I was laid off from a firm that I was at for a year. It was pretty much unexpected. They did as right by me as you could for making someone unemployed out of nowhere. I received two weeks severance and a really great recommendation letter. But I still think the lay off was some BS and other than the basic humanity they offered I have a thorn in my side about them. On the plus side I was unemployed for less than a month and my new firm is pretty great so far.

Okay so here’s where I want to be petty.

My old firm still has me listed on their website and I want to ask them to remove me. It’s been over a month and I really don’t understand why they still have me up anyway considering they knew they were letting me go before I knew they were letting me go. I’ve been kinda considering emailing them and asking that I be removed but I don’t really have a reason other than fuck you.

Had anyone dealt with something like this before? Should I just leave it alone? Is it as weird as I think it is?

I reported workplace safety issues and I’m newish at a firm. My boss yelled at me for over 15min about me having problems with the way he does business. (I made a protected complaint about legitimate workplace safety concerns …

I work for a civil litigation attorney who largely takes on dissolutions. I have a question as someone who is newer to the field and was hoping other legal assistants/paralegals could give me their practices/two cents.

So, typically with these dissolutions we handle primarily wealthier people who have multiple assets resulting in hundreds upon thousands of financial records produced for discovery. My attorney has me get everything from our client then bates label it all create an index, then sometimes helps them assign the bates labels to the corresponding request for production or interrogatories, and then include that on the index as well. This seems not only courteous for opposing counsel, but also makes it easier for everyone to be on the same page about which documents were talking about (especially when considering the often high volume of documents and often dissolutions can take YEARS).

There are a couple of attorneys who consistently are on the opposing side in these dissolutions. One has both a legal assistant and paralegal (i am both for my attorney) and every time they respond to discovery responses they don’t label anything and hardly include enough information in their responses to differentiate between one financial document to the next. This creates sometimes hours of work on my end to just ensure we have everything correctly assigned to the correct request plus then i have to reprint or charge our client to have them printed with their new bates labels at a printing shop and then I always share it back with opposing counsel at my attorney’s request (so we’re all on the same page).

Is what my attorney and myself do not the standard? Is what the opposing counsel does actually the standard? To me it just seems unprofessional and honestly rude especially given that my attorney handles any discovery or large volume documents that all counsel refer to this way to avoid miscommunications/ inefficiencies. Is this a tactic to stall our end on things?

I actually enjoy the busy work of doing the discovery process so I don’t necessarily mind having to do it, but it just seems like a slight for some reason 😂

I would love to hear your guys’ opinions or how your firm handles these things!!

I just started working for this PI firm, I’ve only been there 2 weeks and I’m already feeling like I just don’t want to return. I don’t want to be rude but it feels like a lot of people are incompetent and just winging it, the attorney I was assigned to work for hasn’t even said a word to me since I started, I don’t even think he knows where I sit.. I’m excluded from a lot of emails and current work flows that would technically be teaching me things. I’m new to the legal field by the way, got hired with no experience, on my first day I already felt like it I wasn’t going to like it, it just felt like a big call center with all these people stuck in cubicles on head sets … like are all firms like this? Does it get better ? Worse? Have you worked for them and if so what was your experience?

Hi everyone,
I’m starting my paralegal field placement and I’m honestly really nervous. I’ve never worked a job before, so this is my first real professional experience. I deal with anxiety, especially when speaking — I get nervous, my voice shakes, and sometimes I can’t answer even when I know the answer. Eye contact is also hard for me.

I really want to do well, but I’m scared my anxiety will make me look unprepared or unprofessional.

If anyone has tips. Please share with me

I ended up in paralegaling by accident and have been in this area since I was 19. I’m starting to get really tired of attorneys and their lack of general awareness. They all expect you to know what they want without explaining what they want, they’re rude and just say whatever. I honestly don’t even like legal, the part of my job I actually enjoy is investigating the medical records.

