The Solicitor’s Secretary

Abstract

“When I first started here seven years ago I thought my job was rather difficult. Although I had covered legal work in my typing syllabus at the secretarial college, it seemed so different typing the real thing on the legal stationery: real wills, conveyances, briefs to counsel, petitions and affidavits. The vocabulary sounded rather meaningless and confusing for the first few months, but when I had typed the documents with their repetitive legal phrases, they became quite familiar. One of the senior shorthand-typists was very helpful and spent some time explaining the purpose of each document as well as giving me a list of common legal phrases. By typing these over and over again I became accustomed to them quickly and soon made up a number of contracted shorthand outlines for them.