What do you do if you lose your keys, wallet, sunglasses or briefcase at the courthouse?  Where do you go?  Who do you talk to?  I had to find out after losing my car keys at court one day.

My five unwritten rules of court for this are:

1. Always ask for help. Ask at security gate whether the guards found anything.

2. Ask someone to tell you where the courthouse lost-and-found is located.

3. Ask the people at the lost-and-found whether someone turned in your item. Be sure to give them as much information as possible like where you were when you noticed you were missing the item. The more information you can give, the better.

4. Ask the lost-and-found people for their phone number if you cannot find the item on that visit. Then call them later in the day to see if some good soul turned in your stuff.

And most important:

5.  Thank everyone you asked for help.

Folks who go to courthouses often have lots of time to wait while attorneys need to talk. While you are waiting, head downstairs to the basement. Believe it or not, basements are where you can find courthouse cafeterias.

I learned all I know about fine dining at courthouses from my dad. He was a lawyer in a small town. He took me to several different places. I preferred the courthouse cafeteria and he would take me there. But, if he was alone, he always preferred the restaurant nearby that offered pickled pigs’ feet. Shudder.

Times have changed but I still prefer courthouse cafeterias. The Fairfax County Courthouse has a really good cafeteria with a great staff.  Everything there is clean and neat. The servers are polite, the food is inexpensive and good. The Courthouse even has a coffee shop just for fact ferrets like me.

But if you have the time, you can always go to local restaurants that live cheek-by-jowl with the courthouse. Google the terms “courthouse” and “restaurants” and you are bound to find just what you are craving.

Hello, you’ve probably been wondering who is adding some of the new blog posts at BusinessBrawls.com.

I am Mr. Kaufman’s paralegal, fact-ferret and herder. My name is Shelley Young.

So what defines a paralegal? I am glad you asked.

According to the American Bar Association a paralegal is “a person qualified by education, training or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible.” For the exact details and citation, See http://www.nala.org/terms.aspx.

Pretty fancy mouthful. But in practice what does that really mean?

The short answer is that I herd attorneys and our clients, and the other side’s attorneys and paralegals. I do research, prepare trial notebooks, and get everything else into their proper places.

The long answer is that I handle much of the detail work for my attorney. I talk with clients, interview translators, write reports on depositions, research law and locate information in the cases we handle. I also fill in subpoena forms, praecipes for hearings at Court and draft for review letters and simple lines for cases. I research legal issues as directed by my attorney. I organize paperwork into deposition, exhibit and trial notebooks. I take filings to court and retrieve papers that need to go to the client and opposing counsel — which is where I find my musings on the Rules of Court. And, of course, I set up and manage the files. Fortunately in this office they are electronic, so I get to spend my time on the good stuff, rather than in dusty dirty file rooms.

But one of my biggest jobs is making sure I also have a working relationship with the client. That way clients know to call or email me if they ever have a question on one of the smaller issues that I can answer. If I don’t know the answer or if the question is beyond my scope to answer I will contact the attorney and get back to you.

In my spare time, I volunteer at communal cat shelter which means we volunteers herd cats for their food, medicine, grooming, and into crates so they can go home with their new families. And, of course, we herd them for hugs.

And just for fun, I volunteer at the local library in their adopt-a-shelf program where I herd library books into their correct places.

So, let’s see. I herd attorneys, papers, information, research, cats and books. I guess you could say that herding is not only what I do, but who I am.

Expect to see more posts from me as I go through the days seeing things from the herding point of view.

For those of us 1950 kids, Perry Mason is a known quantity.  For those of us non 1950s kids, this was a show featuring a pelfy attorney, aka Perry Mason, a cynical investigator, aka Paul Drake, and the most awesome quintessence of paralegal/legal assistant excellence anywhere in the known television universe, aka Della Street.