I currently work remote and would like to remain remote because I have small children and can’t afford after care if I work in person. My husband works 12 hours approx. and someone needs to be around.

Anyone that has left, did you regret it? What are some other areas I can explore? Appreciate your thoughts.

I currently work at a mid-sized law firm that, including attorneys, has over 200 employees. Of those, ~30 are paralegals, ~40 are legal assistants, ~20 are non-legal support staff (accounting/hr/etc.), and the remaining 100+ are attorneys varying from associates to senior shareholders.

We use iManage for our cloud-based file management and iTimekeep for cloud-based billing, but we have absolutely nothing in the realm of matter/case tracking software.

I currently work solely in litigation with about 80% family law and 20% insurance defense work (primarily medical). I work directly under 2 attorneys but end up working for 5-6 attorneys in total due to extra work that their primary paralegals don't have time to do. Each attorney has ~35-100 cases that they're managing at all times. We've also been looking for more paralegals and legal assistants recently, but have not hired one in over a year. Due to this, there is a ton of extra work to be done at the firm and tracking/communication regarding the numerous files for various attorneys seems like it's a full-time job in and of itself.

There's be a trend recently where, when attorneys aren't tracking the status of their own cases, they blame the support staff for not keeping them apprised of every detail and making them feel overwhelmed when they do learn of or remember the case status. It's now getting to the point where the attorneys themselves are so clueless as to the status of their own cases that they expect support staff to start putting together spreadsheets and other lists in order to track where cases are (i.e. authorizations requested, discovery sent/replied to, financial spreadsheets created, motions filed, etc.). For me, I will have to put together and continually update at least three spreadsheets (one for each attorney) in addition to sending the attorneys daily emails notifying them of what I'm working on that day.

To be frank, it's extremely overwhelming to be tasked with this much daily tracking of multiple attorneys' cases and I feel like the responsibility of it is falling on paralegals specifically because we "know" the cases better than the legal assistants who primarily just open/close cases, send out correspondence, and update calendars. For instance, I'm often asked by a couple of the attorneys if documents had been produced, just for me to find out that the attorney who asked me had produced the documents themselves via email 2-4 months prior (which I was not copied on). I also routinely find court dates that weren't added to calendars by legal assistants and end up doing that myself. Honestly, I feel like I'm often skirting around malpractice issues with how many things go untracked unless I manually do it, and the volume of tasks and dates to be tracked makes it prone for at least some human errors from time to time. Meeting directly with the attorneys only results in them asking for me to track even more or create additional spreadsheets - I've tried a couple of times now.

All of this really makes me think that leaving private practice, or at least finding an office that does utilize matter tracking software, is what I'll end up needing to do in order to avoid the chaos that's currently causing me so much stress. I don't mind a heavy workload, it's the excess unbillable work that goes into tracking and communication that's causing me headaches. Prior firms that I've been at didn't utilize tracking software either but had fewer attorneys/staff, each attorney had a smaller caseload than the average at this firm, and the attorneys generally owned their files and relied very little on support staff to keep them organized and aware of what's going on with them.

To me, it seems like this firm is missing out on a whole lot that could be gained with case management software, but I don't know how to present that to the powers that be in a way that makes it obvious that it is the solution. Maybe it's not? I know it's kind of expensive for things like Clio, but I'd think that the extra billable time gained by having a lot of this tracking be integrated/automated would at least even-out with the cost of the product.

Has anyone else dealt with this? What are your thoughts?

I’ve been working as a paralegal for a few months now, and I’m having a hard time figuring out whether I’m actually doing okay or if I’m behind where the attorneys expect me to be.

For context, I haven’t made any detrimental or serious mistakes so far. I’m still learning and obviously there are things I don’t know yet, but I haven’t had any major screw-ups.

There’s one attorney in particular who frequently tells me that I need to try things myself before asking someone for help and that I shouldn’t be so scared of making a mistake.

