r/paralegal

I work at a personal injury firm (defense) and I just wanted everyone’s insight on this..

Our firm offers six sick days and 10 days PTO. I have plenty of sick days, so I took one this Tuesday to rest and go to urgent care. I was tested and found positive with the flu (influenza type B) and the doctor told me I am highly contagious and provided me with a doctor’s note advising that I cannot return to work until 8/23.

I forwarded these notes to my office manager, who didn’t respond until hours later, eventually saying I can work remotely. She did not clarify if i could work remotely just today, or the remainder of the week. I worked a full 8 hour day today remotely with no issues and our firm allows remote work. I offered to come in to the office with a mask if they wanted me to without a direct response. I’m getting the feeling that the office manager is upset with me for this whole situation as she blew up at me over email for asking an invoice question today. Should I message/call her asking her to clarify if I am to be remote the rest of the week, or if I should come in using masks? I’m extremely concerned about getting into any trouble/fired.

I'm a long time Plaintiff's PI para looking to move defense side. I haven't done billables since my para cert class back in 2020, and never in my professional career. I'm starting to receive offer letters, and I have absolutely zero frame of reference for what a "normal" or "reasonable" amount of billable hours would entail.

So, ID para's: what is standard? IS there a standard? What do y'all typically bill in a month? Please help me out here, I am a babe in the woods and don't want to sign on to a job without understanding what I'm getting myself into 😂

I’ve been a PI paralegal in Charleston SC since I graduated school, but am wanting to move out to WA state next year. We recently visited Seattle, its neighborhoods, and Bellingham, and I noticed there were almost no personal injury ads except for maybe one attorney in a pink suit. Is personal injury not big in WA, or are there right rules regarding advertising your firm? In SC almost all of our billboards are different PI firm. I’m just curious if I’d be able to find a job in this area of law when we move. I’ve seen some postings in Seattle but almost none elsewhere in the state.

I've been thinking about becoming a paralegal as a male in their early 40s, but I'm worried that my circumstances in terms of age and gender might work against me. I've been reading around, and while I did come across anecdotes of older people successfully pivoting to become a paralegal, there seems to be very little out there in terms of men my age pursuing this as a career pivot at this stage in the game.

My biggest worry is how I'm going to be perceived by a prospective employer, like "why is this 40 year old dude with no legal experience trying to apply for this position?" Especially from male attorneys my age, who might potentially view me as some kind of weird, threatening competition (I have no desire to be come a lawyer), or even look down on me for even trying to apply as an older male (and then subsequently throwing my resume in the trash). Right now, I'm looking at paralegal certificate programs in my area, and I'm very much open to the idea of applying for entry level positions, like file clerk, legal assistant, etc. to get some experience under my belt, but if my gender+age is going to work as a deterrent, then I rather not waste my time and money on something that'll invariably end up fruitless.

Am I overthinking this, or do my fears and worries have merit? Are there any male paralegals here that started out later in life that can provide their perspective on this?

Hi! I'm looking to join the field and maybe eventually become a paralegal down the road. What I'm doing now is just applying for any openings to be a receptionist or legal assistant but I'd like to work my way up to paralegal at some point. I just got an interview with one of those big TV commercial law firms and it's personal injury on the plaintiff side. Receptionist role. I scrolled through this sub for hours and kept seeing nothing but negatives for plaintiff PI. Can someone in PI please let me know their thoughts on if I should even entertain this?

For reference I just left a very stressful career path and was moreso hoping to get into estate planning or some sort of "simple" law. Thanks for any advice in advance.

also I'm only considering this because it's a foot in the door for law experience. I am aware that wanting to do a different field of law looks kind of bad when applying to another field lol

Hi all,

I have inattentive ADHD, and while I take medication, I still struggle with organization. I'm currently working a very part-time job doing filing at a law library, and I was thinking about getting a paralegal certificate. My question: If you have ADHD/AuDHD, how do you cope? Do you use meds? Also, I have an underlying mental health condition, which is being properly treated. Is working part-time as a paralegal possible? In addition to all that, I'm extremely sensitive, and I don't know how I'd feel working for attorneys that are demanding and/or verbally abusive. Any thoughts or comments would be welcome!

