If you're an attorney and work from home

[Anonymous]

Do you take your files, etc. with you every time you decide to work from home?

I'm on a regular one day/week work from home schedule. I appreciate it for its flexibility, but I despise carrying all my files back and forth? But I'm a visual person and I have to see things written out on paper (as opposed to just a computer screen) in order to process.

Do you lug your files back and forth? Is there something else I could be doing?

[Anonymous]

Get a printer and print a set for home.

[Anonymous]

We are prohibited from doing so at SSA, due to protection of personal info in the files we look at. From home when we connect through VPN, printing is literally disabled somehow by IT. I couldn’t print at home even if I tried to. We are also prohibited from carrying home files or papers from work. I think it’s silly to be this restrictive. We can still access and view everything the same from home as in the office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are prohibited from doing so at SSA, due to protection of personal info in the files we look at. From home when we connect through VPN, printing is literally disabled somehow by IT. I couldn’t print at home even if I tried to. We are also prohibited from carrying home files or papers from work. I think it’s silly to be this restrictive. We can still access and view everything the same from home as in the office.

Adding. So I just learned to get to reading everything online, using online highlighting function, online sticky notes, etc.

In private practice as an associate where we had no such rules, I used to selectively take home only what I really needed to do work at home on weekends. Files did get heavy, so I only took what I absolutely needed for how many hours I anticipated working on. Or tried to do the portions that needed more paper in the office, not evenings or weekends.

[Anonymous]

If permitted, I suppose you could save to a CD (my office does not allow USB drives) and then print at home from your personal computer. Personally, though, I don't every put anything from the office on my personal computer or vice versa. I think reading from the screen is just part of teleworking, sorry.

[Anonymous]

Yes, OP. You really have to bite the bullet and learn to work on the screen. I was like you at first when I started a teleworking job that was very document-intensive. I had to print everything out and work on it with a pen. But then I realized how wasteful that was - in both resources and time - and I started reading it on the screen, using all the digital editing tools available. You’ll thank yourself once you have made the switch.

[Anonymous]

Do you have a second screen at home? It really makes paper docs unnecessary.

Otherwise print things at home.

[Anonymous]

I bring home the files I need. I drive though.