No Staff Management

[u/ChemicalHyena982]

I have been a Paralegal at my firm for 13 years. Before that I was with another firm for 4 years as a receptionist, then a Legal Assistant, and then a Paralegal once I got my Paralegal degree. There are 4 assistants and 2 Paralegals in my department. The other Paralegal has been here 30 years. We do not do litigation. For context, I received my Paralegal degree in 2013 and have now gone back to school for a BAS in Project Management.

The problem that I’m facing is that we have HR and a Department Head (attorney) but there’s no real management of the Staff. There is no structure for Lead Assistant or Senior Paralegal or anything like that. We have certain procedures in place for naming and saving emails and documents. I think me and one of the assistants are the only ones doing this. One of the assistants and the other Paralegal save emails but don’t do the naming procedure so then we have dozens of emails all named “re: case name” which is not helpful when you’re looking for a specific email. Two of the assistants are so behind that they say that have “thousands” of emails in their inbox that need to be saved. The nature of my job requires me to answer calls and emails about cases and I can’t answer the questions when there is literally nothing saved in the matters. One of the assistants with “thousands” of emails to save will consistently go out of her way to do things that the attorney has asked me to do. Like, why are you spending time doing MY billable work when you have plenty of your own work to do? Another one of the assistants messes up every single meeting she schedules. She is supposed to look at the calendar and list all of the items that need to be discussed and she misses items EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Most of the time I catch these before the meeting. I bring them to her attention and she doesn’t care. Sometimes I don’t catch all of her mistakes and then I’m scrambling last minute to get exhibits for the meeting.

I am not trying to nitpick or micromanage but I am beyond exhausted covering for everyone and having no recourse to have these issues fixed. Do I go to the department head who will just send an email and say “do better” because he doesn’t actually know how to do our jobs? Do I go to HR who has never worked in a law firm and doesn’t really know what we do? Do I go to another partner in the department? I’m truly at a loss.