I literally made a post a day ago saying I think I’m gonna be fired. And today it happened. They didn’t care that It was only a week I worked there. They didn’t care that I moved to a whole other state
And they even provided relocation assistance. But clearly none of that mattered

Realistically, I can’t afford to pack up my shit and then go home because now I’m in a lease that I don’t wanna break or can’t break .

So now I’m in a state with no friends, little support and not sure how I’m gonna pay September‘s rent. Anything would be appreciated honestly guys.

Dear Estate Planning Attorneys and Clients,

If you are going to create multiple, multiple trusts and/or entities for various purposes, please for the love of God start naming them distinctly from each other and not just by removing a single letter. PLEASE.

Regards,

A T&E para and her tension headache

I’m only a legal secretary at my public defenders office, putting in the work to move up to paralegal eventually. I’ve been in the role almost 8 months now and it’s been a solid experience, except for one attorney.

He doesn’t take phone calls from clients more than half the time. He refuses to allow meetings scheduled to speak with clients. When he does communicate with clients, it’s the bare minimum and he’s notorious for hanging up on clients and walking away from them mid-conversation. We secretaries have to deal with being chewed out by his clients who call multiple times a day, every day, every week, every month because he won’t speak with them and then have to take the brunt of further complaints because they get pissed when the director and the judges won’t approve a change of attorney.

The kicker is that he apparently gets away with it because he’s been here for 20 years, the longest serving public defender.

Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

Very small prosecutors office, including me there's three of us support staff.

Now tell me why me and girl A are swamped, but girl B can sit there on her phone scrolling and eating snacks?? She messes up her cases and we have to go in and fix them. So there's no point in giving her tasks cuz we just gotta go in and clean up the mess after her. She's been here nearly as long as us so neither of us wanna be teaching her things she should already know. Our boss doesn't really care, and honestly had no idea how bad it is until I said something. No use in calling her out either, she takes everything as a personal attack.

It's hard to detach myself because I care so much about my job and the victims we're getting justice for while she exudes apathy.

I’d like to think I’m an emotionally regulated person, but enough is enough.

Just a little background, I left a large national firm to work in a very small firm. When I say small, I mean me and two partners. I had worked with these people before, we did a big trial and became friends and they asked me to come work for them. I was elated because I was able to work from home, but I would be traveling and do trials all over the U.S. The female partner was a friend and around my same age (40) and the male was significantly older (73). I had my reservations about him because he was demanding and grumpy, but I thought well, I’m working from home and I get along really well with the other one, so it will be fine. It was fine, at first.

The first 3 months, the female partner, Linda disappeared and I was only working with Dave, the other partner. He was rude and demanding, but sometimes nice so I went on. I bill a lot of time and contribute a lot to the firm, I handle all the day to day, calendar, etc. Over time, Linda, the female partner puts in less and less time, pops in and out and Dave gets more and more rude. Since he’s old, he constantly misses emails. He then started accusing me of not doing what he’s asked (even though I did and emailed him several times to follow up). He cannot read the emails or open attachments. He just can’t and after 2 .5 years, it got horrible. He failed to take responsibility or accountability for anything, missing things. Meanwhile, nothing bad happened, we didn’t miss deadlines, hearings etc. at this juncture, I was getting really upset. I spoke with Linda and voiced my concerns and she tried to mitigate the situation, but it got worse. I ran the billing and learned that j had billed the most time for the year 25-26. There were no annual reviews, no check-ins, no raises (although I did get a Christmas bonus).

Finally, one day, he threw me under the bus and accused me of not preparing his PHV papers even though I did and sent him multiple emails following up on whether he reviewed them. We even talked about it at a meeting and I told him I did that. He sent an email to local counsel and he included all these other counsel literally calling me out by name and saying “apparently I hadn’t done that” because everyone, including counsel has been telling him to do that. In any event, I had it and I immediately picked up the phone and called my previous job and made the decision to leave this place. At this point, they tell me that I’ve “betrayed” them and let them down. I think I’ve been let down. I feel really bad about the whole situation, but when is enough, enough?

