A place for legal office professionals to share their experiences with legal administrative assistant students at South Central College. Feel free to comment on posts. We'd love to hear from professionals from all over the country.
It is ok to sign your attorney's name to letters as long as they are not giving advice and at no time should you ever sign your attorney's name to a legal document.
I don't think it is unethical for an assistant to sign an attorney's name to a letter as long as there is some indication that it was not signed by the attorney, i.e., circling your initials under the signature block. Some attorney's use a stamp, and others use the formal notation under the signature: "dictated but not reviewed by attorney," or something like that.
Under our ethical rules an attorney is ethically responsible for the work done by the assistants in his/her office. This is why it is not unethical to have an assistant sign an attorney's name, because the attorney is ultimately responsible. Sometimes this causes problems, such as the case where the attorney sends out a settlement offer or demand, indicating willingness to settle for $5,000, and the letter goes out with a typo ($50,000). The attorney will be bound by the error.
It would not be permissible to sign the attorney's name to a pleading. You can add another attorney in your office to the signature block and have that person sign the pleading.
The practice is the same in our office - legal assistants do sign letters at times with the permission of the attorneys and so indicated on the correspondence (circling initials). As stated previously, no legal assistant would sign a pleading.
So if the lawyer is not available when a signature is needed, can you just sign for them, or do you need to ask them first? I work in an office right now, and my manager has a stamp with her signature on it, we can use it if she is not available, but we still have to ask for permission.
Kate: Every attorney has a different preference for the use of signature stamps. Here, if an attorney wants a letter to go out in his or her absence, they will say to sign it or stamp it. If they don't say it, then we ask them if we know they will be gone when it is ready to go in the mail.
You should probably clarify your attorney's policy regarding stamping or signing their name, and under what circumstances you may do this if they are not present to ask their permission.
In this situations an attorney can become very busy with his day and not have time to stop and sign every piece of paper he or she is suppose to. So in this case using a stamp word word. Even though i do not think it looks very professional they dont always have the time to stop everything they are doing to sign a piece of paper. Every attorney is different so for using the stamp signature it is best that you clarify with the attorney that will will be using this technique because if they were to be out of the office for a couple of days
7 comments:
It is ok to sign your attorney's name to letters as long as they are not giving advice and at no time should you ever sign your attorney's name to a legal document.
I don't think it is unethical for an assistant to sign an attorney's name to a letter as long as there is some indication that it was not signed by the attorney, i.e., circling your initials under the signature block. Some attorney's use a stamp, and others use the formal notation under the signature: "dictated but not reviewed by attorney," or something like that.
Under our ethical rules an attorney is ethically responsible for the work done by the assistants in his/her office. This is why it is not unethical to have an assistant sign an attorney's name, because the attorney is ultimately responsible. Sometimes this causes problems, such as the case where the attorney sends out a settlement offer or demand, indicating willingness to settle for $5,000, and the letter goes out with a typo ($50,000). The attorney will be bound by the error.
It would not be permissible to sign the attorney's name to a pleading. You can add another attorney in your office to the signature block and have that person sign the pleading.
The practice is the same in our office - legal assistants do sign letters at times with the permission of the attorneys and so indicated on the correspondence (circling initials). As stated previously, no legal assistant would sign a pleading.
So if the lawyer is not available when a signature is needed, can you just sign for them, or do you need to ask them first? I work in an office right now, and my manager has a stamp with her signature on it, we can use it if she is not available, but we still have to ask for permission.
Kate: Every attorney has a different preference for the use of signature stamps. Here, if an attorney wants a letter to go out in his or her absence, they will say to sign it or stamp it. If they don't say it, then we ask them if we know they will be gone when it is ready to go in the mail.
You should probably clarify your attorney's policy regarding stamping or signing their name, and under what circumstances you may do this if they are not present to ask their permission.
In this situations an attorney can become very busy with his day and not have time to stop and sign every piece of paper he or she is suppose to. So in this case using a stamp word word. Even though i do not think it looks very professional they dont always have the time to stop everything they are doing to sign a piece of paper. Every attorney is different so for using the stamp signature it is best that you clarify with the attorney that will will be using this technique because if they were to be out of the office for a couple of days
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