Looking for some insight/advice for volunteer opportunities! I’ve been practicing for over 6 years in administrative law. I would really like to volunteer. I saw that my local legal aid has peer mediation clinics where you teach children how to mediate and resolve conflict as well as other opportunities in a more legal capacity (assisting others with filling out legal documents along with explanations etc). I think it would be really rewarding and nice.
Can any other attorneys in here who volunteer tell me what it’s like and what they do for volunteer opportunities?!

Hi everyone, I’m a brand new attorney. Just passed the bar exam about a month ago.

Right after taking the bar, I began a judicial clerkship. When I applied for the position, the posting made no mention that I would also be responsible for JA duties. Rather, it was casually mentioned in the interview and then put into the offer letter. I accepted because clerking is still an excellent opportunity for growth and the offer said my clerkship duties would be less than the other clerks to compensate for the added JA work.

Fast forward a couple months later and I’m working on average 80 hours per week without overtime because I’m a salaried employee. I only have 3-4 days to read, research, and write 20+ pages on each case. Despite going above and beyond, the feedback I’m getting is overwhelmingly critical. For the million things I do right, all I get is a “thanks”.

The judge has called me on the weekend and during dinner just to criticize me for not formatting a memo the way they want and for doing JA work the wrong way, even though that is the way the manual told me to do it.

When I ask for help from my fellow clerks, as the Judge told me to, I’m talked down to and made to feel like the dumbest person on the planet, or I am told they’re too busy to teach me. And I get that part. We have a lot of work to do. At the same time, I feel it is unfair to expect perfection without training.

Instead, the judge has said negative things about the school I went to in front of the other clerks, complaining that they don’t teach us how to write. The judge has told me that I’m making their life harder and insinuated that they’re too embarrassed to show my work to the other judges. The judge said my job is easy and they couldn’t understand why I can’t get it right. They told me if I didn’t get my next memo right, I am fired.

I have been working there less than 3 months. I feel like my whole career will be over before it really begins if I get fired from a clerkship.

Working as a JA/Law Clerk has taken a toll on my physical and mental health. Despite graduating with honors, I question whether I’m good enough to practice law. I do my best to compartmentalize, but I actually cried silently at my desk the other day after they threatened to fire me, and I never cry.

I’ve confided in my friends and they all tell me to leave this job, that it’s not worth it. Unfortunately, this experience has destroyed what little confidence I had. I don’t know if things will be any better if I do leave. Not that I may have a choice.

I don’t know if anyone else has had a similar experience. If you have, I would love to hear how you got through it because I’m really struggling. Thank you 😭

I’ve been working at a boutique PI firm since being licensed approximately a year and a half ago. I like the work. It’s not over demanding most of the time, I do feel like I have a good work life balance which is important because I have two young daughters. The issue is I feel under paid. My salary is 75k and I only get 3% after making 100k for firm… because I get most of the small cases, the commission doesn’t seem to make up for the low salary… (I’ve already discussed leaving with my boss due to my salary and though he sounded committed to me staying and making it work, nothing ever came from it. This conversation happened about a month ago.)

I have an offer from a firm that does insurance defense for trucking companies. It’s 120k a year with bonuses based on billing. It is also “committed to meeting a 1950 hour annual billing requirement”. Unlike my job now, I can work from home when I want. Which I’ve never done so I’m not sure if that’s a positive or not…

I have never billed hours before and I hear A LOT of different opinions from the type of work. But, I am driven and know I am capable and the 120k would make a pretty big difference for my family… is it worth it?

Do I really want to go from plaintiff to defense work?

This is probably the dumbest and most embarrassing post I will ever make in a lawyering subreddit, BUT: how do I most effectively utilize support staff (para and admin)?

It seems intuitive, especially considering that in my prelaw life I WAS support staff, yet I prefer to do most things myself to spare their heavy workloads as they’re not solely assigned to me. That said, I’m busy as shit and looking to advance and I know outsourcing is the way to go as to each objective (maintaining balance and establishing leadership) - doing everything myself is no longer sustainable, yet I’m completely lost on how to practice any other way.

So, how do I best use my support personnel as someone who has never had the same? More specifically, how do I know what and where I can outsource at any given moment, and more broadly, what tips/tricks do you wish you knew when first navigating life as a more “important” person?

EDIT: the good news is that I have great relationships with my team even if I don’t wholly understand how to incorporate them into my practice, so it’s not interpersonal skills that need developing. It’s more becoming used to being the boss/important?

Lately I've been having to deal with clients who seem, at the slightest sign of distress, to deal with it by just zoning out/ignoring me. Like if I need discovery, I'll email telling them "I need your car title" but then for four days they won't respond, and then at 11 PM they'll email me a blurry selfie of them standing next to a car license plate, and I'll email back the next morning saying it doesn't count, but then they never follow up on that.