I have been a legal assistant for almost two years at an insurance defense law firm. I enjoy my job and feel confident in the work I produce . The attorney I work under has commended my work product and work ethic multiple times throughout my time there. I also received a small bonus at our yearly review last year and received positive comments from the partners. Despite the seemingly positive feed back, the raise was VERY small considering my work evaluation went positively with no comments or concerns brought up, only praise.

I want to further my career and am looking for input/advice from others who have experienced this process. I am looking into becoming a certified paralegal and eventually a Florida Registered Paralegal. Would the certificate and/or becoming a Florida Registered Paralegal realistically be beneficial in building my career to find better paying opportunities?

• ABA accredited paralegal certificate programs in Florida
• The NALA exam (can it be taken without the paralegal certificate if one has relevant legal work experience and a Bachelors' degree, or how does that work?

As a side note, my Bachelors degree is in Criminal Justice.

Been at the same firm for just over 4 years. Moved up from legal assistant. (25f)

Everyone I work with says I’m very talented. I thought about law school but being an attorney sounds horrible and I would like to start a family within the next year which is why I am reluctant to leave and start a new job.

I also make very little compared to other firms, but I like the stability of my job. They also say other firms are super crazy, but I am starting to believe that’s not true.

Is the grass greener on the other side?

I currently do probate litigation would family law be too different?

Have you ever, or been told to, purposely produce duplicate documents in the same production? I've got a huge PDF from opposing counsel with pages and pages of documents that appeared earlier in the same PDF, some with a different one stuck in the middle here and there. Seems intentional. Wondering if attorneys tell staff to do this to run up the opponent's fees.

Hey everyone! I wanted to gauge how screwed I am
Based on my career path. To preface I’m 23 years old, I got my foot in the door at 21 and worked as a legal case manager (pre litigation) for a year. I am now a legal assistant, but again, no litigation experience. I absolutely want to get to this point, but I want to know how bad is it that I don’t have litigation experience at this point in time. I feel like if I branch out into other areas of law I’ll be limited in what positions I can apply for with my lack of experience. I guess I’m also ranting so apologies, but I just feel kind of stressed about it for some weird reason.

Morning, everyone! My printer at the office died, so I got a new Brother machine since I know how to use it and it does everything I need. But, the new one won't let me fax from my PC when I'm working from home. I still fax medical records requests, so I really need that feature. How are you all faxing stuff? Any secure suggestions? I don't have a landline at my place. Thanks!

I'm looking at a 'synchronous online' ABA-approved paralegal cert program. The schedule of classes is 6:30-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday + 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday -- for five and a half months.

This is quite a bit for somebody who is working - I am wondering how much work outside of classroom hours + studying for exams would be considered realistic. Obviously varies by person but would be interested to hear ballpark ideas and experience of people who have taken the ABA-approved courses. Cheers.

I work for a small firm, and there’s a total of 10 of us. The senior paralegals are super close with the attorneys, and I feel like it’s very noticeable. The attorneys only go to the senior paralegals offices, the senior paralegals can come and go whenever, and then there’s the legal assistants plus a scheduler and a front desk assistant.

I’m not going to go into a ton of detail on terms of the double standards I’ve noticed, but what really makes me feel uncomfortable is the fact that they’ll go into each others offices and be talking at normal volume and then they’ll start to whisper.

Based on prior observations, I know they’re talking mad shit. I hate it bc for obvious reasons, as soon as I hear wishers, I can’t help but think they’re talking about me.

Recently, I’ve made a few errors (I’m still in my first year as a new legal assistant without prior legal experience in a law firm), and I already shame myself super hard with the mistakes. Some of them aren’t even my fault but senior staff who is supposed to be reviewing my work, blame me even tho I’ve asked for my work to be reviewed.

