Bridget Thelen, Messerli Kramer

“Office specialist.” It could mean anything, right? In the case of Bridget Thelen, the title means almost everything.

Colleagues describe Thelen as the get-it-done powerhouse at Messerli Kramer. She might cover reception one day, do conflict checks the next, and take the lead on an event planning project the day after that.

“Now that we’re more remote after COVID, part of my job is to keep the office functioning,” she said. “That means making sure there’s a proper number of staff for our attorneys, making sure the files that people need are getting pulled.”

Then there’s the massive move that Messerli undertook recently. In planning the relocation, the firm found that it had about 2,000 boxes of paper files from the previous 15 years – and nobody available to lead the clean-up process.

Thelen was first to raise her hand. She spent workdays and even weekends going through files and selecting them for deleting, saving or reviewing by practice group heads. Then there was the matter of sorting the files, organized according to some long-forgotten system, by practice area, attorney and matter number.

“That meant coordinating with our records department to go through files and setting up the process to get them in digital form,” Thelen said.

Thanks to Thelen’s help, the firm got through its entire backlog of paper files. She has also played a strong role in developing and refining the firm’s current file retention and organization policy.

Thelen came to Messerli Kramer via a recruiter, she recalled. “I was impressed with the operations manager and the whole culture here.”

Those who work alongside Thelen describe her as cheerful and unflappable.

“I’ve never seen her have a bad day, because she refuses to be anything but optimistic,” said one colleague of Thelen’s. “And in a law firm, that can be hard to do.”