Working at a law firm can be tough. Long hours, a seemingly insurmountable workload, often uncaring superiors — it’s enough to make anyone break. While being overworked may engender sympathy, one paralegal appears to have taken it too far.

Thomas Rubino [no relation] was a paralegal at the personal injury firm of Paris & Chaikin and he was swamped with work. Rubino [no relation] was responsible for final insurance settlement documents, which require judical approval. Rather than jump through the hoops of actually getting the judges to sign the necessary documentation, Rubino [no relation] decided to forge the names of 76 New York State Supreme Court justices on 117 insurance settlements over a two-year period. Seems legit.

The New York Post has Rubino’s [no relation] justification for the scheme:

“Each year, the workload increased and I had difficulty keeping up,” Rubino told investigators. “I made the forged orders when I felt overwhelmed with work. I was motivated out of fear that the work wouldn’t get done.”

You might think with all of the technology available, Rubino [no relation] must have a fancy operation to keep the forgeries going for so long. You’d be wrong. He used a device invented in 1500 B.C. — the lowly scissor.

He described his forgery as a simple cut-and-paste system, in which he used scissors to snip a judge’s signature from a legitimate document then used tape to put it on a phony settlement form, prosecutors said. “Although it looks like it took a lot of time to make each forged order, to get a legitimate order signed was a lot more work,” he allegedly admitted. “I’m talking phone calls, emails, and I was the only person doing it, so creating the forged ­orders was quicker.”

At least he saved time. I guess.

The scheme first started to unravel in 2013, and Rubino [no relation] was arrested on 234 counts of forgery last week. Knowing the jig was up, he appears to recognize the error of his ways.

He told authorities he had planned to kill himself but had a change of heart because “I thought it was going to destroy my girlfriend.”

He is now being held on $25,000 bond, after pleading not guilty.

Now for the million dollar question: where were the attorneys during all this? If Rubino [no relation] was saving so much time, isn’t that something his supervisors would have noticed?

Well, the Post is reporting that the firm, Paris & Chaikin now faces a $1,000,000 lawsuit from insurance settlement company J.G. Wentworth (you know the company from their late-night commercials which promise to give you cash for your structured settlements) for failure to supervise the paralegal.

Wentworth was forced to pay additional money when the insurance settlement documents doctored by Rubino [no relation] were invalidated and the court ordered Wentworth to pay the plaintiffs larger sums. And according to the Post, the evidence may cut against the law firm:

Court documents in another Wentworth case appear to reveal the firm tried to sweep Rubino’s scam under the rug.

The firm offered this response:

“Upon first discovering Rubino’s fraudulent conduct, Paris & Chaikin immediately self-reported Rubino’s fraud to various New York courts and law enforcement and since that time, the firm has continued to ethically and aggressively address this matter,” said the firm’s ethics counsel Pery Krinsky.

And though Rubino [no relation] was just trying to make his job a little easier, he wound up with a far messier problem then just getting a few signatures.

Paralegal forged names of 76 judges to ‘make work easier’ [New York Post]

Judge ‘forger’s’ law firm facing $1 million lawsuit [New York Post]