This paralegal sucks, but I agree Kash is awesome.

How about working 1.5 years with a Federal judge who hasn't bothered to learn my name?

Kash is awesome.

Whiny beeatch paralegals should just get a stuffed "boss voodoo doll" and call it a day.

11:07, maybe you should take some responsibility yourself and change your name to something more memorable.

Anyway, why should your desire to have your name learned take priority over the Judge's desire not to waste time getting to know the temp help?

Kash, I like zombie/horror movies too.

If you want positive reinforcement, don't work in the legal field. We do nothing but screw with people for a living.

What idiot that has lived in the District for more than a week wouldn't put the quadrant on a DC address. Huge difference between 15th Street NE, SE, and NW. 2 of the 3 will get a rich female partner shot and maybe worse.

In the words of Alec Baldwin, "you don't like it, leave."

At what point can I turn to my boss and say, "Hey, I need things to be different around here" without sounding like an ingrate for the great opportunity that I have.

Anytime you feel like looking for other employment.

"What idiot that has lived in the District for more than a week wouldn't put the quadrant on a DC address. Huge difference between 15th Street NE, SE, and NW. 2 of the 3 will get a rich female partner shot and maybe worse."

11:11: Best comment of the day.

Kash, why are you talking about yourself in the thrid person? Also, will you marry me?

What does a paralegal or support staff earn?

What's the max a firm will pay someone with a JD? I'm working on my J.D., my friend is working at a firm with his B.A. - is the J.D. definitely worth while?

Nowhere does it say the person is a paralegal. She sounds like a personal assistant or secretary.

From the opening sentence, inexplicably left off the post above:

"I'm an ambitious recent college graduate. Six months ago, I moved to Washington, D.C., and was lucky enough to land a well-paying job with great career prospects as an assistant at a law firm."

I also love the other two whiners:

"Needs help....", who wants his/her ("low-income") parents to help pay student loans.

"Newly enhanced," who gets a boob job and complains about people noticing it.

11:11, except for capitol hill, high-priced lawyers really only go to addresses in NW, so it's a tad redundant in most cases.

It is said what a bunch of losers exist in big law. In my time in big law I went out of my way to be nice to my admin/staff. It really is not hard to say thanks . . . considering you are making at least 4-5 times what they are.

Seriously, stop being such a bunch of d-bags.

I understand the whoa-is-me mentality but it's a waste of time.

I also can't stand the attorneys that think they are in a caste system in India. But no matter what job you are in, you have to deal with idiosyncracies of people. If your boss tells you to do something you do it. It's simple. If your boss doesn't praise you for showing up on time every day then get over it. If it bugs you that much that it has shaken your faith in humanity then find a new job.

Deterred,

If you need help, create a checklist for yourself, or better yet, compare the letter you finalized with what a "perfect" sample. Or go for a position with a less challenging boss.

11:22, leaving off the quadrant is like leaving off the street number. sure, i guess you could google it in most cases but that's what the legal assistant is for.

It's not about being a d-bag. Why should I give positive reinforcement to some little whiner who can't even address a letter properly?

Actual "horror" story:

A few years ago, I was an associate in a mid-sized firm in a mid-sized Southern city. One day, there was a notice in the break/lunch room about a State Board of Health inspection of the facilities. I was a little suprised, so I mentioned it to another associate. They laughed and said that it was because a partner's secretary made a complaint to the Board of Health about the partner's habit of picking his nose and wiping it on documents before handing them to the secretary. Said secretary was later fired for something or other, during the second week of December, ie., right before Christmas, because said partner was a douche in many other ways and went through secretaries more quickly than he went through Kleenex(TM).

11:25,

Your terrible grammar and usage obliterate your credibility. You could not have possibly been a biglaw lawyer, unless by biglaw you mean the Kansas satellite office of Ballon Stoll Bader & Nadler.

11:11: "whoa-is-me" mentality? Whoa....

I'm still a first-year so I have a feeling my worst stories are yet to come, but I've worked with one partner who will ask me to change a document I've created ("instead of doing X, I want you to do Y") and then when they get it back, I get yelled at for that exact change ("You should have it like X, not Y"). That pisses me off.

11:11 - it's woe. w. o. e. woe is me.

Nobody knows the paralegal/assistant/support staff salary ranges?

Edit: I meant 11:11/11:29.

11:37 - no, it's "whoa" . . . 11:11 is Joey Lawrence

Did you have a geographic area in mind, or should we survey the entire US legal market for you? Biglaw? Midlaw? TTT?

11:37 lighten up and have an oor derve

It's in the assistant's job description to be accurate - all of the time - she shouldn't get congratulations for that.

She never said she was writing a "horror" story. I find your logic deplorable, Cashmere.

Cashmere is a type of wool! The adorable new(-ish) ATL blogger is Kashmir.

11:41 -

Big city (Chicago or DC), Big firm

Thanks!

Actually, 11:11 is Keanu.

Once, the partner I work for asked me to pee on him.

11:50, were you criticized for peeing on the wrong quadrant?

@11:50 - I didn't know R Kelly was a lawyer

11:52, sure he is:
http://www.robertkelleyinjurylawyer.com/

What a bunch of dbags on this post. All this "if you don't like it, leave" crap. People shouldn't be jackasses, especially to their subordinates. If lawyers think their paralegals suck, they should fire them. Hostile work environments produce bad work. Since when was a J.D. or a partnership license to act like a nefarious hag?

Oh the stories I have:

I worked at a V2 firm. There are sooo many good ones. A sampling….

1) A female attorney nicknamed “Satan’s Spawn” who only made comments in purple pen and refused to use any other tape flag besides purple. She would also chew Grape Trident late nite to stay awake and sometimes wore binder clips in her hair. HOT! Of course she made partner.

2) Once, a Partner threw a chair in the general direction of two paralegals and his partner secretary. The chair broke. The Partner was still popular with them because he’d take them out drinking.

3) Not to be outdone, I also heard (right after it happened, from the source) of a Partner who had told his secretary to hold all calls. Well, an important C-level client called and said he must speak with Partner X. The secretary demurred, but the caller was insistent. So, cute, kind secretary knocked, popped her head in and said, “Partner X, I know you said to hold all calls, but Important C-level client really needs to…” Partner X whirled around from his desk to face her and flung his pen toward her head, just like a dart. Luckily, not having played darts for a while since he was a V2 partner and all, the pen whizzed right by her ear and LODGED IN THE WALL. Of course the next time Partner was out of town, all the support staff ran to check out the pen hole. Fantastic.

