Recent post from the UK’s nearlylegal blog describes a familiar problem. Do you agree with this paralegal’s solution?
"I currently have four solicitors giving me work. Regardless of what I explain about current workload, each insists that their work takes priority. Each then gets very annoyed when I do my own form of triage as to what gets done first and what gets delayed. I have to. They are individually incapable of accepting that their work might have to be done later, or by them.
"Let us get this straight, on the off chance they are reading. I am paid (badly) to do casework. This I do well. I am not paid (badly) to spend many extra hours supporting your demands to do work that is necessary because of your poor time management, or because you simply assumed that I would be able to do it.
"What would be professional would be to actually work out, between yourselves, how my workload is to be organised. I suggest you try it."
Thanks for the link. The links from this post raise some interesting and familiar issues. I should be clear I wasn’t complaining about last minute litigation work. As we all know, this happens often and has to be done. The problem for me is the solicitors having their timetable for necessary work, but not informing me until a day or two beforehand, with no mutual consultation. As one of your links points out, keep the paralegals included in the overall case structure and timetable…
But I am also used to effectively running my own cases under supervision), so perhaps I also get annoyed at lack of control. Anyway, my temporary solution is in the comments to my original post.
This is an interesting blog, but I think the US and UK versions of paralegal differ widely.