I feel like the errors being made is just more fuel for them to talk shit and it makes me feel like the legal field is not for me if it’s like this at every firm.

How is it for those who work in small firms? Do you experience this type of toxicity? Is this everywhere?!

Grammar First, I appreciate all the feedback. I had two mess ups in one day. First it was brought to my attention I miscalendared a hearing. Luckily the error was caught in advance of the hearing so we didn’t actually miss a hearing.

I helped draft a subpoena for deposition and production of business records. I helped with the preliminary drafting and the attorney did the rest. I wasn’t fully confident the final product was correct and I sent to my coworkers who is my supervisor. Sure enough there were errors with the dates and the contents of the subpoenas itself.

At the end of the day a hearing wasn’t missed and I did not serve an incorrect subpoena.

Up to know these have been the only mistakes I’ve made in almost 3 months.

The managing partner and senior associate are currently in trial so I assume they’re more consumed with that than noticing two mistakes.

Law clerk at an extremely small personal injury firm. My job has been consumed by how tedious and time consuming it is to obtain records/bills—spending hours going through incessant phone mazes to determine where requests need to go, relentless follow ups (including nonstop back and forth with insufferable companies like Datavant), hunting down random missing DOS or radiology exams, etc… It makes me hate my job!! Our office is considering paying a service to get these documents for us so that I can spend my time on more substantive legal work.

Any recommendations or insights on your experience working with these services?

I’m already a full time paralegal (remote) but like everybody else, I need to boost the income 😬

Does anyone freelance on the side for overflow litigation support for other firms? Not a part time job, just single projects. If so, what platforms do you use to apply or advertise your services?

I also want to look into offering illustration/demonstrative services for trials since I have experience from making demonstratives in college.

Sometimes I’m given a sample pleading by the attorney in PDF and when I convert it to word to grab the text I have a lot of issues formatting it. It takes me forever to get it look like it does on the pdf like with the numbered paragraphs, indent on each paragraph but starting at the margin on the left hand side. Struggling with the formatting is a huge waste of time.

What’s the best way to copy and paste the text I’ve converted from a PDF while preserving the formatting and putting it into another document? Or is it faster to just copy and paste the text itself and then format it? Thanks for any help. This slows me down to a crawl so I want to find a solution.

I feel there are so many moving parts to this job, it’s a lot from time to time but I enjoy it, sadly it’s slowly been feeling like I’m to become a babysitter to the attorney and remind them of everything and make sure they’re doing everything they need (respond to emails, follow up on meetings with clients, remind to call clients) and I just don’t like that but idk if it’s part of the job or it’s irresponsible and a lack of responsibility on their end??
The past assistant used to be like that and they’re used to it but it’s not my personality, now if it needs to be, then so be it but idk how long I’ll be able to do so.

I'm an ops manager at a tiny firm that will back up our receptionist/admin as needed. I'm halfway through my paralegal program so hopefully this won't be my problem for much longer.

One of the paralegals I support will do ANYTHING to not speak with her clients. She expects admin to handle any and all communication. A client will call with questions I can't answer, she will prefer to have me put them on hold, give me the answer, have me tell them, then put them on hold again to repeat the process with follow up questions. When she could just take the call and sort it out.

For example, she will ask me to email a client for urgent information. Then will check in all day to see if they respond, and then will ask me to call them to get it. I am just as swamped as she is so I'll ask her to call them instead and she'll always find a reason to wait til the following day, despite badgering me all day to get the ultra urgent info. Of course it's me who she expects to call them the next day.

Is it normal for paralegals to expect admin to do this level of communication? I'm not talking calendar scheduling or retainers, but information retrieval for her cases that are already assigned and for tasks that impede her from doing her job.

