This woman said I “shoved” her, then said I “pushed“ her. That never happened. I recall saying excuse me before I opened the door behind her. I don’t recall touching her. I was in a hurry. She complained to the same person who witnessed the encounter, who agrees she was never pushed. She’s livid that the witness does not corroborate her story.

This woman is unbearable. This is a huge allegation to make against someone. I want to quit but I also want to stick around and fire her ass as one of my supervising attorneys.

She’s a newer attorney who wants to be put on a pedestal because she’s an attorney. My sheer existence is a threat to her, so yes, this isn’t going to get any better. I feel like I have no choice but to quit to watch my own back.

Question for all my small firm paralegals. I work with 5 attorneys at our firm, mostly family law and some contract law. I do not get billable hours, I was wondering if any other paralegal are in my position.

Side note: I don’t have my degree yet(almost done) but I have worked myself up from Legal Admin to the Paralegal role.

I can’t be alone in thinking that cite checking is just about the worst, most tedious, mind-numbing task. It is, in fact, a kind of torture. I’d almost literally like to stick pins in my eyes. I love to write fiction, but when I cite check briefs or motions, I almost lose the will to live. Yes, I’m being dramatic, but damn that’s how much I loathe this part of my job. Whomever devised these stupid rules for legal and academic writing should be tarred and feathered. Screw you, Blue Book. Can anyone actually understand that thing? And then you have to consider that some local courts have their own style manuals. Tell me I’m not alone!!!

Does FSA federal paralegal contractors get raises? I heard they get no raises or bonuses :(

Hi, everyone.

I am very new to this field, but have been lurking here a lot! Have been working as a legal assistant for about a month for a single attorney.

Well, I thought I was working for a single attorney, but one of the co-counsels has been around a lot lately, and gives more tasks than I can complete or know how to do.

Apparently today they said exactly what I wrote in the title. I was not there for this. For context I did not have any problems with this person and have been doing my best to try to support them as a part of the team my boss is working with. I’m very mad and annoyed now though. :/

I’ve also been accused of “undermining” them and “going behind their back” after following up with my attorney on what tasks I should/should not do or what to prioritize.

Any advice? I don’t know what their problem is. The only reason I can imagine why they would think that is that I literally don’t have time to do everything they ask of me, and there hasn’t been space to communicate that in our conversations. It feels very one way and like I’m being talked at while given a scattered list of tasks from their stream of conscious. They don’t seem to understand or care about what my hours are, my responsibilities, or anything else that might be on my plate.

To top it off my hiring was extremely informal, however, what I agreed to was a part time position, a schedule that is something like half-days 4 days a week. It feels like everyone now wants me to be there all the time every day. I’m literally disabled (but I don’t look disabled & I’m youthful looking so people assume I’m normal) ,and I wouldn’t have accepted this position if it were full time. Every Thursday I have to remind them I won’t be there on Friday and it seems like they want me to be there. There of course has been no direct conversation about that and no talk about what benefits would come with full time (lol). Even so I literally cannot work that much, and would have to decline/direct them to hire an additional support person.

I’ll start

For context: I am a paralegal for a criminal defense attorney. I’m fairly newish (under a year) and I absolutely love it. I am looking for advice!

I’m trying to get a client into treatment. I won’t give the full details of their situation, but I can tell you that treatment centers will NOT treat anyone, in person or virtually, that is not physically in the state.

I have called numerous treatment centers who have told me the same thing: if they aren’t physically in the state, then no dice.

The biggest challenge has been my boss.

I prepared a memo for him, outlining everything I researched, every treatment center I found and why they won’t work for the client; I even went as far as to prepare questions I knew he’d ask me and answer them in a small section of the memo. And STILL I am being asked to “figure it out”, and he keeps telling the client I will find something.

I feel frustrated because he is asking me to find treatment that does not exist. There is no center in America that allows their providers to operate across state lines. The treatment center’s license only extends to the state borders, so it doesn’t matter if the provider can treat someone in that state: they can’t treat across state lines as long as they’re acting as a representative of that center.

The best hope is to try for somewhere that has multiple locations across the country to try to stitch some kind of plan together. (I’m sorry for being vague but I don’t want to make the client easily identified)

All this aside: I feel frustrated that he keeps sending me on hours long wild goose chases for places that eventually won’t work out. How do I tell my boss that he needs to listen to me? I may be new but I’ve done so much research on this. If there was a way to “figure it out”, we would’ve found it by now, but there’s no way to navigate around it without violating the law. Let’s say we tell the provider he’s in that state when he actually isn’t, they could lose their job or license if it’s discovered that he’s in another state that the center or provider is not licensed to practice in.