4) Another time, during negotiations, I was up on the 49th floor. A clumsy fat attorney spilled the cream for the coffee, dribbling it all over the cabinets. He turned to two of us paralegals and said, “Clean it up, NOW.”

5) My officemate, a paralegal, was made to get Satan’s Spawn’s birth control pills from the pharmacy at least every few months. Never mind that the pharmacy was right across the street.

6) At my firm’s summer retreat, there were three summers in a smaller office. Everyone was sitting around at a beautiful old country house, shooting the breeze late night. Gross New Zealand senior attorney starts rubbing a female summer’s back, suggestively, in front of everyone and THEN, drunk dumbass tries to cop a feel, in front of everyone. Needless to say, the advances were unwanted and awkward….

7) During the blizzard of the century in 2003, President’s Day Weekend, not only was I called in to “supervise” the conference rooms for M&A negotiations, I also had to trudge through three feet of snow to get takeout for clients as all other support staff had the day off. Luckily we ended up getting quadruple time. The firm “appreciated our efforts.”

8) Our paralegal manager, intials MK (and no longer in New York) would give us talks about “perception being reality” and “how to be professional.” Maybe that explained why she was a fake-baking B&T whore who would make out with attorneys from other firms at the steakhouse across the street from work. You know, the tone’s always set at the top.

All’s I can say is that my two years at V2 firm really taught me a ton. Like what a crazy place can be like.

[end—longest post EVER]

Blog comment grammar does not determine credibility. No-one whose time is at all valuable (and hence who might be credible) spends any time checking grammar in blog comments. Anyone with the spare time necessary to critique grammar shows at best poor time management skills and at worst that their time is worthless.

I worked for several years at a paralegal. It amazed me that Law Firms (or at least the one I worked at) set Paralegals up for failure.
There was no training. No mentorship and minimal leadership.
The firm took a bunch of highly uneducated, but completely untrained and inexperienced people and put them in charge of the documents for multi-million dollar litigations.
Consequently, many cases were completely unorganized. (Organizing a litigation is something which needs to be taught...)
I've seen important documents lost. I've seen massive waste of resources. I've seen thousand of dollars of photocopies made and then thrown out and then made again.

I've seen paralegals treated in ways which are clearly violates Title VII.
Yet, I am Law School… go figure…

The partner I spent most of my time working for dropped one of his usual messy and often incoherent markups on my desk at 9PM and told me to make the changes and email it to him at home. I said it would take me a while and he said, no rush. I just want to have it when I wake up. I stayed until 2:30 and emailed it to him as he asked. (It sounds like a long time to do a markup up, but it was quite involved.)
When I got in at 9AM the next day, I was called into his office and his secretary was there. He asked me what the f___ I was doing in his document last night. Apparently, he'd forgotten that he gave it to me and re-did his markup and gave it to his secretary. She couldn't make sense of it because the doc had changed due to my changes.
I humbly told him that he had asked me to make the changes and showed him his markup. He screamed that I was a g-d d--ned liar and ordered me out of his office and said he couldn't stand the sight of me.
This was par for the course with this guy. A total lunatic.

I'm a first year paralegal at a firm pretty well known on the pages of ATL, though not in its NYC office. I graduated magna cum laude from a top 25 university. My starting salary? 30,000. That itself is a nightmare. Not sure why I thought it was a good idea to "take time off," before taking the LSAT. Guess I spent too much time senior year getting wasted and thought I needed to find myself. That again, is another horror story, likely to be chronicled on Stuff White People Like.

At any rate 11:20, I'm almost certain no firm’s senior paralegals make what the first year associates make. Get the J.D.

What about assistants? I don't really know all the different positions in a firm, but is there some sort of high paying assistant position? Especially in IP, with technical expertise?

Kash, afraid you need a bit of attention to detail as well. The Slate letter is from someone who says they are an "Assistant". "Assistant" could mean jr. paralegal or secretary, and I read this letter as coming from a secretary.

11:11, if that is true, then adding the NW quadrant is unnecessary. Besides, it is likely the partner was going to a place she'd been before, and therefore likely to know where it is anway.

I agree with the PPs that acting like a d-bag to your secretary or paralegal is just wrong. I don't give a flying f*** who you are, where you come from, where you went to school or where you work, you treat people with respect, especially if you're asking them to do something for you - yes, even if they get paid to do it.

"At any rate 11:20, I'm almost certain no firm’s senior paralegals make what the first year associates make."

In base salary? Agreed, almost certainly not. Including overtime? Yes, there are (a few) paralegals in Chicago who make over $160k/year. They bill basically as much as successful associates, but are more appreciated and don't have the up or out pressure and can actually take their vacations.

$100k is not rare (at certain firms), but generally requires 5+ years experience and/or extreme hours.

Starting pay generally sux.

12:13,

There is a difference between treating people with respect, which should always be the case, and coddling overgrown children who have no desire to perform at the level expected of them. If someone is not doing what they are asked, it is not disrespectful to make them aware of it.

"Besides, it is likely the partner was going to a place she'd been before, and therefore likely to know where it is anway."

Using words like "likely" is what gets one into trouble. It's a good a idea to be certain before passing anything along.

That's true 12:20, but there are ways to tell people to shape up or ship out without screaming. That's something most lawyers I know - particularly in NYC - don't seem to get.

8: approx. number of associates I know of, self included, who have had some version of the "talking with a partner about case and he walks into the bathroom and keeps talking to me, sits down in the stall and continues talking about the case" scenario.

that partner is an idiot, you don't go anywhere in DC that's not NW unless you want to get shot. strong presumption is NW idiotic partner. ypu're not going to the hood, the ghetto. you're not gangsta. it's NW!

12:20 - agreed, coddling is totally unnecessary.

12:22 - if this person is the partner's assistant, she would know if the partner had been there or had prior contacts at that address, therefore felt comfortable leaving off the NW - which would make the complaint legit.

Shut up, listen, and learn. Look, I know that this is your first day and you don't really know how things work around here, so I will tell you. You have no brain. No judgement calls are necessary. What you think means nothing. What you feel means nothing. You are here for me. You are here to protect my interests and to serve my needs. So, while it may look like a little thing to you, when I ask for a packet of Sweet-N-Low, that's what I want. And it's your responsibility to see that I get what I want.

Kash - you should do a post on whether it's okay for summer associate's to hook up with the paralegals at their firms.

I went on vacation for 4 business days. When I returned, a partner went ballistic because during that time an opposition to a motion to compel had to be written and he had to do it himself (even though there were other associates on the case to do the work). He said I had no right to take a vacation when there was work to do (um, then when am I ever going to take a vacation?) and that I never told him I was taking a vacation. I forwarded the email I sent a month earlier back to him to prove I told him of the vacation, and he said I hadn't given him enough notice. He ended by yelling (so that everyone down the hall could hear) that he couldn't stand me and I should leave the firm. He then came by my office the next day to let me know that he was not going to apologize for his behavior. I sent my resume out that afternoon.

