Solicitor–Mission Statement
I stumbled upon the old Mission statement for our current Solicitor.
Got me thinking.
Here is the older Mission statement from the Solicitor.
Mission Statement
The City Solicitor serves the public as a whole by assisting local officials and employees in the lawful performance of their duties for the effective and orderly administration of the local government.
DUTIES OF THE CITY OF METHUEN SOLICITOR
The City Solicitor is the chief legal officer of the community.
The responsibilities and duties of the City Solicitor include but are not limited to the following:
– To provide legal advice for officials, officers, employees, and the local government in general;
– To defend the community (including its officers, officials, and employees) in claims and litigation;
– Represent the community (including its offices, officials, and employees) in litigation they initiate;
– Draft contracts of all types, legal documents, local laws, deeds, orders, proclamations, forms, and other documents;
– Render advice both orally, and in writing, draft opinions, advisories, memorandums, decisions and alike;
– Prosecute violations of local laws;
– Conduct internal investigations, make recommendations for actions to be taken, investigate claims.
Email: solicitor@ci.methuen.ma.us
The Solicitors picture was above the statement and his name was below the picture. If you clicked on the solicitors name the following email address used to pop up; pjmcquillan@ci.methuen.ma.us.
Remember when the City website used to include email addresses for all city employees?
Well, maybe not all, but for all elected officials and Department heads and Supervisors.
I recall those days. Their email would pop up if you clicked on their photo.
Try to locate the email address now. Good luck.
Helps to know the officials middle name.
Locally, email addresses are made up of the officials first initial, middle initial and last name.
Then one appends the @ci.methuen.ma.us.
This, generally, will get you to the correct person.
There are exceptions, usually for inexplicable reasons known only to the IT folks.
At some point the Solicitor re-wrote ( or more correctly, re-shuffled) the statement. here is what appears today;
Mission Statement:
The City Solicitor is the chief legal officer of the municipality.
The City Solicitor advises and assists all city officials and employees in the lawful performance of their duties for the effective and orderly operation and administration of local government.
Notice that the “chief legal officer of the municipality” moved from responsibility to mssion statement.Since the School System tends to have their own lawyers what does this statement mean? Guess it is the reason they want to hire more lawyers for the City. Hard to be Chief in a Department of one. (editorial)
We somehow also lost the “serves the public as a whole “Â from the mission.
The responsibilities and duties of the City Solicitor include but are not limited to the following:
– To provide legal advice for officials, officers, employees, and the local government in general;
– To defend the community (including its officers, officials, and employees) in claims and litigation;
– Represent the community (including its offices, officials, and employees) in litigation they initiate;
– Draft contracts of all types, legal documents, local laws, deeds, orders, proclamations, forms, and other documents;
– Render advice both orally, and in writing, draft opinions, advisories, memorandums, decisions and alike;
– Prosecute violations of local laws;
– Conduct internal investigations and recommend appropriate action, investigate damage claims.
Nice that his duties did not substantively change. No email contact information anymore.
Curious if the City has even drafted an email policy for employees?
Here are some other Mission statements (found on-line using solicitor in search field).
Look for these terms and ask why they are not in our Solicitors Statement.
- To provide professional, ethical, cost effective, aggressive, and competent legal support to meet the legal challenges facing the City of Methuen in order to protect and defend the City’s interests.
- To represent the interests of the citizens
- To provide effective and efficient legal advice and representation…in order to enable the city government to operate at maximum potential with minimal risk.
- committed to upholding the highest ethical standards
- To provide exceptional legal services…through aggressive, effective legal reperesentation.
 Worth thinking about anyway…
MISSION:
To provide professional, ethical, cost effective, aggressive, and competent legal support to meet the legal challenges facing the City of Atlantic City in order to protect and defend the City’s interests.
Mission
To represent the interests of the citizens of Atlanta in all matters brought before the Atlanta Municipal Court by screening, investigating and prosecuting all cases, handling all appeals from the court and by providing legal assistance to the city administration, community groups, schools, colleges and by providing training to law enforcement agencies and private police forces.
Overview
Provides legal representation and support to the City of Medford and its officials, departments, agencies, boards and commissions, including litigation, claims, contracts, ordinances, and opinions.
Mission Statement
To provide effective and efficient legal advice and representation to all municipal elected and appointed officials and to all city departments in order to enable the city government to operate at maximum potential with minimal risk. Law Department Personnel are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in its representation of the City of Medford
Mission Statement
To provide exceptional legal services to the City, its elected and appointed officials, boards, agencies and departments and further the city’s policy and public objectives through aggressive, effective legal reperesentation.