Invaluable General Factotum

I had just attended a hearing on July, as one of the most important parts of the longest battle our company's ever been involved in: 13 years and counting. Imagine when the battle started, I was only a 11 year-old primary student! This hearing is one of those events most people in our company would hardly have exposure to: Only 5 people from our side are allowed to enter the hearing room: two senior lawyers, one senior consultant and one senior general manager, and myself. In fact I also have a senior who's also involved in this case but only 5 attendants were allowed and I was chosen over her.

It’s a bitter-sweet feeling, I’m not sure whether I was happy or angry when our senior lawyer started introducing the attendants from our side and when he was introducing me, he referred me as the “invaluable general factotum”. After I looked up on what 'factotum' means, I concede and concur that there is no better word to describe my whole involvement in this battle. 

Below is the quote from Oxford Dictionary online on what it means

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factotumPronunciation: /fakˈtəʊtəm/noun (plural factotums)

• an employee who does all kinds of work:he was employed as the general factotum

Origin:

mid 16th century (originally in the phrases dominum (or magister factotum), translating roughly as 'master of everything', andJohannes factotem 'John do-it-all' or 'Jack of all trades'): from medieval Latin, from Latin fac! 'do!' (imperative of facere) +totum 'the whole thing' (neuter of totus)
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With that said, let’s see what the ups and downs of my factotum job are, in relation to this “battle”. Let’s leave the better part behind, so here goes the bad parts:

1. My jobscope is truly undefined. Hence, factotum is really a strong word befitting the job. I have kinda sorted the scope roughly based on the level of intelligence required:

• Carry 30-40 kilo worth of documents in the lousy luggage. This is due to the meetings that are normally held in hotels instead of our own office, as our senior lawyer finds it more comfortable to work there. There were also five numbers of 10kilogram-boxes of documents. Sometimes one office boy helps me with the trolley. Transporting the luggage is the most physically demanding task. When internal meetings are adjourned I would normally be carrying this luggage + my backpack which contains heavy laptop and documents + one big inkjet 3-in-1 printer in hung on my shoulder. Sometimes I gotta slot in a projector somewhere as well.

• Procure customised beverages for meeting attendants: Kopi O for one lawyer, Kopi O Kosong for my consultant, Kopi C kosong for my big boss, Teh-C kosong for my senior, and normal Kopi for the rest. This is every time we have a morning internal meeting.

• Order lunch (sometimes) or drinks including alcohol

• Prepare print outs and documents for submissions. At one time there were two days I arrived at 6am and 7am to do urgent print-outs before the meeting where the documents were finished at 2-3am the same day.

• Help with technical difficulties with the Printer/Laptop/Projector.

• Manage the tiny library (i.e. the luggage containing 30-40 kilo of documents) and look for/draw out the correct document when the lawyer/consultant requires it. These documents are the essentials of the piles and stacks of documents from 13 years of battle + 3-4 year of the project duration worth.

• Edit the formatting of the documents or tables.

• Look for letters/correspondences that I have never seen or read

• Receive and write letters in response thereto.

• Maintain factual data from these 13 years of battle and analyse it in various forms of tables for legal arguments

• Analyse written/technical submissions and feedback to the lawyer and the consultant

2. I also need to endure with unpleasant experiences such as the following:

• Reporting to 3-5 superiors/bosses. Reporting to one single person can already be a headache, multiply that with 3, or 4, or 5!

• Work that end up mostly in vain: Doing 60 write-ups for different items of arguments for two months; after a meeting, every single one has to be reformatted and inserted with new arguments because the lawyers and the consultant had a change of heart in the way they want to present the case; I took another month to reformat and restructure the argument. Only one document out of sixty was eventually utilized.

• Working late and or long hours. Sometimes this may be due to “last minute” ideas from the consultant, and in spite of the above ample time of preparation sacrificed in vain. Working late period varies from 9pm to no sleep until the next morning.

• Having to skip events that I want to attend/participate in.

• Having my leave to be cancelled, as my consultant was not able to give her work in time and hence delayed the submission which then coincided with my approved leave. This leave was only for 3 days and had been planned at least 3 months before.

• not to mention my affected social life as I have less time to interact with my close colleagues or friends, with a lot of hangouts, skipped due to this work

So far that's what I can think of for now for the downside.

And we do have the upside of being the factotum to this battle. Not as many as the bad parts, but here are the good perks:

I have to say that the best part of it is the learning experience. Of course, after getting more or less accustomed to the intelligent portion of the work, I find it easier to write letters as 

It was good show! Being able to see directly how good our senior lawyer argues and defend against the other side's senior lawyer is mind-blowing. He always gives good questions for provoke us into seeing our case in various different lights, and I have already admired him so much for that, but seeing him in action put him in an even more revered pedestal.