I agree in this context the assistant knew that the partner had been to an address on a previous occasion. My poorly conveyed point was that the paralegal/assistant in the Slate Q and A stated she was a "non-perfectionist" and I was just pointing out that non-perfectionists use words like "likely" and "probably" to cut corners and not know in certain or sure terms. It should not have really mattered in that particular example, but I hope you get what I meant.

Where is SEN?

To set the stage....

There was this midlevel associate at biglaw. Girlfriend was another mid-level, same group, same firm. It was girlfriend's birthday, and midlevel had dinner reservations at upscale very nice place.

EvilPartner is known as the difficult partner throughout the firm. Has run off more than a few associates.

Anyway, midlevel let EvilPartner know that he had dinner plans for Girlfriend Birthday that evening. Nothing pressing was going on, just a letter.

EvilPartner had a few minor edits on a letter. Midlevel goes to his office, makes changes, and gets back in about 10 minutes. EvilPartner was not in his office.

Midlevel paces. Midlevel walks the floor to find EvilPartner. The minutes turn to hours. Dinner ruined. Birthday ruined.

EvilPartner is at the nearby bar with other Partners. Couldn't wait less than ten minutes to avoid ruining Midlevel's Girlfriend's birthday.

Midlevel had the nerve to express his displeasure to EvilPartner, which caused EvilPartner to do his typical scream and yell. EvilPartner had his revenge by taking Midlevel off of all his cases, and subsequently blocking Midlevel's promotion. Midlevel was a stellar attorney. So was his Girlfriend.

Both left the firm. Firm lost out, because no one will rein in EvilPartner.

12:43, why didn't "Midlevel" just leave the changed document on the partner's desk, with a note: "Went to dinner. See you tomorrow."

If it's "just a letter," it can wait. It's not like the mail is going to be picked up at 7:30 pm anyway.

Most attorneys are dicks.

Lesson learned the hardway: don't f- or f-with the support staff cause, man, they will burn you, cause at the end of the day, they don't care cause it ain't gonna be their head on the choppin' block.

I nominate 11:58 for post of the month.

Because EvilPartner would go equally ballistic if he were to acutally lick an envelope (or take off the sticky backing), or place it in a FedEx envelope and acutally walk it to the FedEx bin, and the letter had to go out that night for some reason.

EvilPartner would have gone ballistic if MidLevel sent out letter without EvilPartner's final ok.

EvilPartner had a very short fuse, shall we say.

Note: Midlevel only expressed displeasure upon finding out that Partner was at the bar.

Back when I was a legal assistant at a small firm in Century City, a partner offered me $400 if he could feel my breasts. Did I mention he was also dating a friend of mine, who was a secretary at the firm? All class, all the way!

The firm took a bunch of highly uneducated, ....."

The state of being uneducated is a binary function- you either have an education or you don't. There are not varying degress to the state of being uneducated ...

12:47: Exactly. If you know you're going to get a new asshole either way, may as well enjoy the evening before. You have to put your foot down or these people will suck you dry.

I'm trying to think of horror stories from when I was in BIGLAW. I think it may have been when I got a tough assignment about a month-and-a-half in, got no oversight or feedback from the senior associate, turned it in to the partner (who had a fit), and then the senior associate threw me under a bus for the whole debacle. Now that I supervise junior associates, I know how shitty and cowardly that is.

When I was a paralegal, I worked for such a bitchy associate. I didn't complain about her or anything, but I was on a case with her and a really nice associate and I mentioned to the nice associate something the bitchy associate had asked me to do the the former went ballistic and confronted the bitchy associate. It was awesome.

If you've spent more than a month living in D.C. and you still haven't figured out that you always include the quadrant in addresses, you can't expect people not to be frustrated with your stupidity.

yeah, sounds like midlevel was an idiot. next time, email the modified document on the system to partner and be on your way.

While paralegaling at a V10 I had a senior associate (and total douchebag) tell me and the other paralegals working on his case that he didn't like seeing us with any color on our faces (it was during the summer) because we shouldn't be out of the office long enough to get a tan.

Hey 12:56, are you the same chick who wrote to Slate about guys noticing your boob job? If so, see my name.

12:05 - would that firm be CWT?

11:11 and 11:17 -

11:11 would be the best comment of the day if he/she didn't use "the District." Sounds kinda douchy, or really douchy.

And they will love you forever. Treat them poorly, and they will plot your demise.

Did Kash refer to herself in the third person? I think I'm in love.

To all the retards making comments about DC quadrants, did you all go to Georgetown undergrad and do you all still wear popped collars?

11:22 almost got it: "except for capitol hill, high-priced lawyers really only go to addresses in NW, so it's a tad redundant in most cases." It just so happens that your "except for" spans both NE and SE, making your point ..well ...pointless.

Maybe this is why some nice spots around the Hill are not overrun by hot-shot dbag attorneys yet - because you are too afraid to go there. Let's keep it this way - be afraid, be very afraid!

a partner at my former firm was known for having called a para to turn some pages in the document she was reading b/c she'd just painted her nails...

No, DC is and will always be known as "the District." You are the douche.

lol 1:09

Nope. All natural baby!

I love how Georgetown people get rattled about everything. For example, who gets mad about people talking about the top 10 or top 25 rather than the top 13 or the top 14 or whatever random mid-teen number Georgetown gets ranked every year?

Next year, in honor of GULC, I am going to propose to the AP that they make their college football poll the Top 14 instead of the top 25.

It's because GULC thinks T14 means "elite", as opposed to "law school where all the people who want to be elite but are not go and then claim it is elite because it is better than GW and because they pop their collars".

12:56, I hope you didn't accept the offer. A BIGLAW partner can afford to cough up at least twice that much money.

Oh snap!!!

First year, first week, first assignment.

Partner asks me to do some research and draft a memo. I eagerly do so and spend, I'm sure, too much time on it to make sure that every statement is supported, and every puncuation mark is perfect. Partner is happy. Partner gives me a run down of "relevant facts" and asks me to draft a short motion using research from memo. I eagerly do so ("A motion in my first week! Awesome! I must be a genius!")

Using Partner's "relevant facts" I agonize over motion to make sure it is perfect in every respect. I hand in to Partner. Partner makes no redlines or edits whatsoever. ("I am Learned Hand reincarnated!") Motion gets filed.

