Secretary at work won’t do her job

[zsymina]

Can anyone explain/help me work around this?

I’m a lawyer and have a secretary. She works for me and a few other lawyers in the team. I also have a trainee sitting with me.

Secretary is fab to me and other lawyers. But refuses to do work for the trainees. Unless I specifically email her she won’t help when my trainee asks for help with something like printing or filing expenses. Whilst she doesn’t report directly to the trainee, it is still in her job description to help out the team where required.

Do you think it’s because she is a similar age to the trainee? or jealousy?

I was a legal secretary and did as I was asked, be it for fully fledge or trainees

I think secretaries only responding to seniority is fairly common. It's one of those facts of life. If its something for you that you delegated to the trainee then she doesn't do it pick her up on it.

I'm not sure if she should be doing the trainees expenses. Photocopying presumably not a big feature nowadays.

It depends on her workload. Secretaries are paid low salaries permanently. I don't think you can expect them to be overloaded.

I actually don't know why you are getting involved. I'd leave the trainee to it unless it's impacting your work.

Has she already shown the trainee, who either hasn't made good enough notes/paid enough attention/has ignored as it as they had no intention of ever doing it and now has to/is just plain dense??

Can anyone explain/help me work around this?

Well, we can guess but surely you just need to have a conversation with her and get her take on things?

My bet would be on workload. If she’s already supporting you and several other lawyers she’s most likely already spread thinly. Is it really fair for her to be doing admin for the trainee as well? What if she’s expected to do the same for trainees reporting to the other lawyers she’s supporting as well?

In my firm, trainees don't have a secretary, they would email requests to an admin team. Previous firms the trainees have to do all tasks themselves, it was about learning everything from the bottom up, so secretaries couldn't even put paper in a printer for them.

And Op you are part of the problem. You are her manager. Why do you not just talk to her instead of posting on MN? The fact you did that suggests very poor management practices.

Talk to her.
Tell her you've noticed this ongoing issue and remind her what her job description includes and that it extends to these staff members too .

And check that they aren't being arrogant towards her btw. You may find they're coming in lording it over her instead of being polite and so are getting her back up. I say this because i remember my first job was a receptionist and there were people who would bark orders at me without so much as a please or thank you and while you obviously should rise above it, the temptation to 'forget' to do their bloody filing is huge.

Are the admin expectations of the secretary and the trainee very clearly communicated? Some people really do need this stuff spelt out for them in detail.

Also is the workload reasonable? I think anyone in any job who is only just managing isn't going to leap at the prospect of taking on another person's requests. You may want to give your all to a job but I'm guessing this secretary earns significantly less than you and may feel differently about what's reasonable here.

I think if your sec is sec to several lawyers she would have her hands full and it makes more sense the juniors do their own expenses etc.

Ive been a PA in my time and observed the following about juniors:

1. They do often need to be trained how to behave, especially those coming from the big private schools who think PA=dogsbody for their personal requests. They need to be trained how to ask for something with approrpiate timelines and how to listen when they are told something is not allowed and chose from the options given. It sounds ridiculous but a HUGE number of new staters just didn't understand this. Someone complained about me not having time for a data input request before cob and ended up being severly repremanded by a Partner.

1. Expenses - what is the company policy, although I would help juniors with general IT stuff, the PA manager asked us to only do expenses for seniors and teach juniors how to do their things for themselves - obvs i would teach them of they asked.

1. Printing - this can take a lot of time. Sometimes I could spend an hour printing things or i could be going to different depts getting signatures for a deal that needs to be signed asap, or chasing people for docs the client needs for a meeting starting 5 mins ago.

On the other side any people can also be rude, especially PAs that support seniors, god forbid a more junior PA gives availability without deferring to the more senior one 🤣 i dont really care about this but some PAs love the hierachy.

There's also one law firm (i wont name) that without exception employs the rudest people, always a chore to deal with anyone from there lol.

Are you her line manager? It needs to be picked up at her next 1-2-1. When these things get left stewing, it makes for a really unpleasant workplace.

How does the trainee approach her? When I worked at a law firm some of the trainees were quite arrogant and spoke 'down' to the secretarial staff, asking them to do some of the more mundane tasks that the trainees should (but didn't want to) be doing.

The managing partner took a dim view of this attitude and spoke to those involved.

This OP

The trainees should learn to do their own admin for their own good. This is the way law is going. I’ve been at my firm (senior legal assistant) for 20 years. We hardly have any secretaries/assistants. Fee earners are expected to do their own admin more and more.

Your secretary is probably short on time and doing what she feels is highest priority.

I’ve only worked in a law firm on a secondment from my then-employer for a short while, but I was a trainee so got an insight into this. There was a very strict division of labour when it came to anything admin. Secretaries did anything within their remit, regardless of who asked for it, while there were loads of awful drudge jobs (mainly involving photocopiers) that only the trainees did. I’d never have dared ask a secretary to do any of this. Are they possibly asking her to do things that really aren’t secretarial? Maybe she has worked somewhere previously where this work was allocated differently?

This.

I've never seen a trainee who doesn't treat secretaries, or support staff or cleaners etc, like shit.

I suggest you speak to the secretary one-to-one and ask her if there's an issue. Note that she's excellent with you but you have some concerns re. her not helping the trainee. Put the ball in her court. Don't go in all guns blazing as PPs have suggested. A good secretary is hard to come by and if she's good in every other respect, you don't want to risk her just quitting.

If it is clear to both your secretary and trainee(s) to help the trainee with expenses/printing, how many trainees do you have who need support? In our firm one secretary works for the 5 senior lawyers, but not for the trainees (who do their own expenses online, but have some help with printing). Many firms here no longer have secretarial positions.
You need to chat with her about whether it's a workload issue, or attitude (whether one or other parties are being unreasonable/ a dick). Her priority will always be the seniors.

Is it definitely in your secretary’s job description that she performs secretarial duties for trainees? When I was an EA there was often an expectation from newer members of staff that I would help out them with admin tasks etc, but actually my job was EA to X and Y, so I was under no obligation to assist. I sometimes did if I had time, especially if it was for X and Y’s direct reports, but it was always bottom of the priority list. I found it very annoying, to be honest – this assumption that I was a general admin dogsbody when actually my role was complex and specific.