Hi all! Need some guidance atm. I’m currently a paralegal studies student getting my certificate as I already have my criminal justice associates. Prior to me getting my associates, I went to medical assisting school for the job security ( now that ive been doing it a while I don’t feel like it’s right for me, so I went back to school to do an associates in criminal justice since it was the most interesting for me ) I want to transition out of medical field and into something more towards the legal field however, it seems hard to get my foot in, even after getting my degree in criminal justice I couldn’t land a job due to being a new grad and not having any experience. So my question is, what’s a good entry level position for someone who wants to become a paralegal who has no experience? Anything helps. Thanks!

Hey everyone,

I wanted to know if anyone can let me know do a cheap ABA approved paralegal certification?

I am still upset by a phone call today. A potential client called, previously we'd only talked with his girlfriend who initially called on his behalf to inquire if we would be able to assist him. Once his documentation was forwarded for the attorney's review so he could determine if he would be able to assist, the attorney had me email stating the attorney's suggested options on what he should do. Keep in mind these communications were all through the potential client's girlfriend, who kept stating she would forward our questions to him for him to answer, but he never did. We never talked/communicated with the potential client directly.

Now, back to today's phone call. Potential client called, identified himself, and started saying he did what the attorney suggested he do, which was to call a certain person. Then he started saying what this person was telling him he needed. I started asking questions when I suddenly hear a female voice talking. He had apparently been on hold on another phone which he had on speaker. He started talking to her so I said "do you need to call me back?" I had no idea what was going on. He didn't answer me and I debated hanging up, but I didn't want to be rude so I waited. I could hear the female telling him that he needed to have his attorney send such and such documents, to which he replied he would have his attorney send them.

Here comes the part that has just left me spinning...the call ended and I heard him say Hello? So I say Hi. Then I immediately followed that with "I need to clarify that we are not your attorneys." I did emphasize the "not?" not in a rude way, just firm, and maybe that is what set him off. Next thing I know he's raising his voice telling me he didnt like my tone, that he's a supervisor and he would NEVER talk to his employees like that! I responded saying "I apologize if you thought I had a tone, I certainly didn't intend to, I just needed to clarify that in case there was a misunderstanding." He kept yelling at me telling me he didn't like my tone and that I was very unprofessional for how i spoke to him and then hung up on me.

I am so upset because I know well enough that I had no tone whatsoever. I was just being very firm because we all know from being in the legal field that if it appears someone may think your office represents them, and ESPECIALLY if it appears they are stating that to a third party, that you must immediately clear that up. And, having never talked with him directly I wasn't certain what his girlfriend may have told him.

I am so lost at his reaction and nothing hurts me more than when someone so freely throws an accusation at you that demeans your character. I have been doing this for 34 years and it still ruins my day to the point I can't focus on anything else.

Has anyone ever experienced this? Hpw do you let it go?

Is it normal that a client gives you 4 vague hospitals or providers, 1 of which does not exist, and then you have to just request and try to figure it out and see where else they were referred from the records you get because they don't know where they went for treatment, are confused, or are not giving full information?

if it is normal, is that paralegal work suitable for someone with 3/4 months of experience or is it more advanced?

Hi all. I've been thinking about pivoting towards becoming a paralegal, and have been looking at different Paralegal Certificate programs here in GA as a way to give my resume a small initial boost (already have a BA in something else, but no legal background / work experience). I see that most of the big name schools, like Emory, UGA, KSU, offer a non-ABA paralegal certificate program, all of which are online and can be completed within six months. I also live about 30 minutes from Georgia Piedmont Technical College. Their certificate program is ABA-approved, but it looks like it takes about a year to complete and requires in-person attendance for some classes. That might be difficult for me to schedule around, as I'm currently working and I'm unsure if they'll be willing to work with me on my schedule. If it's night classes though, then it should be doable.

I'm tempted by the quicker completion time of the non-ABA programs, the online structure of them, and the bigger "prestige" behind the Emory, UGA, etc. name, but the fact that I live relatively close to a school that offers an ABA-approved program makes me wonder if that would be the smarter choice.