Turns out, Partner's "relevant facts," while maybe "relevant" were not exactly "facts." More like utter fabrications in direct contradiction of statements already in the record. (Was I supposed to read that? Crap.)

Based on the real facts, every case cited in the motion I wrote actually goes against us. To this day I've never seen a judge reject a motion faster. Threat of sanctions hanging in the air. Client is outraged.

Partner blames me for ruining entire case in phone call with Client, while I am in his office. (It was just a discovery motion.) Turns out, Partner is well on his way to losing dispositive motions. He needs a fall guy. Partner gives me terrible write up that pops up in yearly reviews to this day.

Story, not sure if it is horror...

I had a partner accuse me of overbilling to all of the other partners in my section (but he never approached me), and he pointed to one particular 17 hour day as proof. His logic: If I had gotten in the office even at 6 AM, that meant that I worked all day with only an hour off, for lunch, dinner, bathroom.

One partner finally asked me what happened, and I was clued in to his slander.

For that particular day, I was at the office from Midnight and continued to work until 6:00AM, at which time I slept for an hour, then enjoyed a refreshing cold shower to wake myself up, and changed into a new shirt. I finally left the office at 8:00 PM.

This on a document review that had over 200k pages and I was expected to do in 10 days, by myself, although I was begging for assistance and had other assignments as well. Talk about dreaming the impossible dream...

12:05 here...nah...it's NP, where everyone's a "winner...."

1:35 -

Yes, you were supposed to read the record. You got the rubber hose, for sure, but you could have easily avoided it.

139- really? What if the record is 45 depositions and several hundred thousand pages of produced documents?

1:35 & 1:35

Thank you. I am now terrified of starting my job in the fall.

I notice a common theme in a lot of these posts is that the screamers seem to be in litigation. Please tell me this is true. I would like to believe transactional attorneys are all reasonable, fun-loving people who would never engage in the type of behavior discussed in the posts above.

1:39 = clueless 1L

12:56 -

$400 was a great offer, I hope you took him up. I generally offer $75 for just a feel. For $400 you could have two paralegals at one time in my office.

1:42=clueless 3L

1:42 - one of the most notorious screamers in the whole freakin' profession is a transactional partner (although he used to pull double duty and do both transactions and litigation).

No no- 1:39 is absolutely right. Any lawyer would know that you'd better CYA and read the record - no matter how long. But I had been practicing for precisely two weeks when the motion got filed, and didn't understand the principle of CYA yet. Partner picked me on purpose.

1:35, I guess you need to register a few 17 hour days like the guy in 1:36. Deposition indexes are handy tools as well. If the file had been well-organized by a quality paralegal (see above), then no problem...

1:44 - what could be possibly scream about? The transactional practice offers a friendly, stress-free environment where people just like to work together to make their clients happy. Then everyone leaves and goes and has a nice dinner together . . . RIGHT????

Kash, we really want to give you positive feedback, but without more pics, we just don't know if you're worth leaving the wife.

>>While paralegaling at a V10 I had a senior associate (and total douchebag) tell me and the other paralegals working on his case that he didn't like seeing us with any color on our faces (it was during the summer) because we shouldn't be out of the office long enough to get a tan.<<

I have a nice, pithy, very effective, two-word response for just such a situation:

FUCK YOU!

For those of you who have never had this kind of experience before, just wait. it's easy to say you could have used depo indices, the files could be well-organized then there would be no problem etc... but until you actually are put under the gun and have to deal with what, in most litigation nowadays, is an epic disaster on wheels' worth of discovery that you would have to review from scratch if you are new, then you don't really know what you are talking about.

Kash, we'd be happy to give you your desired "positive reinforcement."

A partner at my old firm set up the only typwriter in the office under his desk. Then he would demand that certain paralegals prepare a document for him, but they had to use the typewriter. While the paralegal was under his desk, he would pull out his wanger and slap the paralegal about the face with it. It was hilarious....

Im just kidding, I made that up. But the stories here are pretty weak. I was hoping for better.

just want to clarify that "135" poster is not the guy who posted the "horror story" at 1:35.

The real 1:35 accepts a portion of the blame - though was pretty pissed at the time.

12:57,

good catch. I know "highly educated" was not right, but could not corner why. Either way, i would have left it out of my brief to the judge.

135:

Been there. Done it. Savvy?

Sorry the TTT hole you work at has nothing but unorganized litigation files. Luckily for you it is all insurance defense, so no big loss.

Where the big boys play, things are a little more organized.

Like the original poster said, he got picked because he was so green. Anyone with any experience at all would have done at least some diligence before drafting the motion.

1:39, I work at S&C.

When I was a summer at an IP firm in NY, a fellow summer's father died and he informed the summer program coordinator and the partners he was working for he would be taking off for a week to fly home and be with his family. Everyone knows, including the summers, that summers do not actually do any work, but he was actually working on a response to a motion - or more accurately, making changes for a partner and looking up some additional cases to throw in as citations. Big evil partner says he can't leave and he must stay, and needless to say, he went anyway, and big evil partner tries to make it so that summer doesn't get an offer, but he received good reviews from other partners and associates, and ended up getting an offer anyway, he even came back and worked for 2.5 years before switching to another firm.

what a stupid crybaby...putting NW on something can mean the difference between something going to a top law firm in dupont or some crack house in anacostia....

This perra needs to deal!

1:56(2)-

Really? I count at least 3 grammar abortions in your 3 sentence post. Bravo! Let me help you "corner" this concept...you are a dipshit.

Partner gave me an assignment at 6:00 p.m., and demanded I have it finished and e-mailed to him before I went home for the night. I e-mailed it to him at 12:15 a.m. and then went home. I saw the partner two days later, and he asked me in passing, "hey, have you had a chance to get to that memo I asked you to write? If not, don't worry about, the issue has been resolved." That was pretty bogus.

Are we supposed to be impressed? Good to see you're nice and busy. Or a liar. Whichever.

For what it is worth, higher proportion of screamers/rageaholics/JAs/AHs seem to crop up in these departments (starting with the worst)

-litigation;
-M&A;
-bankruptcy;

There are also some winners in structured fin (fewer of those these days), but those are more bad/stunted personality than mean.

At higher powered firms (V10-V20) - I have worked at several - some of the transactional non M&A people who do corporate fin or general corporate can be "difficult" or personality defective - but far fewer screamers/ragers.

I would not want my child to be a paralegal.

2:03, while that situation sucks, it happens ALL THE TIME. At least where I'm from.

139-- i actually have some things to get done now, so go f*** yourself, then get back to work at your P.I. firm, 1-800-VICTIM2.

