What do you think about these staff counsel changes?

Has anyone heard about the staff counsel changes? I’m not sure if this is a good thing or if they’re just trying to make SC like the rest of the company. In the town halls, they made it sound positive, but I’m worried that work will eventually be delivered in queues. That could be a real problem for legal assistants.

Does anyone know who the outside auditors are? Do they have enough experience to decide if a file is being handled the right way? Like most things this company has done since the pandemic, this could be a disaster waiting to happen.

This is going to be a mess.

GEICO is setting itself up for failure here. They don’t understand the value of attorneys and seem to think a system can replace them. Legal work isn’t like that—you need people who care, who know the law, and who have connections in their legal community. GEICO is ignoring all of this, and it’s going to catch up with them eventually.

This is dumb. I honestly hope this system flops because I can’t see it working. Now that they’re centralizing everything, I bet they’ll introduce queues. But how would that even help? Especially if they want us to handle cases from different parts of the country. Courts vary so much from state to state—it’d be chaos.

@Bao
Not just from state to state. Courts can vary from county to county, too.

San said:
@Bao
Not just from state to state. Courts can vary from county to county, too.

And even from one division to another within the same county.

@Bao
I’ve worked with queue systems in two departments before. While they can be useful for assigning work, they make it harder to organize your day. When I got work directly from supervisors, I could plan my day in a way that worked best for me. For example, I could group similar tasks together, which made me more efficient and reduced mistakes. Best of luck to everyone in Staff Counsel!

Whenever Geico centralizes a department, they assume they’ll need fewer people because of ‘efficiency gains.’ But they never really analyze whether those gains are possible. They just pick an arbitrary percentage for staff reductions. This is what they did when they centralized salvage operations and moved it to Georgia. They started with fewer people than the old system had, and it was a disaster that took years to fix.

This will be a nightmare. I worked for Staff Counsel 10 years ago, and centralized work just doesn’t work for these kinds of claims. Good luck with that.

I don’t think this will fix workload issues. It seems like there will just be fewer people to do all the work. Important things will be missed unless attorneys start doing all the admin work on their cases.

I’m fine with standardizing systems, but assistants already have too many files. We’re going to lose good people. But did anyone ask for my opinion? Nope. Just trying to keep my job and pay my bills here.

What’s going on? I used to work in Staff Counsel but left almost three years ago.

Sidney said:
What’s going on? I used to work in Staff Counsel but left almost three years ago.

They’re moving to a nationwide vertical management system, like the rest of the company.

@Zeph
Oh no, like when they tried to make caseloads the same nationwide, regardless of jurisdiction? That’s terrifying.

Apparently, according to Tom, all laws are the same in every state.

This company is like a sinking ship, and you can hear the last gasps.

Why are you all worrying so much? Why not wait and see what happens? You’re still getting paid, right?

Taron said:
Why are you all worrying so much? Why not wait and see what happens? You’re still getting paid, right?

These folks have every reason to be worried. We’ve seen how bad things are in other parts of the company, and it’s reasonable to assume the same could happen here. Their jobs are different, though, and if the company tries to handle them like other departments, it’s not going to work. These are valid concerns.

Taron said:
Why are you all worrying so much? Why not wait and see what happens? You’re still getting paid, right?

How about you just keep quiet?

dominic said:

Taron said:
Why are you all worrying so much? Why not wait and see what happens? You’re still getting paid, right?

How about you just keep quiet?

Why should I? You’re not staying quiet either. Sounds like you might need a different job if you’re so unhappy.