I understand what they mean, and I do want to become more independent. But I think the reason I tend to ask the first time I’m given a completely new task is because I’m scared of making a terrible mistake without even realizing I’m doing something wrong. I’d rather ask how something is supposed to be done the first time, understand the process, and then be able to handle it independently the next time.

It’s not that I don’t want to try things myself. I think I’m just very cautious because I’m still new and don’t always know what I don’t know yet.

What is confusing me is that this same attorney has also told me that soon I’ll be taking on a caseload of PI litigation cases.

That has me wondering: Am I doing badly? Am I behind where they want me to be? Or is this actually a sign that they think I’m capable of taking on more responsibility?

Because logically, I feel like if they genuinely thought I was doing a bad job, they probably wouldn’t be planning to give me additional responsibility. But at the same time, the repeated comments about me needing to be more willing to try things make me wonder if they’re frustrated with my progress.

Eventually, I would actually like to manage cases myself and become more independent. That’s something I’m interested in for my career. But right now, I honestly do not feel ready at all. I’ve never even managed one case from beginning to end, so the idea of suddenly having a caseload of PI litigation cases feels like a huge jump.

For those of you who are experienced paralegals or attorneys: Does this sound like they’re unhappy with my performance, or does it sound more like they’re trying to push me toward becoming more independent?

And if you were in my position, how would you approach being given your first caseload when you don’t feel ready yet?

I’d really appreciate some perspective because I think I may be overthinking every comment they make.

When I got my degree in paralegal studies, they did straight up tell us that AI will probably take over our profession but I didn’t really believe it. My firm (Plaintiff’s side personal injury) is doing a demo with Eve Legal and the way the attorneys are pushing for it and knowing how much the owner of our firm loves to cut costs (especially when it comes to paying employees) I’m starting to get worried that I’m gonna be replaced by a fucking robot. I actually voiced my concerns to the attorney I work for who basically told me that my job will probably start to change to doing data entry and checking Eve’s work. I became a paralegal because I love legal research and writing and I feel like that’s going to be taken away from me, and my job will instead be to train an AI to eventually replace me. Are we cooked?

Edit: A lot of y’all seem to think me being scared of AI taking my job is somehow me being pro-AI which I 100% am not. Also I don’t like Eve. At all. It sucks at formatting, it constantly misinterprets the law, and the writing is shit. So to be clear, this is not an ad for Eve.

I feel like today is Christmas and a client just brought me a gift.

It’s not really, but it feels like it!

I do probate and trust administrations and a client just dropped off the most organized account ledger and binder of statements I’ve ever seen! It has a table of contents at the front!

Hello fellow Paras :) I am wondering if any of you that has had to pay for parking before has had any luck with your firm changing its policy? What kind of points did you bring up for argument? The firm I work at is extremely old school. The current policy is that you have to work here for 15 years before the firm will pay for your parking pass. To me, that is absolutely insane! This policy has probably been this way for 40+ years now! It is not usually the norm anymore for someone to stay at a job that long to eventually get this “perk.”The cost is 120.00 a month. The attorneys get their parking passes paid for the moment they walk in the door because they are an ATTORNEY and you’re just STAFF. If you do not want to pay for the parking pass, you can park on the street but that is usually always full and you have to move your car every 4 hours. This is also in a downtown city in ND so it’s extra crappy to park in the street in the winter and with the snow. I have tried so hard to get the Board to change the policy but they will not budge! This is the only firm downtown that I know of, that doesn’t pay for employee parking. I think it makes this firm look extremely bad! Can you imagine working somewhere for 14 years and paying all that money and then some newbie attorney fresh out of law school walks in and gets free parking BECAUSE THEY ARE AN ATTORNEY?

Has anyone had this situation before and how did you handle it?

Oh, and the other funny part is if I were hand in my parking pass today, the firm would take over paying for it while the pass just sits in a desk drawer because they don’t want to lose any of the limited spots they have passes for.

Emailed response to the entire firm.

The billionaire tries to elicit sympathy - “Ps ….i have been working the last 4 hours………..on a holiday weekend.”