My former boss is a bitch and a half (I say that because she's fat). She's all negativity, all the time. Zero appreciation for anything that I did. I'm convinced that she's manic, because she's not at all consistent from moment to moment. She would tell me to do one thing one day and next day yell at me for doing it. I could never ask more than 2 questions before she started losing her temper with me.

Worse yet, she was the only partner I worked for. I have special training in a niche field, and she was the only person that I was hired to work for. She could not get enough work to keep me busy. When review time came, she first yelled at me for not meeting my hours, and further told me that I was responsible for keeping myself busy. This was with zero warning. On top of which, because it was such a niche practice, there was no practical way for me to seek out other work. She was in complete denial about the lack of work and basically shifted blame to me for everything.

I got out of there pretty fast. Now I'm at a better firm, with a good boss, and loving my job. There is a happy ending afterall.

PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN

PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN !
PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN !
PETER HEIN !
PETER HEIN PETER HEIN !
PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN !
PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN PETER HEIN !!!!!
PETER HEIN !!!!!!
PETER HEIN !

139-- i actually have some things to get done now, so go f*** yourself, then get back to work at your P.I. firm, 1-800-VICTIM2.

I wonder what is with all of this hostility? This is a bad example to set for all of those law students who are starting this fall. We should be telling them about the good experiences we have, and about why we are so fortunate to be making as much or more money as anyone at our age. Can't we all just get along???

2:01

Out of curiosity, is the firm you're referring to Fitzpatrick?

dsfdf

Good point 2:22.

For all you law students out there - Biglaw isn't all bad. I never worked for the evil Partner again. In fact, I found out later that he is notorious for blaming associates when a case goes awry, and mid-level/senior associates know to avoid him like the plague.

I've been taken under the wing of an incredibly smart, caring and experienced litigation partner who is genuinely interested in associate development. The work is hard but I wouldn't dream of leaving at this point.

Pretty awesome to see someone get so irate over harmless anonymous commenting on a gossip blog. That dude (135) will make a greatbiglaw partner.

"Been there. Done it. Savvy?"

1:39, do you work at Sparrow, Barbossa & Turner? I think I remember seeing you at a deposition once.

I was the Jr-most associate on a complex case that was chronically understaffed. Jr. partner, in charge of this case, took an extended leave that was never explained (wonder why?).

Senior partner took over, and wanted to know why the case was such a mess and why it was not better staffed. Sr. Counsel insisted that it was all my fault.

Best time ever I was thrown under the bus.

boo whiners! I love my job and my bosses even though I have been told, "fuck off" "go get me a soda" "why did you go on vacation, that's not allowed" "you're an idiot" (this all while being told I am the best in the firm and getting the biggest bonus every year). I can't think of a single job I have ever worked where I was given lots of positive reinforcement. Its the workplace not preschool. It's especially bad in Boston where all the recent college grads flood the paralegal market and every June I have to train a new "I'm thinking about law school" Harvard grad who has been told their whole life how wonderful and special they are.

>>2:22:

Can't we all just get along???<<

Rodney King became a lawyer?

This is prestige? This is why only NYC matters? Geez, as much as I'm amused by your horror stories, I fail to see why I should be swayed to join this hellish environment.

As a 1st year attorney in Los Angeles, I was working on a document production until 2:00 a.m. Becaue the documents were due before noon the next day in San Francisco, the partner had me drive to San Francisco at 2:00 in the morning. He's actually an awesome partner, though.

That same month, I had been working 15 hour days on a document production. On the day the documents were due, the named partner disguised his voice and pretended to be the e-discovery company. He said that thier system had crashed and that they lost all of our data. When I instructed him to contact the partner, he revealed who he was and repremanded me for not taking care of the situation myself.

For all of you law students out there-- there are so many posts that tell absolutely hellacious stories about working in biglaw. then there are a few that say it's worth it. that's nothing but rationalization. it's awful. litigation, transactional, it doesn't matter. partners are mostly a-holes who only care about collecting as much of the money you bill as they can. if you do anything to get in their way on that mission or that shows the slightest bit of inexperience, they lay the hammer down.

holy shit, 3:04

co-sign 3:25.

3:22 - there are so many stories about partners behaving badly because that's the topic of the thread. Maybe when there's a topic on partners congratulating lowly associates we'd get different stories.

I also don't entirely agree with your second statement. Many partners can see the forest through the trees and do realize that lawyers make less mistakes as they level up. (closing = +50 exp.)

I was in an accident wherein I broke my pelvic bone and tore some muscles and spent the night in the emergency room. I called the partner for whom I worked the next morning (through my morphine fugue) to tell him where I was and that I was not coming in to the office and he whined: “But I have this contract that I really need you to do today! It can’t wait!” I somehow drafted the contract and had it dropped off at the firm that evening and the next day, just didn’t call in at all—figuring if I did, I’d have another assignment. The third day, I was back in the office. I couldn’t walk for six weeks, but he had me doing industrial site visits on crutches.

Same partner…. At Christmas one year, he wanted each of the support staff that worked for our section to get a gift card for an equal-amount so that nobody seemed favored. To facilitate that, he had the attorneys pool our money and we had to contribute a certain amount determined through some completely bizarre and arbitrary logarithm based on salary and the amount of the individual’s time we each consumed. The next year, a group of two attorneys and their paralegal and secretary were added to our section mid-year. When we told them mid-December about the prior year’s group-gift-card-pooled-money theory of gifting, the two new attorneys said, “No thanks, we don’t want to participate. We already bought our paralegal and secretary a gift.” He tried to get them fired for not being “team-players” and screamed about how that meant he would have to pony up an extra $200 according to the logarithm and assumption we had to buy their paralegal and secretary the same gift card amount.

Same partner…. Instructed me via e-mail to make an appointment with a particular regulator, which I did. The next day, he said he was about to call said regulator to make an appointment and I said, “I already did.” He then proceeded to throw a temper tantrum about how HE needed to be the one making contact with the regulators and HE needed to be the one seen as having influence and that I was “way outside my bounds” in usurping that opportunity and how dare I and I interjected that he’d told me to do so and he called me a liar and said that he specifically and categorically did not as he would not have because of the aforementioned needs…during said temper tantrum, I flicked through my Blackberry and found the e-mail wherein he had told me to do so and showed it to him. At which point, his temper tantrum turned into a three-year old’s whine saying, “But I wanted to call him….”