Sigh, these days reality is just not the same.   Gone is that mad rush to court. E-filing has taken a big bite out of the thrill. And gone is much of the dusty research.  The web has taken a big bite out of that as well.

So what is left?  Becoming more like that cynical investigator, that is what. Today knowing where to look is just as important as Paul Drakes’ job was back in his days on the show.

And here is where we look first.  Local court menus of cases, hours of operation for the clerks’ office, and phone numbers for the clerks and for chambers.  Legal research tools such as Lexis/Nexis and others and even Google Scholar.  Knowing where to find links to creating a praecipe when time is short sometimes makes or breaks a case.

Bottom line, know the local court’s website and check it often.

Sometimes when I go to court, the experience can feel like I have just entered a rerun of an episode of “Sex in the City.”

Take my trip to Court on Valentines’ Day.

I was standing in the line waiting to get up to the clerk’s window to ask for a certified copy of a key document in a case for my attorney. Also in the line was a young female attorney who was dressed in the usual “power suit” court attire and another woman dressed casually, as was I.

The young female attorney was moaning about texting manners. Apparently a colleague had flirted and she’d flirted back. And he was married!! What should she do?

The other woman and I in the Clerk’s waiting room suggested that the next time she texts him she should cite the “Twinkie Defense” which she could reframe as the Valentine’s Day Defense. Namely, that she had responded to his first in the spirit of the day and that she sincerely hoped he hadn’t taken her seriously. Blame it all on being high on Valentines’ Day spirit. (The “Twinkie Defense” was asserted in San Francisco, when a defendant attempted to plead that he was high on Twinkies when he shot up City Hall and killed the mayor.)

She thought our suggestion was a good idea and whipped out her Blackberry to convey her regrets of the day. Huge sighs of relief all around.

Then my own paperwork appeared and I left full of wonder about how life goes on at Court.

You may have noticed that I advise a great deal of pre-court preparation before stepping into the courthouse. Practice Hard, Fight Easy. And it also never hurts to have memorized several songs from those English light opera champions Gilbert & Sullivan. In the Pirates of Penzance, the chorus for the policeman is “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.” Just substitute paralegal and try to keep from smiling. Just try.

If nothing else, these songs will take your mind off your troubles so you are fresh when you get to the clerk or the courthouse.

Getting through security is just the first step to a successful filing.

More Unstated Rules for the Courthouse Road:

1.  Be patient because things will be confusing.

2.  Be persistent because things will be confusing.

3.  Be polite because things will be confusing

This rule is also know as “Be Kind, Rewind”

No matter how many times you have gone to a courthouse, the place will be different every time you go. Different guards, elevators that may not work, people who are lost, people who are even more lost than you are, and, yes, people who are even grumpier than you are can transform a once really nice place into the Courthouse From Hell. Getting through this infernal region depends on using the those  three rules.

Be patient. Once you get through all the roadblocks and sail into the clerk’s office, don’t expect things to go smoothly. Sometimes you just have to wait and being patient is a survival skill. One time at my local courthouse the line waiting for a clerk was outside of the door. I kept reminding myself that time takes time and other usual meditation devices. And when those didn’t work, I stood for a while on one foot and then another and when those things didn’t work, I struck up conversations with other harried individuals in the line.

When I got to the front of the line I was still in a pretty good mood, which was good since the caption on the case had gotten swapped with a different case. The clerk and I sorted out what the problem was but it would have been harder if I’d been in a grumpy mood. Much harder.

Just keep saying to yourself “the clerk is here to help me so let me help him understand what I need.” Help them to help you. Make sure you have your filing fee, your complaint, your service copies and other information available if you are making a filing. And if you run into the caption issue, as I did, keep asking questions to clarify what is going on. Be persistent.

Don’t forget, you only have had 30-plus minutes in this hell. That clerk has been in courthouse hell since 9 in that morning and will be there long after you are gone.