Anyone have any reviews or feedback about the quality of these programs? Which ones would you recommend?

I was hired to work at a small PI firm after being unemployed for almost a month . I was applying to basically all the all jobs in .major metropolitan area. This job reached out and I was hired.

I was definitely weary of the situation, but I figured I would go for it because I didn’t know how long that would be unemployed so I wanted to get the ball rolling.

On day two, they threw me into the fire and expected me to pretty much know everything. I find out that I’m the only paralegal at the firm and there’s essentially no support. I knew it was a small law firm, I was told there were two or three paralegals, but they went to law school / grad school. I knew it was a smaller firm, but I wasn’t expecting them to be so outdated as you guys know AI is taken over. So at my two previous law firms, they’re pretty much used templates and pretty much guiding you through the demand process. I get to this firm and realize they don’t have AI or templates to go off of. Maybe I sound bratty, but it’s a small family firm and they threw me out into the fire. I barely received any training which I know is common for most law firms. However, they knew I was learning a new case system and like I said I had so many tasks to do. I had to write demands answer phone calls, and do Attorney‘s task. They weren’t really graceful at all. They just assumed because I worked at a bigger firm that I would know everything and like I said this was a shock to me because the firms I were at were definitely up-to-date. This law firm is run by like seven-year-olds.
.

I thought it would be a good idea to let my supervisor know that I’m still kind of learning and I wasn’t used to being the only paralegal. My previous firms usually had 6 to 15case managers/paralegal. I just let her know essentially that I’m still new and I wasn’t expected to inherited the previous paralegal‘s email so I’m looking at communication from months ago. I have clients asking for updates and I literally have no idea what’s going on their case cause I’m new all the cases were inherited and I was just expected to know stuff. The Attorney is passive aggressive speaks to you any type of way which I know is common but still left a bad taste in my mouth.

My supervisor said oh I thought could you come from these two big firms you would know how to handle it. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to handle it. I was just mad cause so much things were coming at me and I was expected to finish task list, respond to Attorney’s demands, etc..

My supervisor started oh you have two years of PI experience and are used to heavy caseloads. Yeah, there is more guidance at the firms. I wasn’t just thrown out in the fire and there was at least two weeks of training for the bigger company. It wasn’t even the fact that I was incompetent. I just wasn’t expecting to have to do all this work with essentially no guidance. She stated oh communication is important blah blah blah. I noticed she goes upstairs and had a meeting with two attorneys.

The vibes were off that’s all I can say . I looked at LinkedIn because I was paranoid and saw my title posted 48 minutes ago. Since I know it’s a small firm. I doubt they are just gonna hire another paralegal. I believe they’re looking for my replacement like I said it’s a small family firm.

I don’t wanna jump to conclusions, but honestly, I have no idea what to do. Like I said, I took a leap of faith, move to another state and this is what I get. sorry to ramble, but this has already taken a toll on me mentally because I have no family or support and now I’m scared essentially of being evicted or behind on rent. because I’m not able to pay rent I have enough for the month of August but I have no idea where to go from there. I would appreciate any advice or how to go about this because I’m not gonna lie. This is destroying my mental health. I was already concerned when I saw it that it was a small family firm, but I ignored my intuition. If it is true, the fact that they even couldn’t give me a week knowing I moved to another state again I might be jumping to conclusions, but I doubt it. It’s so fucked up and I’m now I’m already spiraling. I don’t know why they would offer relocation assistance and just throw me away within a week.
Like I said, I could be jumping into conclusions, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my exact title was on LinkedIn and like I said it’s a small firm.

Has anyone else pursued a paralegal certificate simply because they wanted to learn more, even though they were already working as a paralegal? I know the value probably depends on the program, but I'm curious whether anyone has done it "for fun" and found it worthwhile! Sorry if this is silly! I know there's a general understanding that experience is incredible too -- but I just don't know if I will want to leave my current field/job to gain experience if I just more so have an knowledge itch needing to be scratched!