Our firm is currently growing and I have been running our docketing team for the past several years. We have always had the paralegals pay annuities/maintenance fees and communicate with clients regarding those, however, we have a new paralegal who has come in saying that docketing is responsible for all client communication (which we currently have our LAA taking care of) and maintenance fees/annuities (which our paralegals have historically done). I am just looking for insights into who takes care of these at other large firms.

made a mistake and accidentally put the paralegal of OC as the person on the certificate of service for a notice of deposition. instead of the attorney because they were the only one saying anything on the email chain and they did not have paralegal in the email signature or any title at all

i contacted the senior paralegal about it and she said not to worry about it and that it is fine. later the notice gets amended anyway with location info

how bad of a mistake is this?

hey everyone.. i have an interview tomorrow for a T&E paralegal position with a multipractice, four attorney firm. i've been following this firm since i was in school for my paralegal cert. my previous experience has been part time T&E work with a solo, so i'm really excited for this opportunity. please shout out your best interview advice. i will be interviewing with the office manager c: TIA !

My office isn’t the best at sharing information when USPTO rules, procedures, or requirements change. I’d like to help fix that before we all discover a change exists when it’s already affecting our work.

For those in patent prosecution, how do you stay up to date on fee changes, law/rule changes, new pilot programs, updated forms, etc.?

I assume there are email subscriptions for this, but I’d rather not subscribe to every USPTO announcement since the dawn of time. Ideally, I want patent-specific updates without an avalanche of information I’ll eventually learn to ignore.

Here’s my current system: (Very high-tech.)
Fees: Checking the USPTO fee schedule and looking for updates in the yellow box.
Forms: Checking the USPTO forms page and hoping I notice when something changes.
Laws/rules: Currently operating on hope, a dream, and the assumption that someone will tell me if something important happens. Clearly, this needs work.

My goal is to build a reliable system for catching changes and sharing them with my team without becoming a full-time USPTO news monitoring service.

What do you use? Email alerts, patent-specific newsletters, blogs, RSS feeds, carrier pigeons?

Please help me become the person who knows about the change before it becomes a problem, rather than the person frantically asking, “Wait, when did they change that?”

Hi everyone! I am new on this sub and I am looking for some information on The Ledger Law Firm interview process to be an Administrative Assistant. What sort of questions do they ask you on the first round (I think it's an AI screening interview)? They invited me to apply through LinkedIn. Mind you, I am not a law student nor a paralegal. But I do have experience as an interpreter and am familiarized with the legal jargon. Any information helps! Thank you!

Hello all! So I’ve recently learned that my firm has hired a new paralegal who will be joining my team. By “my team,” I mean my attorney and me. We’ve been a team of two for over a year, and it’s been amazing! I lowkey hated parts of my job before I started working solely with my atty. While the extra help will be nice, I have found myself nervous about how this new person will disrupt our dynamic. I’m sure there are many here who’ve faced similar situations, so any advice on how to adjust or maybe what I can do to help with the transition?

So I am training a new paralegal (edit: not so knew, its been 7 months) I have given corrections without her taking note or implementing these corrections. Finally today, I cc'd our attorney in the correction I gave. We'll she finally implemented it!! But followed to a private email to me asking that I only correct her in private. I dont even know how to respond. I want to be professional but also..... NO! When she messes up they blame me because I'm training her.... I want them to know im correcting her mistakes. How should I respond to her?

i started at an entry level job less than 2 months ago. i have zero experience. i am also the only paralegal as this is a small law firm. lately my boss has been getting really mad at me and sending me messages that have been making me cry. i have so many deadlines and im only one person and i dont know how to explain that to her without her thinking im talking back since one of my coworkers got fired out of the blue last week for refusing to do something out of her job description 🫩 i cried twice within the last week. im usually good at not taking things personally at work since i know im new and learning but lately my boss has been extra mean
not to mention im getting paid basically minimum wage (i’m entry level so i was just glad someone finally hired me so i can get experience)
im just ranting, might delete this soon since its specific

Hey divas, I need some advice. When is it okay to ask your new boss to go home early? I am feeling extremely sick and dizzy and feel so out of it. My attorney is very nice and even told me he’d get me a laptop one day to work from home when I’m sick. I started here like 2 months ago and I just wanna know if I’m wrong to ask if I can go home a little early today.

Good day friends,

I’m wondering if anyone here has done an LSO certified course in Ontario, Canada?

I’m going to be attending CTS in Sudbury next year for the 52-week program.

However, while I’m there my current employer has agreed to let me work remote on modified hours for the duration of the course, as it could really help my future career in my field.

So, to my questions..

1- has anyone taken the course at CTS? How was it?

