This question may be a little too vague, but I'm hoping someone else has gone through this and has some advice.
At the beginning of my career, I basically managed all of our cases and only involved the attorney when I needed him. All of the calls and emails would come to me, and I would either answer them or escalate them to the attorney (I always cc'd the attorney on my emails, but I know he didn't really read them unless I specifically addressed them to him). I did all the case management and deadline tracking. Instead of the attorney assigning me stuff to do, I would go to the attorney and basically say what I thought I needed to do, and just confirmed that's how he wanted me to proceed.
For the past 8 years, I've been working as a contractor in a much more limited role. Basically, I just do what the attorney asks me to do, draft what she asks me to draft, etc. She went a long time without having a paralegal, so she is used to doing everything herself. Now we are trying to take some of the work off her and have me take on more obligations. I've told her how I worked in the past, but I know that she would 100% not be comfortable with that level of handing over the reins (and honestly, now in my career, I don't think I'd be comfortable with it either).
I'm trying to figure out ways that I can take work off of her. I guess what I'm wondering is what tasks everyone considers paralegal tasks v. attorney tasks. Has anyone else gone through this and have any ideas on how to "baby step" an attorney into being more hands-off, or have any recommendations for systems that allow the attorney to have a lot of oversight while the paralegal does the bulk of the work?