Being a paralegal can feel like a juggling act especially when you are the only one supporting your team of attorneys. If you have ever felt paralegal overwhelm and stress on the job, this is the blog for you. We received some questions from paralegals on the job asking for tips on what they can do to get back on track. I’ll dive into strategies to help you regain control of your time and increase productivity so you can stop drowning in work and start standing out in your firm.
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How do you help your boss see that you are overwhelmed/burning out with supporting 8 attorneys while being the only full-time paralegal/receptionist and bringing in short-term interns (less than 3 months in office) or a high school student once a week you have to train is not the solution?
What are practical ideas for time management other than working 10-12 hours a day to meet multiple deadlines and focus on the legal demands while being interrupted constantly since I don’t have my own office and have to answer every call?
It’s Time for a Time Audit
It’s really important to have the data when you’re experiencing paralegal overwhelm. What data? How much time per day are you interrupted to answer a call?? Track it for an entire week.
Since you called yourself the only full-time paralegal/receptionist, I assume that means part of your job responsibilities include receptionist tasks.
So start there. For one week, I want you to track every single thing you do throughout the day. Now, you’re not necessarily sharing that with the attorney yet – because I want you to honestly track every single thing you do.
Did you just grab your phone and give Facebook a quick scroll? Write it down.
Did you go to the break room to grab some coffee and end up chatting with someone about how your weekend was?
Are you showing that intern how to do filing or some other tasks?
When the phone rings and you’re on the phone with a potential new client, write it down.
Write it ALL down. Use 6-minute increments if you can. Even if you’re not someone with a billable hour quota, it’s good to track it in 6-minute increments because that’s a .1
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Why is the Data Important
Why do this for a week? Because you can’t just go to the attorneys and say, “I’m experiencing paralegal overwhelm and stress and don’t have time to answer the phones anymore.”
You want to first look at that data privately at the end of the week and ask yourself… what percentage of my day is spent on personal distractions and non-work stuff, like calls from the kids’ school, your spouse, a text from a friend, etc. If at the end of the week, you look and see that 90% or more of your workday is spent on work-related activities, that’s a good number. This can help you identify if your paralegal overwhelm stems from too much of one task or a lack of productivity.
Learn about paralegals working long hours.
Discussing the Data with Your Boss
And that’s what you want to share with the attorney when you’re experiencing paralegal overwhelm. You start the conversation with “I have been feeling overwhelmed and so I went ahead and started tracking my day to see where my time was going and here’s what I found…”
Give them the data. Give them the facts.
If it’s less than 80%, first try to clean up your time spent on personal stuff. Get the number to at least 85% – 90% and then track another week. When it’s at 85 – 90%, how much of that time is spent on your paralegal duties and meeting deadlines, and how much is spent on phone calls and your reception duties?
Let’s say when you get to that point, your calculations show that out of an 8-hour workday, if you’re at around 90% overall productivity that means that you’re doing actual work around 7 of those hours. Of those 7 hours, you determine from your tracking that you’re spending 4 hours a day on receptionist duties and 3 hours per day on paralegal duties.
If you had those 3 hours added back in, what other work could you get done that’s not getting done? That’s the data you want to be able to approach the attorney with. Would you be spending that time moving cases forward more quickly so that the firm could be getting settlement dollars in the door quicker?
Would you be spending that time providing better client service to the firm’s clients? If so, what does that look like? Would you be able to prepare motions and pleadings and discovery responses in draft form so that the attorney’s time would be freed up?
Tips for how to have courageous conversations with your boss.
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Make a Plan to Overcome Paralegal Overwhelm
Have a written plan on what you could accomplish if you didn’t have all of these other distractions.
Also, when you’re talking to the attorney about a plan, offer a better alternative to having a high school student or an intern come in, that maybe you could start with a part-time receptionist. When you were tracking your time, go back and look and see when the majority of phone calls were coming in.
Let’s say the phone is the busiest from 9 am to 1 pm. It is a lot easier to hire a part-time receptionist than another full-time paralegal. And if you approached the hiring correctly, and hired someone who is going to school to get their paralegal degree, then when you want to add hours to that person’s schedule, you could make them a full-time receptionist and have them doing some paralegal work when the phones are slow. There’s just so much opportunity there.
Approach it as a growth plan for the firm. As we grow, here’s a way we would be able to take on more clients and bring in more revenue for the firm.