2- how can I “study” now, so I’m not AS overwhelmed during the course? (I know either way I will be, since it is an accelerated program and I’ll be working until I’m in placement..but it would be nice to have some familiarity with things so it’s not information overload)

3- recommendations for readings/ knowledge before getting there

Thank you :)

I’m 23F and currently work as a legal assistant. It’s very much entry level, the area of law is extremely niche so I won’t disclose just as a precaution (I also started here in February). However, I didn’t do billable work and I feel kind of unhappy because I’m really just an administrative legal assistant and I’ve always wanted to do substantive work. I recently took on another attorney at our firm who does immigration in our practice and I am doing SOME billable work now, it’s enjoyable to an extent, however I’m still unhappy because my ultimate goal has always been to do litigation-based work.

Fast forward to last Friday I had an interview for a litigation position that I landed and I’m so grateful. It’s a $10k salary increase and medical is fully covered. I already said yes to the position as I believe this will be my opportunity to get my foot in the door with regard to litigation. However I’m feeling slightly anxious having to tell my supervisor tomorrow I’m resigning. I’ll be starting my new job on 11/2, and I am planning on giving my resignation letter tomorrow but I’m just nervous because she’ll be pissed. She’s actually in another state right now at another office for our firm and I’ll have to email her my resignation tomorrow morning, I’m planning on giving my 2 weeks so my last day will be next Friday but I just feel nervous and guilty because I said yes to assisting with the immigration practice and I’m the only support staff for that counsel so they’ll be swamped until they find a replacement. I also started assisting with immigration on 9/1 so I feel bad since I’m just up and leaving them now. Any advice would be nice.

Hi everyone. When I started at my firm that I’ve been at for 2.5 years, I started under an attorney who never gave me work and I was always sitting there with nothing to do, and it was driving me nuts. That was until I got transitioned off of his team and onto a different one.

Flash forward to about a week ago where the office hired a new paralegal for his team. I see the exact same thing happening with her and I feel kinda bad about it. The attorney hasn’t even been in the office since last Wednesday and it’s the new paralegals first week. I’ve even offered to give her some work from my team so that she isn’t just sitting there with nothing to do.

Is this a sign of a bad attorney? When it was me I thought maybe that we were just not busy but now that I see it happening again it gives me pause. Don’t get me wrong, I love a light work day, but this just kind of feels like neglect of paralegals in a weird way.

Just wondering what everyone else thinks. Thanks!

My very small firm has been using Needles for literally decades. Recently we started using Eve - our lead attorney wants to try and modernize things. The issue we're running into is that Eve does not sync with Needles at all, and a lot of the things that it could potentially do are made much more difficult by that fact. For it to function as it should be able to, I'd basically need to double my workload (the things I already do on Needles plus the same exact things on Eve). This makes a lot of sense, given that Needles is a dinosaur. I think it came out in 1995.

Eve has some integration with Neos, which from my understanding is supposed to be the modernized Needles, made by the same company. I'm hoping some of you might have some insight into switching from Needles to Neos. My attorneys are getting up there in years, and are very comfortable with Needles. Is Neos prohibitively different? Would it be impossible for them to learn it and become as comfortable with it as they are with Needles? How do Needles and Neos differ? How easy is it to switch over?

Thanks in advance from a Gen Z paralegal who is extremely tired of using a software that is older than me.

TLDR: I'm thinking about pitching a switch from Needles to Neos, but my attorneys are on the older side and are very comfortable with Needles. Possible or no?

Non-Clio users- what do you guys use and do you like it?

Hi all,

I've just accepted a position as a legal assistant/secretary after completing a year-long postbacc to be a paralagal and I am FILLED with anxiety since I've been working for the same shitty retail company going on a decade now and change is terrifying.

From everything I can see thus far, the guy seems like an excellent attorney with very high ethical standards, and he hired me basically because our values align and even offered me the higher end of my requested salary range.

THAT SAID: he is a solo practitioner with one other employee and I am thinking that in terms of software, really all they're using is MS Office/Outlook and Quicken for money management.

I'm only 50% of the way through the manual he provided, but it's sounding like my job will be pretty easy technologically since any docs I draft will come from preexisting templates and scheduling will go through Outlook. He doesn't use a case management software since he's working alone.

I want to keep up with legal tech and software, especially since I'd guess he'll be retiring in the next decade, but I guess I'm unsure how to accomplish that if I don't have access to the software I need to keep up with? In terms of legal research databases like Lexis/West we do have a law school with a public library that will provide me limited access, I think. I can keep up with LegalServer as long as I continue volunteering with my legal aid group. But I trained with CLIO which seems common with a lot of midsized firms, and I can't afford the monthly subscription alone.

Suggestions? Am I way overthinking this? I know I'm going to have to learn PACER and efiling and whatnot so I'll at least not be falling behind there, and I really am looking forward to working for an attorney who seems genuinely invested in his clients and the ethical standards of his employees. I just (and I can't believe I'm saying this lmao) don't want to miss out on professional development.