I've worked in legal for 8 years. In September I'll be at my current firm 2 years, I haven't gotten a raise since I started here. It's just me and 2 attorneys, I see all the settlements and for the most part know how much money is coming in. I'm the first employee with legal experience my attorneys have ever hired, they previously had a young woman who worked at their favorite golf course work for them. My attorneys are not accustomed to "managing" employees or anything like that, they regularly forget to pay my quarterly bonuses. Hopefully that sets the scene enough, now my question is how should I go about asking for a raise? Since I started in September 2024 I've been making $26 an hour. I haven't had to ask for a raise at my 2 previous jobs they just automatically gave them to me after a year or so and then after another year etc. In addition to bringing up in the conversation in general how much more should I ask for? Bc if I'm gonna muster up the balls to do it I want to end up with more than like an extra $60 per paycheck. I'm in MO I guess medium cost of living area

Apologies if this is the wrong way to ask this, but hopefully this post is helpful for me and also helpful for paralegals in the area going forward.

We are going to advertise for an experienced paralegal position at our (small) personal injury firm located in Northern Virginia. I want to make sure that we are offering a competitive salary and benefits. I’m not interested in hiring someone for less than they are worth.

We are looking for someone with, let’s say, 5-10 years of experience (or more!).

What would be a fair salary / bonus for such a paralegal? Looking for benchmarks in large suburban areas, or Northern VA specifically if anyone wants to chime in. We’re not necessarily looking for bilingual, but Spanish is always helpful so I imagine that factors into price as well.

As the title shows! I'm being asked to read and have an understanding of at least 9-10 of the Texas Rules and Civil Procedures here at my new job.

What's the best way yall handled the task of reading and understanding of these rules? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Also I'm in PI, wrongful injury, workers comp, etc.

Thanks in advance!

(P.s doing my first ever disclosure was amazing!)

I’m the only litigation paralegal in my firm under 3 (soon to be 4) attorneys. I’m brand new, started this summer and I’ve had no schooling or previous experience in doing this. They really took a chance on me and I’m kinda blowing it. It’s a lot of work, I stay almost an hour late most days, but I try not to stay longer because I do have a family to go home to. Every single paralegal since the firm opened has been fired. I’m under a lot of pressure. I do the job well, but apparently I keep making grammatical errors in my documents. This is very probable, I won’t lie. I’ve got a lot on my plate and I rush to get things done. I do review my documents 2-3 times but I guess things do still slip through the cracks. I might be skimming a little more than I realize. They’ve mentioned it before but today they sat me down and said it stops NOW.

I totally get it. I can’t blame anyone else for that. Everything I draft gets reviewed before it’s sent out or filed, but I know they don’t want to keep fixing my errors. They said I was doing great besides that, then followed it up with saying I need to start keeping a LOG of every single thing I accomplish every hour. ??? This one was totally random and they didn’t give a reason why.

Feeling super confused and not very secure in my position and just wanted to rant I guess.

I am paid $24 an hour as a litigation paralegal with 7 months of experience. am I underpaid? I work in a high cost of living area

Hi all! I'm only a year into working as a paralegal and my partner and I are moving states in about six months (of course my firm doesn't know that yet) when we move I will likely have to change my practice area because it's very niche and not a lot of firms where we are moving to have this practice. I also hate my practice area so I'm looking to try something different. I've been working in transaction law (public finance to be specific) and everyday we are so swamped with deadlines that don't feel humanly possible. I'm often working 10 hour days without a lunch and even then there's still more to be done and constant fast approaching deadlines and turnaround times. I think this is also because our firm is short staffed on associates since not enough lawyers practice this - leaving a lot to fall on me and the other paralegals.

I’m interested to see what areas of law some of you work in if you ACTUALLY like your job and don’t have to work more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis. Looking for something steady that keeps busy year round but not so busy that I don’t have a personal life. I’ve been thinking about family law, litigation, or real estate law? Can anyone offer insight here?

