Paperwork

I thought that, over the holiday, I caught up on all of the paperwork I had left. You see, I started this job mid-stream, and ended up taking over someone else's files. That's always tricky enough. But no one really oriented me on office procedures and such. Apparently, everyone figured that, because I have been out of school for so long, I'd figure everything out.

Well, I thought I had.

Like most bureaucratic institutions, we jump through a lot of hoops for funding. I ended up closing a boatload of files in December, which not only makes our numbers look better, but gives a better picture of the work I have been doing. Kind of.

You see, some of these were files that we never really worked. State law requires us to speak to everyone with 72 hours of their arrest. So we would do that and open a file, even though we might not ever speak to that person again. And then the file hangs around in the office until it becomes clear that the person doesn't want us to represent him. Those were most of the files that I closed last month. There were, of course, some files of my own that I had actually worked. We do, afterall, try to be productive.

Today, I find out that I wasn't quite done. Our policy is to represent everyone who is in jail, unless they hire somone, regardless of income. So, I've talked to a lot of guys over the past three months, and I got their cases taken care of. But I didn't realize that I'm supposed to keep paperwork on that, too. It isn't much, really; just the regular paperwork you might get (probation revocation petition, or accusation) and a coversheet explaining what happened. But, we need these files opened and closed for caseload calculations, which plays directly into budget. So, I've got to get these files closed pronto.

While preparing for trials next week...