CHAPTER 1 GENERAL ADMINISTRATION AND SECURITY

If you are new to the Legalman (LN) rating, you will soon learn that the scope of the rating is as broad as the Navy's legal system. In addition to clerical duties, you will be required to perform many different and important duties under the guidance of a Navy lawyer or senior LN. These duties include matters pertaining to military justice, claims, investigations, administrative discharges, and legal assistance. As you advance in the rating, you will find that your duties and responsibilities will be expanded to include performing legal research, preparing and administering office and claims budgets, interviewing of witnesses and clients, and preparing to become an office manager.

In studying the material contained in this training manual, you will encounter several terms that are used when working with law and other related legal matters. You will run across these terms throughout this manual and in your daily duties as an LN. To help you become more familiar with these terms, a glossary is attached as appendix I to this manual.

When you begin work in a new billet, whether it be in a naval legal service office (NLSO) or in a small staff judge advocate (SJA) office, one of your first jobs is to learn as much as possible about the organization in which you work. You should learn the primary responsibilities of your office and those related functions it performs. You also need to learn your office's relationship to the overall command organization. You must be able to understand the organization of your office and learn what the chain of command is for your organization.

After you understand the functions of your office; for example, claims, military justice, or legal assistance, you will see how your own duties fit into these functions. This knowledge will make your various jobs and responsibilities more interesting to you.

You should know the name and the rank or rate of every person in your office and the manner in which signing officials sign their names. You also should learn what part of the office operations each person performs and how this work contributes to the overall office functions.

Thinking of your office in relation to your ship or station, you should study the ship or station organization and the name, title, and rank of those above your office in the chain of command. You should know which other offices are closely related to yours in their duties. To understand the Navywide program that you are a part of, you need to study the publications related to your work. Learn which reports are due and the appropriate submission format.

In this chapter we discuss matters relating to correspondence, publications and directives, files, reports control system, records disposal, logs, the Judge Advocate General Management Information System (JAG-MIS), security, and the release of government information.

CORRESPONDENCE

One of your most important tasks is the preparation of correspondence. You will be expected to produce properly formatted official correspondence with no uncorrected errors. Correspondence does not just include basic letters. The term official correspondence includes all written materials-standard, business, joint, and multiple-address letters; endorsements; memorandums; messages-that are sent to or from the command.

You should familiarize yourself with the information provided in the Department of the Navy Correspondence Manual, SECNAVINST 5216.5C, and the Department of the Navy Directives Issuance System, SECNAVINST 5215.1C. These two directives are the primary sources of information used throughout the Navy for the proper preparation of correspondence.

To handle naval correspondence properly there are four major areas that you should become familiar with. These areas are preparation, routing, filing, and subject classification.

PREPARATION

As a Legalman 3 (LN3) or Legalman 2 (LN2), you must make sure any correspondence you are assigned to type is placed in the proper format and basic correspondence procedures are followed. In addition to following the procedures outlined in the Correspondence Manual and the Directives Issuance System, it is very important that you remember to take care in the actual typing of correspondence. The quality of the correspondence sent out by your office not only reflects upon you as the typist, but also affects the impression others have of your office and command.

We will now look at the requirements for the preparation of the different types of official correspondence mentioned previously.