The Legal Secretary’s Twelve-Step Recovery Program

1. We admitted we were legal secretaries — that our lives (a third of them, a least) were completely dominated by the whims of lawyers.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could make us stop seeing every puddle on the supermarket floor as a lawsuit waiting to happen.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to coming up with a polite but firm brushoff for “friends” who ask us for legal advice.

4. Made a searching and fearless inventory of our understocked supply rooms.

5. Admitted to our God, ourselves, and our lawyers that once, 8 years ago, we forgot to mail out a service copy until the next day.

6. Were entirely ready to storm the mail room in search of . . . just . . . one . . . measly . . . Fedex pouch!

7. Humbly informed our lawyers that they should forgive that mail-out lapse because of the time we smoothed things over with that irate judge who called while they were out golfing.

8. Made a list of all the baby lawyers we’ve worked for, and became willing to make amends for every time we’ve smirked at them behind their backs.

9. Made direct amends to such baby lawyers whenever possible, except when to do so might dangerously inflate an already near-explosive ego.

10. Continued to take supply inventories and to hoard a year’s worth of any vital office item that is in perpetual shortage.

11. Sought through meditation and introspection to improve our conscious contact with normality as we understand it, hoping only to be able to converse with friends without ever saying “enclosed please find” or “assuming, arguendo.”

12. Having had a spiritual awakening to the fact that our career path has precluded our being employable in any other industry, we resolved to spread cautionary tales to aspiring legal secretaries far and wide.