Law Firm Whodunit: The Clerk in the File Room with a ‘Send’ Button?

AmLawDaily’s report on an SEC filing gone astray (Skadden Accepts Responsibility for Errant Wynn Resorts SEC Filing) is a timely reminder that mistakes happen. We’ve all made them no matter how many protections or quality control measures we have in place. If you happen to work at a law firm, though, you might want to make sure that you’re not the fall guy. A “blame the paralegal” (or the secretary or the law clerk or anyone whose title is not ‘partner’) approach to embarrassing snafus might be workable so long as you’re not the paralegal or the clerk or anyone else standing around when an inadvertent error is uncovered. Sometimes courts, clients, whomever, are indeed appeased by a “pin it on the staff” response to a mistake. (It is just so hard to get good help, even during a recession.) Sometimes they aren’t. Personally, I try to own up to my errors. If I were going to take one for the team, though, at the very least I’d make sure my superiors were aware of my dedication. To prevent someone from falsely claiming that Lori did it, I’d try to make sure my work records were complete so that pinning the blame on me, if it were undeserved, would be unlikely to happen. Just a thought I had over lunch with Colonel Mustard in the conservatory.