stenographer-and that applies to all of us—until fully ready with all material from which quotations are to be made available. They should avoid dictating quotations where indication of the original to a stenographer is feasible. Many of us violate that rule. We want to quote from some opinion or other document and we start in at the top of page fifteen and we begin to read it all to the stenographer. It is a waste of time. All we need to do is to say to the stenographer, "Start at the top of page fifteen and go to the end." The stenographer will take it down and goes out with the book. The skeleton or outline of a brief or other similar paper should always be prepared in advance, before we call for any stenographer at all, and once dictation is commenced, it should not be interrupted unless the interruption is absolutely unavoidable, in which case the stenographer should be released. Some offices use the dictating machine. have no experience with this.

I

In a very small office, stenographers should be given as much routine work as can be done by non-legal help. In larger offices, one of the older stenographers should be appointed head stenographer. His duty is to see that all stenographers are working; that they keep office hours and that they reply to calls in their proper order. He may also advise the member of the firm in charge as to the personnel of assignments. He should keep in touch with questions of supply of paper, ribbons, ink, and repairs of machines, notifying the purchasing department of his needs and keeping a sufficient reserve supply of materials always on hand. Stenographers in a large office can be assigned by the "assigned pool system."

Attendance.-Office hours, say, from 9.15 to 5.45, Saturdays to 1 P.M., for the legal staff and between 8:45 and 10 in the morning and 5 and 6.30 in the afternoon for the non-legal staff-there is some overlapping there should be published and attendance checked up by the heads of departments. Duty boys and duty stenographers are

on duty after the ordinary departure hour until the last member of the firm has left, or later, if needed. The "duty" stenographers and boys are selected by roster kept by the heads of departments and are given advance notice.

It is particularly advisable that everybody in the office should be familiar with what is expected of him. A detailed outline of the office organization and system should be published once a year, containing also the principal office rules. I have a copy of ours here. It is a small printed pamphlet and contains the outline of the office organization and the principal office rules. Everybody in the office has one and is supposed to know its contents. It is well to discuss this in detail at the first office conference after it is issued. From time to time a member of the firm in charge issues special memoranda containing changes in assignments or rules and a book of these is kept for reference.

Card catalogue.-The following card catalogues may, with profit, be established and maintained; file, library, form and law memoranda indices, cases and points, and index of addresses, particularly of out-of-town addresses.

Sanitation and ventilation.-This is a subject that is not particularly thrilling but it is important. You come sometimes into a lawyer's office that is dirty, has not been cleaned or has not been properly cleaned. It ought not to be so. The office should be inspected periodically to see that sanitary conditions are maintained and the office well ventilated. Among the duties of the office boys should be to clean and tidy all portions of the office before the arrival of the members of the firm. Particular attention should be given to wash-rooms, fresh towels installed, etc. All desks should also be tidied. Members of the office staff should not be crowded into small rooms. All doors should have door ventilators, and the covered ventilators should be used on windows where, because of their proximity, it is dangerous to workers to keep the windows always open.

Morale. And finally, a system, no matter how good, will not accomplish all of the desired purposes unless there is an esprit de corps in the organization, whether it be an organization of two or of sixty. Courteous treatment to, and a fair rate of compensation for, all employees with proper increases in salary from time to time should be backed up by a little thoughtfulness in connection with their work and particularly in distributing the work to them. In addition to this, it is very helpful in a large office, or in any office, to have a weekly conference of all lawyers in the office at which matters of office system and organization as well as recent cases can be discussed.

A committee on office system meeting at stated periods is also helpful to the member of the firm in charge. We should all try to be more systematic. Lack of system is a besetting sin of our profession. We are far behind business men in adopting new and progressive methods designed to produce efficiency.

Let us first try to establish in our offices a sound system, and then, by constant supervision, maintain and improve

it.

ADDRESS OF HENRY ROOT STERN

(of the New York Bar)

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE ASSOCIATION: I haven't any speech to make to you to-night. As a matter of fact, when it comes to office system, I see a great many gentlemen here who have forgotten more about office system than I ever hope to know, and they have probably discarded most of those things that I am going to tell you about. But there is one point you always want to remember in dealing with any office system where lawyers are concerned, and that is, as far as possible keep the lawyers away from the system. Otherwise, you won't have any system. In short, you want a system which is lawyer proof, which amounts to the same thing as fool proof.

The first thing that has been assigned to me to speak about is mailing system-the famous case of Carbon Copy against Letter Press. I am not going to waste many words rehearsing the disadvantages of the old letter-press system. Most of us know them without being told. That system is an uncleanly nuisance, and occupies an ungodly amount of the time of hungry office boys who are being paid for that time as overtime. The only reason, of course, why we all of us did not adopt the carbon copy years ago instead of recently, is based upon its questionable probative value. For example, a lawyer, if put on the stand and handed a piece of blue, or green, or yellow paper, and asked to swear if he remembers having signed the original of which that is a correct copy, having probably signed hundreds and perhaps thousands of letters since, of course doesn't remember anything about it. Even if he does

refresh his recollection you may have a technical opponent who really disputes the delivery of the original and all the lawyer can say is, "I suppose I sent that out in the usual course to be mailed." Then you have to produce some mailing clerk, and all he has got is a mailing book with an entry containing the name and address of the addressee of the letter. Of course, he can't swear that this particular carbon is a correct copy of the original referred to in that entry. For all he knows it may have been a totally different letter addressed to the same man. We have found only one solution of this problem. It sounds more elaborate than it really is, but after a little while it becomes automatic and not unduly troublesome. We have this office practice which every one agrees to follow when he enters our employ: both the original and the carbon copy of every letter which has been dictated is, after being written out, put on the desk of the dictator. He looks at the carbon and verifies that it is actually a carbon copy of the letter which he dictated. This he can easily do at a glance by checking the corresponding words at the beginning and end of the same paragraphs in each. If he then makes any change in pen and ink in the original letter-which archaic custom is still adhered to in some offices-he must make the same change in his carbon. Then he signs his letter, and initials the carbon. Both are then sent out to the mailing desk. The mail clerk who has charge of putting the original in the envelopeand of seeing, by the way, that the right original goes in the right envelope, which doesn't always happen, you know-then enters the letter in the mailing book. That is to say, he simply notes the name and address of the addressee under the date for letters for that day and puts his or her initials in the margin. Then the letters are accumulated and handed over to some office boy to mail or deliver, as the case may be. The office boy writes on the carbon his initials underneath the initials of the lawyer. The letters are then mailed and the boy puts his initials