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Saturday, November 13, 2004
About the Author
My name is Marie Carnes and I live in Springfield, Illinois.
In March of 1974, while a senior in high school, I got my first job as a legal secretary. The lawyer was just getting his practice off the ground, having been in the state's attorney's office from 1959 to 1972.
In our office, the only method for getting words on paper was the notorious IBM Executive typewriter. While the Executive made sharp looking documents, correcting typos was a nightmare. I quickly began to despise it and its proportional spacing. Every document required at least one carbon copy. Some documents, like wills, required three carbon copies. Corrections using white-out or correction film on correspondence and pleadings were acceptable. However, there was no room for error on wills and estate planning documents. Not even corrected errors.
Our next typewriter was a Royal with interchangeable typing balls and built-in correction tape. We had two balls: Pica and Elite. The correction tape was wonderful, except there was still no easy way to correct those carbon copies.
In 1979 I took a job at a small firm of six lawyers. The job came on the condition that I would be willing to learn something called, a "word processor," and then teach it to the other five secretaries in the office. I had no idea what that was, but I was willing to give it a try.
The word processor was made by Xerox and utilized a magnetic card system for storing data. It came in three parts: One, the keyboard, which looked very much like a typewriter; two, a screen for viewing what you typed; and, three, the brains which sat on the floor like a computer tower. No words hit the paper until the page was assembled and error free. The firm sent me to Xerox school for two days and I never stressed about correcting typos again.
Over the next ten years, I worked at law firms in Springfield, Chicago, and Western Michigan. In 1989, I returned to Springfield where I got a job using the technological miracle known as WordPerfect 5.0 for DOS. And, the rest, as they say, is history.
One thing I should add, as of February 2003, my career as a legal secretary ended. In January of 1998, the lawyer I was employed by for about eight years passed away. After that, I bounced around from law office to law office. After about five years, it became clear my heart was no longer in it. I'm now working as an office manager, bookkeeper, secretary for a semi-retired architect. I'm enjoying the work and learning a lot of new things.
EDIT: As of November 2005, I'm again unemployed. The architect decided to turn over the remaining aspects of his business to other entities and curtail his office activities. So, I'm available and looking for work.
EDIT: As of March, 2006, I'm employed once again as a legal secretary/paralegal.
• Posted by: Marie Carnes at 02:29 PM
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Comments
Marie,
I work for a non-profit organization. As it turns out, we need to locate a semi-retired architect who could furnish us with plans for two fire escapes. We are prepared to pay for them, but we cannot afford the rates of busy professionals and big firms (most of whom do not want to work on projects this small). Would your employer be interested in working on something in Urbana? If not, do you suppose she might have some suggestions on how we could go about locating such a person?
Posted by: Adrien Vlach at August 12, 2005 05:37 PM
Hi Marie,
Enjoy your notes.
Just purchased WPx3 Office.
Am ready for a change from Office 2000.
Take good care.
Carl Muehleisen
Posted by: Carl Muehleisen at June 4, 2006 07:38 PM
Carl,
Thank you so much for your comment. I have no complaints about WPX3. I hope you like it.
Marie
Posted by: Marie at June 6, 2006 11:23 PM