I have like the usual stuff ready to go. Any recommendations?

hi all! I'm actually a legal assistant and would like to know if my pay is low or if i'm being too ambitious, as it's my first job out of uni (I graduated early in December.) I work at a small firm as a legal assistant in Los Angeles mostly focused on employment law but do a bit of everything. I've worked for just over 6 months at the firm, and that is when they do first considerations for raises.

I do intakes, filings, book depositions, draft discovery, and all the usual admin assist tasks. Two of the other legal assistants have recently quit to go to law school, so I've taken over their specific ongoing tasks from them, such as saving everything to our internal system, coordinating vendors, etc.

I currently make $20/hr without any benefits. i feel like the work and stress it gives me especially for such a high-cost & corporate area of LA is worth more than what I'm paid right now, but it's only 6mo in and I don't have other experience to compare to. I work full time and do overtime often since I'm usually in office alone, so any physical tasks like mailing or binders have to be done by me. (Additionally, I was promised a WFH day of my choosing (everyone else's is friday) but the office is making me do Tuesdays because they need someone in office on Friday. Is this something to even bring up or should I just suck it up?)

I'd of course like to request a raise as we're encouraged to after 6mo, but I'm unsure what to realistically expect or even what to ask for - any guidance even if random would be really appreciated.

I am a legal assistant and the big thing that I focus on is client case management and I’ll help the paralegals on occasion.

The other month, my manager had a meeting with me and discussed what I do. I don’t have a lot of billable time due to me keeping up with case management, so he was grilling on me. I was honest with it and I gave him a whole list of things of what I do. After that meeting I started to ask around my peers and attorneys to see if anyone needed help or had time to teach me new things. Everyone said that they would let me know but no responses which I kept asking.

Last week, my manager comes in and asked me what I do…as if I didn’t give him a large list and then he called me a liar. Every time I would explain myself he would shut it down and it felt like gaslighting. It was out of the blue and I was scared that I was going to lost my job. Apparently management started to hyper fixate what I do and didn’t like how I was doing them but didn’t communicate anything to me. I don’t understand how everything I said was forgotten

Tbh I never liked the job, but now I dread coming in. Management has never been consistent and I’m thinking about aborting ship because I can’t do this

Is this normal behavior?

3 months ago, I left my small firm paralegal job to go to a big law firm for the salary increase. It’s been 3 months and I literally have no work to do. I assist with some out of state attorneys (where there’s a 3 hr time difference) and that gives me some work but barely anything. I’m really struggling with commuting an hour to and from every day to basically sit at my desk doing nothing all day. I really like the firm, and my team but they are all inundated with their work and very minimal tasks can be passed to me. At my old firm I did LOTS of drafting, client communication, and document preparation and work for the attorneys I was assigned to. I’m really trying to hold out hope that things are going to pick up for me at my new firm, but it just seems very stagnant. I am always vocal about being willing to assist with anything and anyone, but as someone who likes to keep busy i’m having a really difficult time with it not being reciprocated. Does anyone have any advice from being in a similar situation?

I can’t be the only one that will receive a court notice that explicitly says “Administrative- No Appearance Required” or “No Appearance. On the Papers” and my attorney is adamant that I need to call the court and confirm.

The notice can say “in person, court room 149) or via zoom link and the zoom link is right there for them to use, and I’m still instructed to call and confirm.

And yeah I call, but I have never had a moment where the instructions didn’t already match what the clerk was going to tell me.

The only time it makes sense for me to reach out to the court is when the notice says reach out for appearance details.

Is this just an anxious attorney habit or should I be more cautious with these notices?

My fellow PI paralegals. Have you too felt the rage and frustration with Chartswap Insights since the switch happened. I’ve seen so many emails to support and spoken with so many reps about missing documents or saying no records found when I have a copies of their discharge paperwork and older records. Ever since the merge and or switch I feel like it’s been a nightmare and also charging $37 for every single request is ridiculous for one sheet of paper. Literally they charged $37 for the request and then $2 for 1-2 pages.

Sorry I just had to let that little rant rage out because I am beyond frustrated with the new system especially with the way they handle billing. This honestly makes me miss doing QDROs 😆

Just trying to figure out the best way to “print” news articles without all the craziness. Thank you!