It is Saturday morning, and after a long run, I drive to my workplace in Seattle. I am not working today, but I have a new project: I am cleaning my office. I have a penchant for completing tasks by challenging myself to pursue them every single day. In this case, I decided to allocate at least 15 minutes a day for 50 days. I have no idea how long this endeavor will take, but setting a goal is the first step in accomplishing it.
My office appears tidy to an outsider, and I am more organized than most of the attorneys in my firm. But my filing cabinet and bookcases with doors conceal a multitude of sins: I am a self-confessed paper hoarder. My case files patiently reside in a file room, so they are not the problem. I am the managing member of the law firm, and I use this as atonement for harboring more files, binders, and papers than the average attorney. I also keep personal files of all sorts – real estate, financial, creative writing, and family business matters.
Attorneys are notorious collectors of briefs, legal research, and notepads. Those of us of a certain age started our legal careers with only a vestige of technology: smart typewriters and word-processors. We printed out and photocopied everything; it would be malpractice not to do so. The successful legacy of a litigation file was not just the legal outcome, but its ordered and structured aftermath consisting of labeled files, tabulated clips, binders fronted with tables of contents, and accordion files. Management responsibilities mandate a plethora of documents: employee and payroll files, insurance coverage applications and policies, tax returns and source documents, sensitive financial records, and an assemblage of materials for committee and bar association volunteer projects.
But my paper accumulations are not merely the dispassionate collections of my legal and managerial duties. I am an apprehensive administrative squirrel, accumulating and storing clutter as though it is food in anticipation of a famine. I save personnel evaluations long after an employee’s voluntary departure. I maintain bank statements that date back more than a decade. I preserve hard copies of management emails to my partners. I compile files of paperwork as a hedge against the fear that I might need them someday.
I have enthusiastic and willing staff who would be happy to scan my papers and save them electronically. But this feels like a pathetic and avoidant solution to the problem. Preserving papers electronically without confronting their contents is the elusive behavior of a wimp. Instead, I force myself to pour through the contents of my file drawers and cabinets, reading and reviewing, discerning and distilling, clearing and culling. It is an all-too familiar process for me: determining whether I am keeping something out of objectivity or due to emotion.
This blog post has been a wonderful excuse to delay today’s office cleaning assignment. Time to send it on its way and purge some paper!