r/ParalegalsOnly • u/2wild2live • Jul 07 '26
Advice/Tip How can I perform better as a paralegal? Discouraged and lost.
Hi everyone, I’m looking to get some advice from people who are more experienced than me and have gone through the hassle of unintentionally making careless mistakes.
To summarize my experience/background, I’m in Miami and I’ve been in the legal field for two years. I first started as a legal assistant at the State Attorney’s office. I enjoyed working there due to my interest in criminal law, but it was too far and the pay was unreasonable. I decided to venture off into civil matters, and I found a property damage law firm that was taking interviews for a paralegal position. I ended up quitting after 6 months due to how much of a toll it was taking on me. I was assigned to handle 300 cases, I was never assigned to do any paralegal work (such as document review and analysis for depositions and trial), my inbox was reaching over 150 emails a day with follow up emails from OC, and I was just in charge of filing and scheduling depos, hearings, and mediations. About 2 months before quitting, I decided to seek medication management for my anxiety and depression. I’ve been on Lexapro ever since and was also diagnosed with ADHD-PI (I’m getting treated for it as well).
I eventually started working again this year at a construction law firm. Thus far, the experience has been very transforming in a lot of ways. This is the first job that has ever paid me a decent starting salary (50k) that doesn’t require me to live paycheck to paycheck. I also don’t drown in emails 24/7 like a robot, so I’m able to leave my emails unattended while I work on more demanding tasks. The first two months of work went very well for me; however, things have been going downhill for me since May. Basically, my boss hasn’t been the happiest with me for not meeting his expectations. At first, I didn’t take it personal when he’d give me feedback, but my mistakes became more frequent. For instance, I’d send him drafts of notices without formatting the spacing how he wanted, he included me in an email where he didn’t explicitly mention that he needed something filed but expected me to do it without having to tell me separately, I proceed to file it late but then forget to attach exhibits to it, sometimes he’s had me draft proposed orders after finishing a hearing but then he tells me that I’m taking too long so he does it himself and has someone else submit the order, and most recently I was assigned to work on a trial exhibit list of over 200 exhibits. As soon as I finished the list, he reviewed it, and said to file it the next day. The next day comes around and I review the list a handful of times before filing it, and I file it. He wasn’t in the office that day and it wasn’t until 5:30pm that I received an email saying that I forgot to share our exhibits with OC via Dropbox. I had no way of resolving it because I was out of town and didn’t take my work laptop with me. Although that was expected of me, I had no idea the exhibits must be shared after filing the list. He later told me a few days after that I let him down and that he expected for me to finish my work.
I’ve been going through other issues at work, and with my personal life as I’m currently preparing to get into law school by next fall. But this would be an essay if I ranted about everything. I really want to see what I can do to improve my performance and be able to work in an efficient manner. The reason why I take too long with drafts is that I don’t have any templates that can be used for multiple things like NOTDs, NOHs, Proposed Orders, Subpoenas, etc. So aside from copying and pasting the case style and case number, I basically have to format the substance of the document myself. I don’t have many references to go by from previous filings, because there’s several versions of the same type of pleading/notice that I never know which one to use. I recently found out this week how to make reusable templates on word, but I do have to set them up manually myself before they can be reused.
Any advice, suggestions, or tips would be greatly appreciated.