Same partner…. He overheard a group of secretaries complaining about the high price of day-care came out of his office to say, “My (high-school age) sons go to private school and it’s $150,000 a year, so don’t you date complain about day-care costs!” Oh and he’d go on and on in front of secretaries and clients and whomever about the high cost of maintaining his fleet of pleasure boats. When a client was at his lake-house for the weekend, the expense report would include gas for all of the pleasure boats plus a two-day-calculated depreciation cost and the cost of expensive bottles of liquor and a maid and so forth.

Same partner…. He would be gone for three days a week on vacation every month and then come back around 9pm or whatever on a Friday night and call me and if I was out and especially if I was out with other lawyers from the firm, he would complain about how HE was in the office because HE was apparently the only one that cared about clients and that WE needed to come back immediately.

Yes…I got out. Why it took so long? Niche practice in a community where all of the attorneys in that practice area know each other well and I had seen him actively try to poison the community against other associates and partners that had left.

3:36 - did you break your pelvis bone by riding a motorcyle at 40mph into a wall, by any chance?

2:28 -

I thought 2:01 was referring to Morgan & Finnegan. But I could be totally wrong about that.

1:35 - I had a similar one. When I started, I was immediately assigned to a litigation document review (yeah...I know) that went on each day from 8 to 5 because the documents were housed at a government building...so I was there 8 to 5 every day. Meanwhile, on a separate matter, the partner and a senior associate had been in trial for three weeks and there were boxes and boxes and boxes of documents in "the record". He puts the boxes in my office and says, "Write the post-trial closing brief. Get it to me by Friday." Brand new out of law school without even a license yet...I dig into the boxes and write a brief from 5 pm to whenever-I-pass-out every day. I give it to him on-time and he comes back screaming at me for "malpractice" and how I was "plotting to sink the firm by intentionally screwing up" and that "you know you can't just MAKE UP what the record says, that’s LYING...." I had no idea what he was talking about. He said not to bother him and that he was going to hand it to another senior associate (not the one that did the litigation with him who might actually KNOW the case) to fix. After it was finished and filed, I did a "compare-doc" on the filed version and all that was changed was that they added the name of the person giving the testimony in each citation. In citing to the record, I cited to a page and line number and did not add "Testimony of Bob Smith". (Didn't know that was required...that's why you're supposed to supervise baby lawyers.) I suspected later that their trial had gone poorly and they wanted me to write the final brief on a short time table with no knowledge of the case so that they'd have a fall-guy for a bad outcome.

I humbly took that kind of crap for months until I got enough work from another partner to ensure my job security and I finally stood up to him and pointed out that he was being a jerk. That month and the next month, he decided to give all of his clients a “good client bonus” by not charging for any of my time—effectively zeroing out all of the hours I billed to his clients, which in our firm meant they were then not counted as billable for purposes of bonus calculation. Finally, the other partner I was working for told him that if he wasn’t going to charge for my time, he shouldn’t use me and I was released.

3:36 - Nope. No motorcycle involved. Though I might have been tempted at the time to do that....

The quadrant is really important. Without you could go to any of four different addresses.

Our BigLaw firm had a partner throw a stapler at a young associate in a raging tamtrum.

First, I think last week's Dear Prudie was about a legal secretary, not legal assistant. I do agree the letter was exceptionally whiny -- one needs to sweat the small stuff in this profession, from the big name partner down to the newest file clerk hired this past Monday.

Second, heads up that today's issue of Dear Prudie concerns a young associate whose husband won't dress up to go to firm events and dinners. Kash, write about that one too please!

Also, I thought Prudie's responses were spot on for both queries (this week and last week). She gets some things wrong (and some things reaaaally wrong, unlike the former Prudie who was almost always right, having inherited her advice-dispensing gene from her mother Ann Landers and aunt Dear Abby).

Future law students -- these types of stories aren't unique to biglaw or to NYC. Before biglaw, I worked at a nonprofit for a crazy lawyer who threw tantrums, refused to speak to me at times, didn't give me credit, yelled, gave inconsistent orders, treated me like his personal assistant, etc., and non-lawyer friends of mine who don't work at law firms have similar or worse horror stories too -- and they don't get paid six figures.

Only on the job 6 months at a specialized shop...nothing too crazy yet...will admit partners have mood swings...thing that irritates me most...partners smoke, mostly in their offices but from time to time in the conference room and halls...my advice, don't go to law school if you can help it and if you do make sure mommy and daddy are paying for it or you get a sick scholarship...and then go in to government...a decent para in NY makes more than a 1st yr anywhere except BigLaw...I worked for Corp Counsel in NY as a para 5 years ago and starting was $35k with every benefit and a million days vacation and we actually got some OT. People I know who stayed make over $40k now and lateralled over to new firms where they make over $60 and have NO DEBT! Others went to law school at night.

I was a paralegal in-house at a dot-com while going to night law school. The legal dept (about 8-10) would take the birthday boy/girl out to lunch at the restaurant of his/her choice. My birthday comes around and do I get to go for the yummy brick oven pizza this paralegal/law student has been craving? Oh, no. One of the lawyers says we have to go somewhere that has no yeast because it's passover. WTF.... be religious on your own birthday, not mine. Isn't it supposed to be *your* religious sacrifice? The Chinese lunch did not hit the spot. Self-centered dork.

4:45--They aren't unique to bniglaw, but they are much more common. I worked in-house for a few years. We had a dick on the legal staff. Just typical abusive tantrum stuff. Companies have procedures to get things done. Complaints were made (not by me) and the guy got spoken to and reprimanded. He got much better.
In Biglaw, if you speak out, you start getting bad performance reviews and eventually get fired.

Chinese is not really kosher for Passover--even if you don't eat the rice, there is cornstarch in everything.

Really, 5:02? You were so psyched about a slice of pizza on your birthday that you're bitter about compromising for someone's religious restrictions? A slice of pizza? Really? Put up your address and I'll mail you a check for $2.50 and you can go get yourself a slice of birthday pizza. Self-centered dork.

I once had a phone thrown at my head (for the wondeful reason of booking a conference room with not enough chairs). god how i wish it had hit me.

I was a 3rd year associate at one of the big 3 in LA. It was Sunday and I was in the office working on a big motion scheduled to be filed mid-week in a class action we were defenfing. Mid-day on sunday I get a call from the nazi female partner running the case saying she has made a "strategic" decision to file TOMORROW (i.e., Monday). Translation: You are working all night. Alone.

I ended up billing 30 hours straight to make that filing on time. She had the nerve in our last call on Sunday night around 11pm to say to me "I am going to bed." BED? I remember thinking, Did she really just say that when she knows I will be slaving away for 12 or so more hours on HER case for HER client.

I sent my resume out for the first time the next week and left a month or 2 later.