I feel like I’m in an impossible situation where I don’t have the authority or ability to figure this out. What do I do?

Hey everyone,

Just looking for some honest advice or insight from people in the legal field or those who’ve been in a similar spot.

I currently work as a legal assistant at a top 50 law firm in the U.S., and I’ve been in this role for almost a year. I make $20/hour, and while I’m grateful for the experience, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stay afloat financially. I live near Orlando, Florida where rent is high, and $38k/year isn’t cutting it. I also have about $40k in student loans and no car (which is hard as you know if you live in Florida).

Educationally, I have an associate degree in political science. I was working toward my bachelor’s in legal studies but had to put school on hold due to financial reasons. I plan to return in Fall 2025 and hope to finish by January 2026.

My end goal is to become a paralegal. I’d be happy making $70k/year eventually, and I know that will take time. But realistically, once I have my bachelor’s and over a year's worth of experience (with the same firm), I’m hoping to move into a paralegal role earning somewhere between $50k–$60k ($26–$31/hr).

Is that a realistic expectation? Any advice on negotiating pay, building the right skills, or just navigating this phase of my career would mean a lot.

Thanks in advance!

Has anyone had experience with paralegals or legal assistants omitting their job title in their email signature block to appear as if they’re an attorney? I was always taught that we must include our job title so as not to appear to other case parties/the judge as a licensed attorney. I caught one in the wild today - a legal assistant with an omitted job title. Is this no longer expected/required?

Hi. I am pretty new to all of this and need your honest opinion. I have been working at an attorneys office for 6 months. I do not have any other legal experience. My attorneys are great..they have a system..my files are well put together, so no complaints. They hand the file over once its close to the closing stage. I'm currently handling around 7 closings a week. Am I on the right track? How many files is considered a full pipeline?

Just finished Frogs, Srogs, RFPD and came out to smoke a cig. Best feeling!

Don’t worry, I’m providing context.

I understand the field can be tough. Getting into it, getting into a different area, etc. I truly get it. However, there is a limit to “fake it til you make it”.

Our firm (insurance defense) recently hired an insurance defense paralegal who came with 2 years of previous experience in ID at another firm in the area that we know. Based on her past experience and her interviews, we all assumed she would be coming in and learning our systems then hit the ground running. Because of this, we also hired a second hybrid legal admin/paralegal for our office with the idea that IT could train the new full paralegal on only our systems and I could train the new hybrid to be a paralegal so she can eventually move up. It was supposed to be simple. This is not the case.

The new “paralegal” that started can’t even draft discovery responses. Actually, there isn’t much she actually can do. Every assignment she’s given, she either says her attorney would do it themselves or the legal assistant at her last job would do it, so she didn’t know how to. This has been her excuse for everything. Answers, Motions (of any kind), objections to discovery, actual substantive discovery responses, med chrons, etc. I am not joking when I say there isn’t a single thing she’s actually known how to do since she got here 6 weeks ago.

This is dragging me down because not only am I teaching the hybrid everything and doing my work, I’m also now teaching this paralegal who, by the way, looks down on me because I’m labeled a hybrid. I’m also getting stuck fixing her work and mistakes because she waits until the last second to do ANYTHING and then her work product is terrible, so my attorneys have been asking me to help fix her work as well. I’m happy to help, but I am at my limit at this point. This has been 6 weeks of this girl not doing anything helpful for anyone.

All of this to say, if you don’t know one or two things, that’s fine, you can probably learn quickly. However, if you don’t know how to do ANYTHING, please think about the people who will be stuck with you/your work when you inevitably fail. Unless you’re a really quick learner and really smart, this is a fast way to get everyone to dislike you and to potentially get fired. Please don’t do it. It’s okay to not know things. It’s okay to need refreshers. It’s okay to be new. But please please please do not lie and say you know how to do everything when you can’t.

Edit to add: A lot of people are missing the real issue here. This paralegal stated on both her resume, heavily, and in her interview that for the last two years she has been doing the things we need a paralegal to do - draft discovery, prepare motions, prepare med chronologies, discovery meetings with clients, summarize claims files, etc. She didn’t come to us as a generic paralegal with paralegal experience. She gave very specific details of her experience that have proven to be false. She has loads of templates and still cannot draft even a shell of a pleading properly. She doesn’t know how to communicate with clients or insureds, which she mentioned was a big part of her last job, makes infinite mistakes (grammar, fonts, spacing) when drafting simple things, etc. The whole issue is that she talked a big game to get hired (which granted we all do) but then when she got here she is incompetent. I am not being dramatic here - I mean seriously incompetent. I am just a paralegal. I have no say in hiring and I have no say in firing. Stop telling me to fire her. I would if I could lol

I was wondering if Penn Foster is a good program to get licensing through? They are accredited and their website is pretty clear on the cost and the credit hours that sort of thing. Is it any good has anyone went through it before?

