What’s the craziest thing you’ve been asked to do by a superior at work?
That’s the question we put to Precedent readers as part of our latest contest — and the responses were totally hilarious.
Up for grabs: a signed copy of J’Adore New York, the critically acclaimed book by former corporate lawyer Isabelle Laflèche about a Parisian lawyer who transfers to her firm’s Manhattan office and quickly learns that life in New York’s legal world is not as glamourous as she’d hoped.
We’ll be contacting the winners shortly, but in the meantime, we thought we’d share a few of the stories people shared with us about crazy legal (and sometimes not-so-legal) assignments.
We found they pretty much broke down into three categories:
ASSIGNMENTS & MISSIONS
- I had to fly to a remote northern town to deliver a document to the courthouse because they missed the courier.
- I was asked to do a detention review on my first day as an articling student. So I had no idea what that even was, the client’s wife was bawling outside the jail and I had to go in and try to convince someone that he meets a test I am reading for the first time while waiting in the jail waiting area.
- Over the course of a weekend, I had to summarize every published case in the Ontario Labour Relations Board reports with the word “certification” in the body of the case.
- As an articling student at a national law firm, my principal asked me on December 22 to prepare a 10-page memo by the next day about whether the separation between church and state was a good thing. A rather weird research request, I thought, but I got to it and worked some long hours to pull together the articles, references, etc. Handed it to my principal and was told that his son would be delighted. When I looked confused, he kindly explained: Apparently, his teenage son wanted to a bring a friend along for his family Christmas skiing trip but the friend wasn’t allowed to go unless he finished his grade 12 “Law and Society” writing assignment before going. Apparently the friend was struggling to get it finished. It was so rewarding to know that I was able to “help” out on a great cause.
FOOD & DRINK
- My supervisor asked me to write a research memo on which Bordeaux wine provided the best value for money over time. (He was thinking about starting a wine cellar, and wanted to stock it with wine that would make him money…sigh.)
- I was once asked by an important client to only buy California avocados. He had his own avocado hobby farm and had a lot of strong opinions on avocado-related politics.
WARDROBE (MAL)FUNCTIONS
- So this actually happened to a family member, and not me, but it’s too good of a story to waste. His principal emailed him from the bathroom and asked him to bring him a change of underwear and a washcloth… enough said.
- I was asked to sew my boss into a skirt after she ripped the zipper on the way to work (and then cut her out of it partially before she went home).
…And last, but not least (though perhaps most amazing, since it also happens to the main character in J’Adore New York)…
- I had to write a memo on local dry cleaners.