Worked 25 hours on Super Bowl Sunday. I dont think the associate even realized, or cared, as he worked insane hours that day as well. The problem was that the task at hand was not a super rush. The thing is that I don't really mind. I knew what I signed up for, as did all of you, so in the words of Ahnold, STOP WHINING!

Hey 5:45: That's why you become a partner--so you can go to bed and let the associate do the work. Do you think you are equals? You're not. You're earning the big bucks to act as the hired help.

If I wanted to stay up all night, I wouldn't hire you dorks and I'd have a higher PPP.

2:01

Can you name the firm?

One of my summer supervisors at a Public Defender's Office had split-personality disorder. Two different names and everything! The 1st personality gave me assignments. I prepared what was asked for. When I went to present my work, I discovered the aforementioned disorder, and was derided for not delivering the right information. Ugh!

How this person got to be in a legal management position is beyond me. Perhaps the Dilbert principle in effect.

People who eat shit (even from their bosses) are pussies and deserve the treatment they get.

It's funny because I bet the same tough guys on that bullying thread with all the right answers (and I agree that advice -- fight back -- was right) are the ones pulling unnecessary all-nighters or getting staplers thrown at them.

If you want respect, you need to earn it.

To 5:45 -- you are aware that the partner's time is much more costly than yours, right? And that the client would probably not be too psyched to get a bill with hours billed at her rate for junior associate work?

Just as well you're out.

5:10 and 5:24 took the bait.

1:35, how do you write a motion without citing to the record -- even a lowly affidavit -- at least once? Shouldn't that have been a clue that something was amiss?

8:11's right, you're only a cog getting shit on if you allow yourself to be. If you're good, smart, etc., push back and move somewhere if you want to. Everyone has to put up with client demands, but there's no reason to allow yourself to be mistreated, unless you have no other options, and then you're still making a choice.

I get sick of people who say that all lawyers or all law firms are like that, because I would not take shit like that. I didn't, I left, and now I'm partner somewhere else.

Kash is a bitch.

I work for a partner that hates the color green. I was advised by a senior associate when I started working with him that I should not use green highlighters or those little green flags on any documents. When redlining a document I should change the settings so that none of the type shows up in green. And by the way, I should try not to WEAR any green around him. It seems that he was in Vietnam, and "he only got shot at" while wearing green.

Ah, home computer. My stories:

- A partner in my office thinks that IP (I am a patent attorney) is a 'shell game.' His words. He told me this to my face, and was fishing for a "Hey, you got me! I just rip people off all day."

- A partner keeps asking me to run TM searches for his buddy, who is not a client, on my own time. Our general counsel frowns upon that...

- A partner has asked me a few times to keep an eye on my boss for him. This is a junior partner in a different group and I am supposed to keep an eye on the head of the IP group. For this other partner. WTF?

- A partner is widely disliked for being brash, obnoxious, and stealing food (allegedly) from the community refridgerators. He self-invites and attends associate events because of the free food and beer, which has a direct chilling effect on associate speech.

The secret, of course, is that the above partners are all the same dbag.

my boss aksed me to clean his fishtank every weekend. that probably made me what i am today-- a f***d up gangstah lawyer.. peace!

5:24: I think 5:02's in the right, actually. The associate should bend, not the rest of the group. Get a salad and call it a day. It's rude to dictate what the birthday boy/girl eats on his/her birthday.

4:02: I'm big enough to admit that I had no idea you had to cite to the record in a motion when I showed up at my BIGLAW job. I think I figured it out by looking at somebody else's motion, but I certainly didn't show up on my first day with any command of the rules or anything like that.

Never mind the fact that I had no idea how to write a motion.

I had a terrible, similar problem with a lawyer at my job and eventually quit and went to a smaller firm. It's just not worth it.

I have for years suspected that Emily Yoffe either creates these letters from whole cloth, or edits them to a point beyond recognition, because they all reflect her writing style.

ATL made an assumption that is perhaps incorrect, and that is that the person writing is a paralegal. Yes, the writer says she or he is an assistant at a law firm, and yes, some law firms call their paralegals legal assistants, but I have a feeling this person was hired to be what (s)he states: a partner's assistant.

And that leads me to believe it's a smallish firm, because most large law firms do not hire assistants without prior experience. At the firm where I work, the assistants/secretaries have at least 15 years' experience on top of an undergraduate degree.

You didn't know to cite to the record when you write a brief? What were you wasting your time doing for the last three years?
I guarantee you other brand new associates would know that. If not, I don't know why I don't have that job.

5:45 - seriously? You left over being told to do your job??? Did you go to HYS or something, I mean how entitled are you? I mean that's not even egregious or anything to be a junior/midlevel associate and work a weekend to finish a Monday filing.

re: paralegal/assistant/support staff salary ranges

I am a Los Angeles litigation secretary working for a large NY-based law firm. My base salary is $82K/year. Coupled with a yearly holiday bonus and a few hours of easy overtime a week, my gross is exceeds $100K a year. I work for one lit partner and three lit associates.

10:06: No, not really. I spent three years reading appellate cases in non practice-based classes and avoided externships like the plague (I don't pay to work for free). I don't regret that - I learned the practical stuff on the job and took challenging, theoretical classes that gave me a firm intellectual grounding that has served me very well (well, after I left BIGLAW, at least).

Big firms are prestige-obsessed and have no interest in recruiting candidates who have any practical experience, so they shouldn't be surprised when their associates show up as blank slates.

2:18 - seriously, you didn't have a legal writing class in, say, your first year? Go ask for some of your tuition back.

You shouldn't need a 'thank you' for doing your job right; you get a paycheck for doing your job right.

3:36:
"Same partner…. Instructed me via e-mail to make an appointment with a particular regulator, which I did. The next day, he said he was about to call said regulator to make an appointment and I said, “I already did.” He then proceeded to throw a temper tantrum about how HE needed to be the one making contact with the regulators and HE needed to be the one seen as having influence and that I was “way outside my bounds” in usurping that opportunity and how dare I and I interjected that he’d told me to do so and he called me a liar and said that he specifically and categorically did not as he would not have because of the aforementioned needs…during said temper tantrum, I flicked through my Blackberry and found the e-mail wherein he had told me to do so and showed it to him. At which point, his temper tantrum turned into a three-year old’s whine saying, “But I wanted to call him….”'

This is very, very funny.

5:28, amen. The WSJ article noted similar irony: "Employers are dishing out kudos to workers for little more than showing up." Bar gets lower and lower...

