At the Clerk's Office: Yet another reason why I never seem to get anything done

Besides blogging, that is.

I actually did finish a Complaint yesterday. I finished it on the very day I told the client it would be filed, too.

(She'll be so surprised.)

This is the glamorous life of the solo practitioner: I figured out what the Complaint would say. That's the legal work.

Then I typed the Complaint. (OK, I do both of these at the same time. Word processing is a wonderful thing.)

Then I assembled the Complaint and the exhibits and photocopied the whole pleading.

The Complaint was too big to staple. (No, it wasn't my pleading, thank you very much. The exhibits were voluminous.) So I two-hole-punched every page and used fasteners.

I stamped the copies with my handy-dandy copy stamp. This sometimes -- but not always -- prevents the clerk from asking, when I present the documents for filing, which one is the original. It's the one that isn't stamped 'copy' I say.

I prepared my Summons and my 'cover sheet' and pulled a couple of checks out of the checkbook, one for the Clerk and one for the Sheriff. And now I was ready to march over to court.

Mind you, the clerical stuff isn't billable. But it still must be done. And my desk is covered with this file -- cases I looked at to formulate my Complaint -- the investigator's report -- the pleadings in the underlying case -- and, scattered amidst all these are the portions of the six other matters that I had to work on because clients called -- or because these are already past due. Oh, there's a few of those.

But finally I was ready to head off to the Clerk's Office.

The line was long, as usual. Every department in Cook County had to cut personnel in order to make the budget balance this year. I assume that's way there's seldom more than one filing station open whenever I get there. No matter when I get there.

After awhile, though, a woman returned from a late lunch or a mid-afternoon break and opened a second window. Now the line began to move a bit faster.

I reached her station, presented my papers, began filling in my check, and then there was this ear-splitting noise.

Fire drill. Everyone must leave at once. We were herded to a central hallway, where the Clerk's personnel have lockers, and into a stairwell.

Everyone was very polite at the outset. "You can tell it's a drill," said one man to a female acquaintance. "Why is that?" she asked. "Because if this was for real, I'd have run you over already," he said. "Not a chance," she said back, "I'd be long out of here." They both laughed.

The woman going down the stairs in front of me was wearing high-heeled boots. Either these were not designed for descending stairs or she'd had little practice doing so while wearing footwear of this kind. A large gap opened up in front of her -- and increasingly impatient people pressed in behind me.

Eventually, we all made it to the 7th floor hallway.

The 7th floor of the Daley Center is a transfer point. Almost all the banks of elevators stop there and, while we were crowded into the hallway, some people came from other floors and exited the elevators... and ran smack dab into the fire drill. They had to listen to the fireman's lecture with the rest of us. Most of these were lawyers, coming from a courtroom, going to file papers or looking to transfer to a different bank of elevators to get to a different courtroom. None of them were pleased.

The fireman, for his part, was pretty funny. He had a serious message, but delivered it glibly. I have to think that would help people to remember, should there ever be a real emergency.

Finally, we were allowed to return to where we began. I finished the filing transaction and went right back to the 7th floor to place my Summons with the Sheriff for service.

This is a two-step process. Before one can pay the fee, one must first present the papers to a clerk at one end of the counter who determines the price the Sheriff will charge to attempt service at a particular address. I made it to the front of this line and got my Summons priced. I was just about to step into the second line for payment when there was this ear-splitting noise.

Fire drill. Everyone must leave at once.

I was almost afraid to get back in line after that.