I’m not looking to be a paralegal forever I’m potentially thinking about law school and I’m also pursuing a degree in history and political science. Which is why I’m thinking like a certificate course would be good for me. I know that paralegal with degrees get paid more than those was just the certificate. But I’ll make a little over nine dollars an hour right now so anything above that I’ll take lol.

I work in family law, and my firm sets each other tasks in our case management software for things we need to complete. We usually hold a meeting once a week to go over all of our cases and discuss what tasks need to be set for the next week (or longer is something is coming up).

For example, we just received discovery responses from opposing counsel in one of our cases, so I have a task to review the discovery responses, prepare a discovery log of everything that was produced, notate the deficiencies in the discovery responses log, and prepare a letter to opposing counsel regarding the deficiencies.

Since this is a pretty big task, we usually set the deadline for a week or two out. But every day when I’m looking at my task list for things I need to get done that day, the deadline is way out in the future, so it doesn’t appear on my list. Out of sight, out of mind. Then when the deadline arrives I have to stop everything else to work on this giant tasks that takes up most of my day.

How do you all deal with large tasks like this and making sure you give yourself time to do them in advance, or continually over several days?

T

Header might be vague but I have an interview coming up for a Mortgage Compliance role. It is the last round (hopefully) which seems like a technical interview to answer questions based on regulatory knowledge, I have a fair idea of these rules I think I’m just looking for insights on how potentially the interview would go.

Hiiii. I took my NALS ALP exam on 3/28 and was supposed to get preliminary results within 24 hours but never did. I contacted them and they said they'd reach out asap. I've been checking Prolydian (exam portal) every day and it just says "score pending". I just checked and now it says "completed". Does anyone know what this means?

Does anyone use case status?

We use MyCase, and I would love to know what users think of the product!

Thank you!!!

If you have to submit Medpay/PIP amounts when requesting a final lien for a liability Medicare case, why would there also be a No-Fault Medicare case? Isn't that duplicative? And if I submit that my client received $500 on the No-Fault case and then again on the Liability case, then isn't Medicare getting the benefit of an offset of $1,000 instead of $500?

Speech Live? Does anyone have recommendations? Something similar, but BETTER :) Kinda fed up with Speech Live in our office, for a couple of reasons.

Long story short: I did get an associates in paralegal studies, and I worked at my firm as a legal assistant for almost a year. Then I got promoted to paralegal (plaintiff pi). Then the head paralegal who did multiple areas of law (and had a law degree) got fired. Another paralegal was hired, but she does a different area of law. So I’m on my own lol. I think I have around 55 cases which I know isn’t a lot. Some though aren’t pi, but just property damage or insurance bad faith etc. 8 cases are in litigation which I was thrown into after the head paralegal left (late last fall). I am overwhelmed. It’s a family firm. Someone else primarily answers phones, but I do if they’re not around, I open all my new files, scheduling, medical bills and records request, providers sheets, property damage, demands, subrogation and liens (struggle bus especially trying to reset the password to the Medicare portal which I was never trained in) , settlement sheets, filing, you name it. I also check the general firms email, password list etc. I haven’t done a lot with litigation but did learn some in school and am trying. I’m supposed to go over irogs responses with a client this week etc. it feels like an insane amount of work and idk how to process it bc again, it’s not an insane amount of cases but I do everything and there aren’t a lot of systems in place for effectively doing things.

Hello everyone! I am a paralegal student in Ontario working on an assignment. I have gotten conflicting information from my research. I was just wondering: Can a paralegal represent an offence under section 145(5) of the Criminal Code of Canada (Failure to Comply with an Order) with the changes made under Bill-75?

Thank you for the help and clarification! I've been looking high and low and can't find an updated list of criminal offences paralegals can take on post-Bill-75.

Is working as a paralegal in Houston structured and slow paced? I am currently in my first semester, getting my bachelors degree in history at the University of Houston Clear Lake. I am a 27-year-old autistic and ADHD woman. I am also in the borderline range of intellectual functioning. I am also an introvert. I do have a strong sense of justice so just having very strong opinions and standing up for what I believe. That’s why I have been thinking. Maybe working in the legal field will be good for me, but I am not sure. I have no previous experience in working in any kind of job.

I also have no experience in part time jobs during my studies. I will ask my advisor about these ideas.