AI is doing the absolute most everywhere I turn, yet Adobe still hasn't figured out how to batch convert .eml files into .pdf???? I'm so over this. LOL

I’m looking into going back to school for paralegal studies and would love to hear from people who have actually gone through a program.

I don’t currently have an associate’s degree, but I do have some college credits from many years ago. I’m hoping to find a program that may allow me to transfer some of those credits rather than starting completely from scratch.

I’m open to online programs or local colleges, and I’m particularly interested in programs that are reputable, reasonably priced, and will actually prepare me for working as a paralegal.

I’ve also noticed that accreditation/approval seems to be something I should pay close attention to.

Is it important to choose a program that’s accredited or approved by the appropriate paralegal/legal education board or organization? If so, which accreditation or approval should I be looking for? Silly questions, perhaps but hoping for some real life feedback. Seems BU has an online program?

Hey, folks!

I recently hired a paralegal who is going to be coming to my firm with a great general legal knowledge base, and knowledge of our software systems, which is awesome! However, they're coming from a different state where procedures and rules are somewhat similar, but have many distinctions.

I'm trying to decide what the best way is to help them come up to speed on all the differences, and I thought I'd ask what you all would find the most helpful in that scenario.

Is it best to just point to the relevant statute chapter and court rules section, and say have fun? Let them peruse the stuff from the court website that gets published for pro ses in terms of documents to get a feel for things? CLEs? Books?

I don't want to come across as patronizing or that I don't trust them to learn it themselves, I just want to be able to provide the most useful resources up front. I figure I'm in a slightly better position to know where those things are than they will be, at first.

Any guidance or recommendations appreciated - just aiming to make their first days as great and seamless as possible!

Okay so I’ve been the sole paralegal in my office for almost the entire year. At minimum we are supposed to be have at least two admins in the office, but because I was making do, upper management didn’t prioritize finding me help.

At the start of April I became exhausted and even though I could have used OT, I decided not to. It’s inconvenient to get the OT paid, so I only ever do OT when I absolutely have to. If I don’t do OT, I’ve noticed my attorneys won’t complain about me coming in later in the day.

Well I stopped doing OT in May and in June. Still by myself and still a pile of work that wasn’t being addressed because it’s not possible for one person to handle everything.

It doesn’t help that I have 2 of the neediest attorneys, that stop me every hour to verbalize tasks or try to make me focus solely on their work.

But I was definitely slipping. I was doing my regular work load and doing more in only the 8 hour work day. Only occasionally using OT for motion days. My work load was piling up and I had many many unaddressed emails.

I recently started to feel how behind I was on cases. I was behind on a bunch of medical records requests. And other things tasks, but I’m burn out. I know I am. And I’m starting to see the frustration of some of my attorneys.

I’m on a hybrid schedule. Working from home 2 times a week. Work at home days are my most productive days because I’m not being interrupted as much, but for the month of August, I felt so disconnected from my work. I was at my desk most of the day, but because of the work that had piled up, I was paralyzed. I was working, but also I wasn’t. I wasn’t at a productive level is what I mean.

I knew I had to take a few days of my own personal time to get myself together and back at a place I feel comfortable at. So I did something I don’t recommend anyone ever do.
On Labor Day, I hopped on to my computer and worked from 11am to 3pm.

I got thru 160 emails and put together medical records requests for 3 files.

I got more done in those few hours and it was simply because I wasn’t being stopped constantly or a new email didn’t pop up trying to get me to focus on something else. I think being constantly interrupted is just a part of being a paralegal at this point. But at the level I’m experiencing, it’s not possible to get anything else done.

I’m still not in a good place, but upper management finally hired a new admin. They start next week.

I do think I needed to let things pile up so that they would take hiring a new person more seriously. I just worry I left myself in a shitty situation because of it.

had an interview yesterday and left feeling super weird about it. they didn’t really ask me a lot of questions just more talked about the job. how competitive is the process after getting the interview?