Always thank the clerk once you have gotten through with the filing and remember to smile on your way out of court. And if you have gotten on friendly terms with the Clerk ask them what caused that really long line. You might get a cool answer like I did. It involved overbooked judges, too many juries, and juries just walking out without notifying the clerks office. So the clerks were sorting through what seemed like a jury revolt when it was a miscommunication and procedural issue. Yoicks!!

And you think you have a tough job.

So you think you know all there is to know about Courthouse Security?

It used to be easy.  With time to spare, you would hustle out the door toward the local courthouse clerk’s window in time to file that five-pound baby pleading for your attorney.  You know, the one that has to be done before the end of the day.  And bing bang bong, you’d be done.

Banking on past experience, you pack up your brief, your service copies, your parking fare and rush out the door. Plenty of time, you think.  But think again.  If you haven’t been to court for a while, their rules could have changed for what is allowed through the door. Local jurisdictions vary, which adds to the fun.  Be sure to check with the court’s website to see what those rules are.

They can be confusing.  Some courts allow phones in the door and some confiscate them.  Some courts tell you to take the phones and electronic  devices back to the car.  And then there are the humane middle of the road courts that allow the guards to hold your electronic gear until you are finished with the clerks’ office.  All of this takes time.

It also takes time to get through the metal detectors. Why? Because of field trips from local schools. I recently went to court and got caught up in a crush of kids from one of the schools.

Fifty high school students, no teachers in evidence and a few courthouse locals and me.  Joy, joy, What normally would have taken five minutes to get through took 15 minutes and a few sharp elbows with one of the other folks caught up in the stream. All the aerobic exercise of a health club and none of the fees.

So stay aware of these unstated rules and avoid any delay in making your filings. As you run out the door of the attorneys’ office to the court, make sure you have your brief, your service copies, your parking fee, and most important, your sense of humor.

You are going to need it.

I’m actually keying this post off the recent Washington Post article about a young man’s suicide.  You can read the article here:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021904528.html

What aroused my absolute and complete indignation (other than what seems to me to be the disproportionate punishment) are these statements:

“Fairfax parents tell stories of going into the process without an attorney and finding their children under fire at adversarial hearings. These families contend there is no impartial judge but instead a presumption of guilt. ”

Then there is this one:  “[when his parents arrived at school they were] told that Nick had confessed in writing to buying …. As was common in such cases, Nick had signed the admission before school officials had alerted his parents of the trouble.”

Finally, there’s this one:  “they had not talked to a lawyer, following the advice of a Woodson administrator who [dad] said cautioned against bringing in one because it might create a confrontational climate.”

Where should I start?  With the violation of the kid’s rights (he was only 15)?  Or with the intimidation factor of not contacting his parents before they got a “confession?”    But I think the most outrageous comment was the one about lawyers.  Of COURSE you need a lawyer.  You are already in confrontation mode!  They took a written “confession” from the kid.  How can this NOT be confrontation?  I don’t know.  I guess people just trust authority or something.

Is there a moral somewhere for business people in this story?  Yep.  What is it?  VERY LOUD Alarm bells should go off in your head when you hear someone tell you that you don’t need a lawyer, that lawyers only screw things up.  In my experience, the minute you hear that you should run, not walk, to a lawyer.  There’s a very good chance that, if someone says this to you either they have a lawyer coaching them to screw you, or they’ve been down this road often enough that they’re trying to screw you.  In other words, the most important time to get a lawyer is when the other side tells you that you don’t need one.

Generally, what this means is that your time and my effort will go up.  Why?  Because judges are going to bend over backward to be fair to the “poor” pro-se. Therefore, whatever the pro se does, there is a 99.99% likelihood that the judge will read their statements/actions generously to see if it generally fits what they were supposed to do/say.  If it does not, then in 99.99% of the time the judge will tell them to do it again and do it right.  But I’ve never, ever, seen a judge penalize a person who is representing herself for not following the rules or even adhering to simple courtesy.