The Nature of Bureaucracy
Apr 19, 2006
An excerpt via Clayton Cramer:
If you had typos in more than 10% of documents, it cost you at evaluation. The typists were making typos constantly, but you were held accountable. You'd make corrections, and they'd make new typos. Many attorneys read their documents with a ruler on them, carefully going down one line at a time and concentrating on each word. Try that with a 20-30 litigation report... one typo and you'll be dinged. It took 2-3 days to get a one page document together on average (only late in my time did individual attys have their own computers and word processors. I once had an emergency matter bounced back because on page two I had said "indian tribe" when protocol was "Indian tribe." Another document get bounced back because it had one space between the period ending one sentence and the first letter of the next and the Govt Style Manual said use two spaces. Then when you were done the document was set up in a package (including seven copies for various files. If you were smart you made one for yourself, since nobody could ever find documents in those files. If anyone above you made a change or caught a typo, start the process again, make seven more copies....
We worked as hard as anyone else, no laziness there. But the bureaucracy was such that we were lucky to get done in a week what one energetic person could do in a day.
Read the 'amusing tale' at the end as well.
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