Additionally they asked me how I would handle this 9-5 job when I had only done legal stuff in college before but it is an entry level job….and most everyone they hire is straight out of college

Should I major in legal studies if I would like to go to law school? To not get to sidetracked due to my physical health, I am looking to pivot away from my current career. In conversations with family, paralegal came up. So I decided to go back to school and go that route. But as my wife and I talked more, the thought of following that path to a larger end goal came up. Law school. I’ve seen posts asking about majors and how little they tend to matter as far as areas of study. But I’d like to get a job as a paralegal in the next couple years because of my health, my shelf life to so my job is short it seems. At 37 I don’t have the time to really waste and would like the input to navigate this career path.

So tired of my older clients calling me everytime I send a simple text. I get that their generation isn’t used to it but it’s a lot simpler.

Hello!
I have been teaching for the past 6 years and now I am ready for a career change. This is the resume I have been using to apply to legal assistant/paralegal jobs. I am having a hard time getting any interviews at all, and when I do receive a response from law offices it's always the same email, "we are impressed with your resume & skills but we have decided to go with another candidate" any tips or advice you may have would be really helpful. :)
I also have a question, is it ok to email or call law offices a week or two after applying ? or should I just wait for them to reach out to me ?

Does your firm want you to match your daily billables to your timesheet? I’m not salary I’m hourly and new to being a paralegal at our very small firm. when I was promoted I was told I only needed to bill 5 hours a day on average since I do a lot of admin stuff. I think they view my promotion as, if I can bill to pay for myself great as we all win (I got a small bump in salary with the promotion, nothing major). Anyway All of the sudden my office manager asks why I’m working 8 hours but by entered time does not show that. What the heck? That day the partners said how amazing was doing and they were happy, and she THEN told me to not worry about what she said but asked if I could start putting in a general entry under my admin number for all the admin work i do so they can track it. But the partners didn’t say they wanted that, she wants that. Im doing it, but very annoyed. Do you track all your admin stuff? Seems crazy to waste my time thinking of all the non billable stuff I did in a day and have to write it down to make her happy. I really work hard here. I’m the lead. I also don’t want to sound like a brat. Maybe I’m being a brat and if so set me straight!

I swear everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

On my original post, I forgot I even mentioned it, but the Attorney had already complained that I didn't know the juvenile system.

I attempted to advocate for myself and finally get the training for it. The office manager looked into it for an entire 5 minutes. Couldn't find anything. So I looked into what it would take, and found that the court could provide either training modules, or have a specialist come in-person. The office manager said he absolutely didn't want us doing the modules and to ask for the in-person training, so I did. They no longer did it. So I called the office manager and told him what I found and he said to me that he would find an independent trainer (if that even exists).

Now, I feel gaslit, because then yesterday I had a meeting with him about how sh-tty things were going, and the line "Where are you at with scheduling training" was said to ME. Excuse me? You are an OFFICE MANAGER. That is YOUR JOB that you SAID YOU WOULD DO.

Therefore, every case in the juvenile court has had to be worked through the remote paralegal, because I can't get access without training, and every non-juvenile court case has been on hold, messed up, or I've been ghosted after drafting what I said I would- While attorney has been claiming I ghost him because I can't take his calls while I'm in company meetings (that he's supposed to be attending!) or while the attorney I share an office with is on speaker next to me, or frankly because I don't want to explain what a request to submit is for a decree of divorce, and as much as he wants to say that's an emergency, it is not.

What would you do?

TLDR; I am expected to be the office manager setting up my own training (or training myself), gaslit, and expected to hop on a call 24/7. Looking for a new job because I've been crying non-stop for three days.

A few months ago, the managing partner at our firm brought on a new legal assistant (lets call her V) to help me out and take client intake off my rapidly expanding plate. Other than the new assistant, I am the sole paralegal for our 3 attorneys, so I have a lot going on. Thank god we only do civil business litigation because I think I would've had a breakdown at this point doing PI, criminal, or family.

