that those of you with good working relationships with your bosses give this one a whirl. It. Was. Fun. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one laughing aloud that day. I’m still not sure whether I’m joking or not.

Does anyone know where I can find pamphlets depicting beach villas? (And just like that, I’m back to stoic and serious, fueled by beach visions, margaritas on the rocks, and flip flops. You had me at Ba-bye.)

_____

Speaking of Ba-bye, I must get back to that whole “career paralegal in the trenches” thing. So must you. We’ve got deadlines to spin, paper cuts to evade, and esquires to save. Besides, we’re a few paychecks short of retirement.

If you found this post amusing, let me know. If you’ve ever eaten enough donut holes to feed a small village in one sitting, do admit it. And if you got a laugh out of today’s post, do share it with your paralegal friends! They could use the laugh.

Until next time, keep it real.