Bottom line is that you have to learn how to navigate this crap or you won't last. And this stuff exists in the business world too; it's not just biglaw. Best advice for you junior attorneys out there: become the best damn attorney you can be as fast as you can. When people perceive you as really valuable, then they are going to care to treat you better. When you are just a body, you are going to be treated like a cog. Even sometimes by the best of people who don't realize they are doing it. Law firms institutionally aren't set up for people to be happy.

First of all I wasn't the least bit miffed over being told to do my job or over working hard. Do you think I got a job at that firm and graduated at the top of my class by coasting and not working hard? I passed over all you fools in class and to get that job and my current one for a Fortune 10 company. So kiss it.

Second of all, if you think billing 30 hrs STRAIGHT is worth any amount of money someone will pay you - you a) clearly haven't ever done it and b) don't have your priorities straight.

7:01, Gibson right? Exact same thing happened to me.

I apologize for the dumb question, but what the frak do people mean when they refer to a "V2" firm or a "V10" firm. I thought I had all the lingo down, but this one eludes me.

7:01, it is clear (and perfectly understandable) that you don't view 30 hours straight as worth the money. But others may have a different perspective than you, and may not be doing it solely for the money. Based on your initial telling of the story, you did not consider that the client was also your client (you said "HER client"). Some would think of the client as their client as well, and if it was necessary for the job to get done in that time frame, would do it because that was what needed. You don't say in your story what you would have done differently had you been the partner. Did you disagree that it was necessary to move the deadline up? If so, that's a different complaint. Did you think she should have added staffing? Given the time frame, that may not have been possible or efficient.

At any rate, this thread is for "REAL horror stories" and yours just doesn't seem to fit the bill.

And I don't know why you would assume that you passed all of us in class. Besides the fact that I doubt we were actually in the same class, I (and I'm sure many others on this site) graduated at the top of our own classes and have similar or more impressive markers of achievement. I suspect, however, that your "fools" statement may be the core of your real issue -- that you felt you were too good for the work.

3:38: I did take legal writing and we didn't learn stuff like that in legal writing. We learned how to write persuasively and organize and all of that, but we only wrote appellate briefs and maybe a client letter. It was not a practice-based class, though it was useful.

I'm just being honest here. I learned a lot in law school, but I learned very little nitty-gritty litigation skills and whatever I learned I promptly discarded after the exam. I've written several briefs since graduating and they've all turned out fine. It's not rocket science - you just learn a lot of that stuff as you go.

Clueless, I think that saying, "I work at a V2 firm" is the fakely modest way of saying "Cravath." It is analagous to saying, "I went to a liberal arts college in Connecticut."

I mean, if you actually went to Trinity or Albertus Magnus or Wesleyan or Connecticut College or some other similarly shitty place like that, you would just say, "I went to Wesleyan, etc" but if you went to Yale, you have to pretend to be all modest about it. Based on my stereotypes, this bitch went to Yale undergrad before paralegalling at Cravath, and now she is on the law review at UVA and getting her shit together for her Supreme Court clerkship apps two years from now.

For staff appreciation week, my firm sent out an email that they would be raffling off 36" televisions. Unfortunately the winners found out that the televisions they had won were the old conference room TVs. They were missing the remotes, were damaged, and definitely put the staff in their place. I heard that this year the winner gets a five minute shopping spree in the supply room and second place wins a broken printer.

"I have for years suspected that Emily Yoffe either creates these letters from whole cloth, or edits them to a point beyond recognition, because they all reflect her writing style."

For years? Really? Has Yoffe even been writing the column for two years yet?

"I have for years suspected that Emily Yoffe either creates these letters from whole cloth, or edits them to a point beyond recognition, because they all reflect her writing style."

For years? Really? Has Yoffe even been writing the column for two years yet?

I worked for several years at a paralegal. It amazed me that Law Firms (or at least the one I worked at) set Paralegals up for failure.
There was no training. No mentorship and minimal leadership.

You see that is the problem: there are no real parameters and standards for paralegals. No required certification, no required training and no licensing. Nada. Being a paralegal, you are literally thrown to the wolves and have to fend for yourself.

I live and work in NY and although there are several paralegal programs available to obtain some form of training in the legal profession (and some of these programs mind you are offered by first and second tier colleges/universities no less), it basically boils down to what the attorney or firm wants to do with its legal support staff. As a paralegal you can either find yourself in position offering support in assisting attorneys with the entire litigation process, including preparation for trial, or you can find yourself working in a firm or corporate legal department as a glorified file clerk despite graduating with a bachelor's and even having a Legal Studies Certificate (which really means nothing).

What is most frustrating is the American Legal System. Countries such as Brazil and England allow people the choice in which areas of law they desire to work in and there are standards and requirements to meet in order to work as a legal professional. The US? The Attorney pretty much is given the license to anything and everything, including calling the shots in what a paralegal can, and can not do as part of t that person's job responsibilities.

In being a paralegal for almost ten years, I find it so frustrating in what attorneys expect from us legal assistants. The only thing I know I can't do as a paralegal is offer legal advice, solely and independently communicate with clients, and represent in Court. With the three jobs I have held as a paralegal, my duties and responsibilities varied so greatly. But with no set standards and requirements set by the ABA, it is not only a challenge to market a job, but to climb in salary.

To answer the person's question as to whether or not pursue a JD, if you want to be in law and that is what you want to do, go for it. Personally, I've had it with working for attorneys. I'm in the process in seeking assistant positions outside of the legal profession.

In reading some of these posts, I really do hope for the sake of your support staff that some of you guys are just joking and trying to take the piss out of people.

Did it ever occurr to some of you attorneys (and future attorneys) that if you took the time in speaking to and communicating with your staff your lives may just be a little easier? I mean is it really necessary to assign a contract renewal to an associate in which the renewal agreement has minor changes from last year's agreement? Ever consider partnering with your paras in creating some form documents?

I can't speak for every paralegal out there, but I don't want your job, I know I can't do your job. However, I do know that I can do more than just make copies. If you are that bogged down in your job, learn to communicate and delegate with your paras. There are some of us legal assistant who actually like what we do. All we ask is for some common courtesy and respect. That's all. If you are really that miserable and insecure that you find it necessary to demean someone who does not have a JD, but was hired to assist you, go f#ck yourself. Passing the Bar does not give you the license in being an unprofessional a-hole.

Imagine my surprise when an attorney I had until recently supported came with a gift bag for me during Staff Appreciation Week. I did not expect anything from her since I no longer supported her but thought, "well, how nice." That is, until I took the "goodies" out of the bag at home that evening, only to discover the shampoo, conditioner, shower gel and body lotion were the "complimentary" guest toiletries from the Scottsdale Phoenician hotel. Can anyone top that one for tacky? (At least the bottles weren't half-used...)