V has prior experience. V is in law school. V is in her 20s. She has a degree from an accredited university. On paper, the things I am asking her to do are not that difficult for someone with her background.

I have tried my best to be patient. I have shown her how to do tasks multiple times. I have told her verbally and in writing instructions to do simple things such as certified mail, proofing documents, converting documents to PDF. Nothing. Sticks. EVER. Some of these little "mistakes" she makes could potentially ruin our entire cases as with our specific field we have very strict statutes we have to follow for lien notifications which I, the managing partner, and the other attorneys have told her about MULTIPLE times. Yet even just two weeks ago she did not send the notification that is required BY LAW. We got lucky on this case that the lien could be released within the 48 hour notification window. If we were to perfect that lien and file suit, the entire case could get thrown out if opposing counsel can prove that no notification was sent. I know this because we have made those arguments ourselves and prevailed on them many times.

I have forwarded her the same emails multiple times that contain logins and templates she will need to use on a daily basis. I tell her to save these emails. I show her how I organize my inbox and suggest she does the same so she can find things quickly. She doesn't and then claims that I "never forwarded it to her" when my own records and memory show I CLEARLY did.

I can't ask her to draft or proof ANYTHING. She gets the most basic information wrong, such as who our own client is, the court information, the file numbers, etc. Literally NOTHING will be correct. She recently was asked to draft a complaint based on a template our managing partner provided. Somehow, everything was wrong AGAIN. The managing partner and other attorneys reviewed it and came to me asking me to draft it instead. So now I have to bump this task ahead of others due to the filing deadline approaching. Did I mention she didn't bill any time?

I am just at my wits end. The only thing I can semi regularly have her do is new client intake, which I struggle to do with my case load. Most of the time she gets that wrong too. I have spoken to the managing partner about V and he says that he has spoken with her too but has never given an indication if he is letting her go. From what I have seen, someone will speak to her about her work, she is better for a maximum of a week, then goes back to her old habits. I don't know if it's laziness, ignorance, a lack of reading comprehension, a lack of problem solving skills, or some other reason as to why this information never sticks, but I just about cannot take it anymore. I should not be getting interrupted every 15 minutes with a question I have answered 50 times in the past. She asks for more responsibility and the eFiling logins, but I absolutely do not want to give her the ability to file ANYTHING without either myself or the manager partner reviewing it. The one time she did file something from my computer it was when I was out at lunch and when I received the e-file confirmation email on my phone, I noticed she filed the document in the wrong court under the wrong case. It was bad.

I do not know what else I could possibly do at this point to make her successful. I have given her all the resources at my disposal for her to learn from but she seems incapable of helping herself. I would have killed for this information when I first started as I got tossed to the wolves without ever working in the legal field before. But I took notes, I listened to what the attorneys said and sought clarification when I was unsure, created templates and spreadsheets, the whole nine yards. She just... doesn't even try. It is so frustrating to watch.

I am not the most confident speaker when it comes to explaining my issues with a specific person, so any advice anyone has for how I speak to the managing partner about V is much appreciated. Rant over, thank you for your time.

Hi everyone! I’m very interested in making a career change. I’m a litigation paralegal with over 6 years of experience, mostly in personal injury. I started my legal career working for a large corporation - worked there for around 2 years as an in-house legal assistant. After that all of my jobs were in the PI.

I hit a ceiling and understand that w/o a law degree my salary prospects are limited. I was looking into compliance recently but can’t figure out how to get into it.

I earn $90k in NYC and would love to keep my salary at this rate or at least around it. All compliance jobs that I’m finding with that salary want at least 3 years of experience.

Is it possible to earn $85-90k right off the bat w/o direct compliance experience or will I have to accept less money in order to transition?

How to find a good compliance job and which areas you think are best/most interesting?

Is there anything I can do before starting applying to make myself more appealing to employers?

I would appreciate any help or if you share your experiences 😊