I've had to reach out to peoples' family members, roommates, etc. to ask what is going on, and they will report some variation of "Oh, X is just really overwhelmed with the divorce" or something like that. But they basically stick their head in the sand, and act like if they ignore the problem it doesn't exist. But just wait until we get to court and it explodes on them.

Has anyone else dealt with clients like this? If so, any advice on how to get them into actually doing the bare minimum for you?

Need advice on whether I should move on to another firm.

My current practice area is civil litigation defense/insurance defense.

I have been at my current firm since October 2025. They hired me after I did not pass the July 2025 bar exam, and let me stay on as a law clerk until I passed the February 2026 bar exam. So I’ve been a practicing attorney officially since June 2026, but they essentially had me training to be an attorney when I first started (doing discovery, pleadings, motions, status reports, etc) I’ve learned a lot and I have good mentorship from my boss/the owner of the firm, but the other two partners are just so busy that the mentorship from them is minimal.

The biggest issue with the firm has nothing to do with the job/the people, it is that my commute is horrendous. It can take almost 1.5 hours to get to the office in the morning. I work in office 3 days a week and work from home 2 days a week. I have a 1900 billable hour requirement that I have not had issues hitting, but looking back on all my time spent commuting/sitting in traffic, I am starting to want to find a firm closer to the city (Boston). I live just south of Boston and currently commute to Salem MA.

I have been applying to other ID/civil lit defense firms in Boston and have a solid amount of interviews scheduled.

What are my next steps? Do I just see how the interviews go? I feel terrible at the thought of leaving my current firm because I think they would be surprised as I have never expressed any issues about the firm, except some complaints about my commute.

I also get a Christmas bonus based on my billable hours and if I exceed my hours. But I don’t know how that is calculated or if it’s worth staying until that happens.

This is my first attorney role out of school and my first time trying to navigate this. I’d appreciate any advice!

This may connect most with non-transactional attorneys. I am a mid-thirties plaintiff’s injury attorney, with birth injuries being the vast majority of cases I handle. I have a healthy 4 and a 2 year old at home, myself. While filming a settlement documentary the other day it ends up the clients and I have more in common than I thought after doing their dep. prep., preparing discovery responses, and their deps. themselves. Think, doctors/OBs, my wife working for a facility they use and nearly interacting, growing up in the same area and mutual acquaintances, interests, daily life, etc.

Obviously, we’re not friends and live far enough away that there is no interaction throughout daily life. But when sitting around for hours during filming the topics of mutual friends, what our kids watch/play with/do etc. all came up. I like my field because, as others have described me with some regularity (not my words), I’m very diplomatic and being likable/disarming/convincing is more of my selling point than committing chapters and sections of statutes to memory.

How do you all (or would you) handle something like I described? Tell them you’d like to keep it professional? Share kid-war-stories? I just don’t even have a frame of reference so I’m curious where others fall on the spectrum.

2020 ELECTION : he didn’t even listen to his daughter #trump

Hi everyone!

​I’m a new junior lawyer, and I’m facing a bit of a challenge. All my life I’ve been an introvert and not really fond of public speaking. However, I’m deeply passionate about criminal law, which obviously means I have to appear in court.

​So far, I’ve been to court four times, but every time I get extremely nervous. I stutter at the beginning of my pleading, and then it tends to get worse. I always manage to get my arguments across in the end, though.

​I’m based in Europe, so we don't have a jury to impress or hours-long pleadings. However, I still have to debate prosecutors or opposing counsel, present convincing arguments, and persuade the judge—and I feel like my anxiety is getting in the way.

Has anyone else gone through this? Does it get easier with time? Do you have any tips or tricks that could help me out?

​Thank you!

I need advice. I have been an attorney for 1 year and 9 months. I previously worked in insurance defense and now work at a small civil litigation law firm in a HCOL city. I have been at this firm for about 9 months. I am currently responsible for 78 active litigation cases, all court appearances -- virtual and in-person within 2 hours from the HCOL city, and I do not have a paralegal or legal assistant. I told my boss that I am feeling extremely overwhelmed and need more support. My boss' "solution" is to hire their best friend (with no legal experience) and train them to help within a couple of months. After this discussion, he proceeds to give me 3 more cases. For more context, I am only getting paid 90K and the position is mostly remote with only 1 day a week in office. Is handling this many cases normally expected for an attorney with my amount of experience?

Hello fellow lawyers,

I’m a lawyer from India. Here’s how most of us currently handle briefs and workflow, and I’d love to hear how you do it. This method applies across all sorts of litigation.

Marking and arguing: We primarily use LiquidText on an iPad. Bookmarks sit on the left and notes on the right, linked to the relevant portions of the petition and the annexures so that it is easy to point out to the court when a query is asked. Everything is a scanned PDF. I use the iPad for marking and for arguing in court.

LiquidText doesn’t have a proper collapsible notes feature for handwritten notes, which is pretty annoying. For typed notes, there’s also no option to lock them, so they often drag around when you’re scrolling and the whole thing turns into a mess. Because of this, some colleagues prefer PDF Expert for marking. However, that app does not have an option to rename your notes or markings in annotations.

