Discover the secrets to smoothly transitioning from law school to a thriving legal career in this episode.  In this episode of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast, explore the invaluable goldmine of sample documents and learn how mastering your firm's document management system can elevate your practice. 

Tune in to enhance your efficiency, meet your billable hours, and unlock your potential as an attorney. Join us and transform your journey from the classroom to the courtroom! Visit our website at classroom2courtroom.com.

Scott Benton: Hi everyone, Scott Benton here. How are you? I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney and where we make the practice of law fun. And today we're going to look at a goldmine of sample documents.

Scott Benton: Today, in order to help assist your overall use of the success cycle, where performing legal services is concerned, we're going to look at a goldmine of sample documents. What would happen if you went to law school, took out an absolute ton of student loans, then graduated with flying colors, studied for the bar, took the bar, and passed on the first round, took the ethics class, got sworn in, and finally got your bar number to then start your first day at a law firm, and you go and you sit down at your desk.

The problem is that you've never heard of either of these documents let alone seen them and even if you did you wouldn't know how to fill them out and this is only your third day on the job.

Since you don't want to look like you don't know what you're doing, this is when you need to go figure out who you can go talk to that would be a good resource. But then there's the other thing that would help if you didn't already know about it. On the main drive of that firm, where all of the case files live and where you're going to soon be contributing your own files, and that is meticulously organized to make it easy for all of the attorneys and all of the staff to find any document that they need, it's going to be a folder of sample documents.

If you end up working for that many, 30 years later. So the first thing you do is you find the sample documents for that form that you need to fill out for the county tax authority and then you look for any 850 petitions and you familiarize yourself with the overall process by asking your supervising attorney or maybe a paralegal or both.

Now, whenever you've got forms to fill out, or documents that need to be put together, or standard letters to write to a client or an opposing counsel, the first thing that you're going to want to do is open the main drive and pull up sample documents, because that way you can see what your own documents should probably look like.

So chances are that when you step into your new role as an attorney, one of the first things that you're going to want to do is get very, very familiar with their document management system. Now chances are that they're going to teach you about it anyway, and someone's going to sit down with you and go through the firm's document management system and how it's organized, how to use it, how to find anything that you need.

In fact, you're going to be a drain on their resources until you get up to speed, and chances are pretty good you'll have a difficult time reaching your minimum billable hours. But with the deep knowledge of using the firm's document management system and assuming that you know how to use the drive and find all the documents that you're going to need, this is now going to free up your focus on delivering legal services to the cases and to the clients that you're handling, which in turn, is going to help you reach and exceed your minimum billable hours.

So you don't want to get bogged down not knowing how to use the firm's document management system and really, really well. Again, this is the backbone of the firm's organizational structure and it's also going to be your backbone for your ability to practice law and advance your career. And it all starts on the first day that you join the firm and get trained on how to use their internal systems.

That means you really need to learn the system that you're going to be working with wherever you are as quickly as possible.

There are going to be folder structures, and they're going to be file naming conventions for your documents that you've really got to get down pat. And there might even be metadata or keywords that you need to include to make searching for them easier. There also may be other attorneys or paralegals or law clerks that will need to find those documents as well at some point.

I'm Scott Benton. I'm the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thanks so much for stopping by and checking out this episode. Now if you like this podcast and you'd like to get more information about us You can always go to our website at classroom2courtroom.

com That's classroom the number two courtroom. com where you can send us a message to keep in touch with us You can even inquire about our seasonal associate programs We have available for law school students If you like you can apply to come and work with us.

And as always don't forget to share like and subscribe to stay on top of all of our latest episodes and until next time We hope you'll join us in making the world a better place One client at a time.