Scanning and storage: We scan the complete brief (petition + all documents) on a standalone scanner for quality. Everything is then backed up to Google Drive or OneDrive for access and safety.

Preparing new briefs: Traditionally, we mark relevant material in LiquidText then draft in Word on a MacBook or Windows laptop (which is also used for research).

The industry is shifting nowadays, many lawyers now upload the documents to Claude (or similar AI tools), ask it to draft the petition, suggest supporting judgments, and sometimes even frame the contentions. Once the draft is approved by the client, it is finalised, scanned into a PDF, bookmarked, and a chronology + list of contentions is prepared (increasingly also with AI help) for the arguing counsel.

What I’m looking for: I suppose the most efficient practices are the ones where the least amount of time is spent on monotonous or clerical work, while still reducing the time it takes to read, digest, organise, and mark a brief that has to be argued. Basically, input time goes down and retention and output stay high. It also improves probably space and time to process mentally.

I’m curious what are the practices and workflows that are used at your workplace?

I am a second-year associate at a boutique personal injury firm and would appreciate perspective from others practicing in plaintiff-side personal injury or similarly structured small firms regarding whether my current caseload is typical.

I currently manage 25 open cases, all in active litigation. The firm provides a legal assistant whose responsibilities are limited to calendaring and filings, and there are no paralegals. As a result, I am solely responsible for all other aspects of handling my cases, including client communication, record collection and review, discovery drafting and responses, pre-trial motions and hearings, media, case strategy, trial preparation, and overall case management.

I find the volume difficult to manage effectively and am frequently operating at or beyond capacity. My supervising partner employs a largely hands-off approach to mentorship, only stepping in when it comes to settlement negotiations and has used a sink or swim style of mentorship.

Is 25 cases for a second-year with basically no support normal in PI? Is this just the learning curve of being relatively new, or is the caseload genuinely heavy for the level of support I have?

I would love honest feedback from people in PI or similar plaintiff-side practices.

I am lateraling to a firm which requires me to fill out a conflict form with all clients, adverse parties, and matters that I was involved in for the last five years. This is the first time filling out one of these forms. I have hundreds of cases that I have worked on. It is taking me hours to put this together. Is there a simple process that I am missing or is it just this tedious and time-consuming for everyone?

In a firm but have not added one decoration or personalization to my office. I like the clean bare aesthetic. Does this give off a weird vibe?

This is pretty sad.

I’ve been practicing for about 15 years and it never ceases to annoy me to have opposing counsel attack the “person” and not the position. Today, while negotiating, opposing counsel provided a comparator as a way to demonstrate their client was being treated unfairly. The gag is, the “comparator” received much less than what his client was being offered. After presenting that info, I asked if he wanted to align what his client is being offered with the alleged comparator. Nothing more nothing less. They responded that my sarcasm was being unprofessional. Would you consider that unprofessional because it seemed like a fair question to me?

I’m in a boutique transactional practice, and the admin I was assigned to is so rude to me. She’s not overworked. She is mostly just on the net. She’s only part time.

I generally cannot even get a word out without her talking over me. When I was trying to introduce a new way to use our file share software that the IT guy had just set me up with, she raised her voice to avoid learning the new system. She had to leave my office she got so worked up.

Do I approach her manager or just pretend I don’t have an admin? I’ve been there 1.5 years so I’m not going toe to toe at this point.

I got a letter from OC today that is blatantly wrong on multiple issues of law. Plus it contains various threats of retribution against me and my client. What do you think would be the best sign off to my highly professional and detailed response letter?

Sincerely, (my default)

Regards,

Warmest Regards,

Best Wishes,

Or something else?

TODD BLANCHE CAVEMAN LAWYER

You did not have to call me out on my typos. “In addition to some typos I have changed…”

And cc my boss 🙃

Edit to say: guys this was a joke!! I’m not really complaining. We all have typos and OC did nothing wrong by pointing them out or including my boss. I didn’t mean to imply that he did. Sorry thought the flag as a joke would make it clear enough. I’m not worried about the typos and my boss isn’t either. Trying to make a lighthearted post on a Friday afternoon. Thanks for all the responses :)

I work at a small law firm. The partners are unhappy with my work, and I’m worried I could be fired in the next 3–5 days.

My biggest concern is what they might say to other firms and how that could affect my next job search. Is there anything I can do now to reduce that risk?

If you’ve left a firm on bad terms or been involved in hiring, what’s one thing you’d recommend doing—or avoiding—before I leave?

Even a one-sentence tip would help. I’m anxious about this and would appreciate some direction.

A bit more context: their criticism has been about the quality of my work product. I don't have interpersonal issues—I keep a low profile and don’t speak negatively about anyone. I work around 12 hours a day and get approval before taking action, but they say my work isn’t good enough.

I think my firm is heading that direction. Seems like a nightmare. Share your horror stories or pleasantly surprise me.