In order to have a written plan, you have to start with an honest evaluation of your paralegal overwhelm and what you’re currently spending your time on. So start there before you ever have the conversation with the attorney.
I am a 2nd year paralegal, working in a civil litigation division. I often find myself being pulled in so many different directions and have difficulty focusing on the task at hand. I am still learning how to properly prioritize tasks. I feel I’m so far behind the curve of what I should be. I lost a lot of time due to health reasons in the beginning of my career. I also started out as a Legal Secretary. Any advice or tips? I adore your podcast! Thank you so very much.
In my new job, I am handling contracts such as leases, as well as probate matters like partition division, which are areas I am unfamiliar with. During my interview, I was truthful about my experience in Personal Injury, but I have not been assigned any related tasks. I am struggling to keep everything organized and feel overwhelmed. Can you suggest any tips to help me manage my workload better? I feel as though I am suffocating. Worse than ever before.
Be Patient with Yourself
I would suggest that both of you also do what I suggested above. Start with a time audit.
One other thing I would add here, because it sounds like all three of you are fairly new to the profession, something I see with new paralegals is that it’s taking you longer to get the projects done, which is natural.
That’s why a new paralegal’s bill rate is usually a lot lower than a senior paralegal’s bill rate. The firm understands that it’s going to take the new paralegal longer to complete things.
So first, know that as you gain more experience and add skills to your skillset, it will naturally start taking less time for you to complete a lot of the work that you’re doing. I tell you that so that you have something to look forward to – it will get easier.
Also though, I see that sometimes it’s taking you longer because you get part of the way into a project and realize you’re doing it wrong and you have to redo work. That’s natural!
If I had a dollar for every time I was halfway into something and realized there was a much better way to get it done. There was no one showing me a better way to get that done faster.
All of that comes with experience, so cut yourself a little bit of slack.
Get tips on overcoming stress and anxiety as a paralegal.
How to Master Your Time Management
One other suggestion, just for general time management, is to grab yourselves a couple of books. Actually, more than a couple. I’d find at least 3 books that you can read, get it on audible and listen on your way into work or when you’re walking the dog in the morning.
There are so many options out there, depending on what your particular issue is, and what you want to accomplish, I can’t really recommend a specific book – because a book that I find helpful on time management as a business owner is going to be different than what might be helpful to you as a paralegal. But one thing I can tell you for sure is that you are going to want to master your time management skills to help you avoid paralegal overwhelm.
All that being said, I want to do more to help! I wish I could fix paralegal overwhelm because I hear it so often. I want to share some of my time management hacks – now, let me warn you – these are things that work for me as a business owner. Not as a paralegal.
And some of them you might say “well, that won’t work for me Ann because I can’t ignore that email from the client or my attorney.” I agree. And yet, I don’t. I know that you’ve got things coming at you from all directions the moment you walk in the door in the morning. I was there. I did it for years.
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Maximizing Your Productivity
Time-blocking can help you get more done so that you can prevent paralegal overwhelm. But ask yourself: Why can’t I block off an hour of time on my calendar this morning and just knock out one big project? Is the client going to be irate that they sent you an email at 9:30 and you didn’t respond until 10:30? If so, is that really their biggest problem?
Here’s what I do when I am the most productive: I batch my work. What does that mean?
I produce 3-4 podcast episodes every month. As you know, if you’re a listener. Pretty much every week, unless the Monday falls on a holiday weekend, because we’ve found that most people aren’t listening on holidays. And to be honest, it gives me a little bit of a break every once in a while to only have to come up with 3 episodes per month.
Except for the past few episodes because I was sick – I try to batch my work and say that one day per month I’m going to research and come up with the topics for the month, outline the episodes, in other words, do all of the background work.
Then another day, I’ll block off 3-4 hours to record those 3-4 episodes. Now, as you know, most episodes are only around 15-20 minutes unless it’s an interview. I block off that amount of time because I need a break in between. I know better than to think I can sit at this microphone and record non-stop for the 2-3 hours it would take for four episodes.
What happens for the rest of that day after recording? Then I’m handling the emails coming in from people who have questions about a course they’re taking or want to talk about enrolling their group of paralegals, questions from the bookkeeper, updates to the courses, etc.
Time-Blocking For Paralegals
The reason I suggest blocking or batching your work is because you’re more efficient and not task-switching. Here’s what it might look like for you.
Let’s say you’ve got 5 client files that you need to order medical records on. And you’ve got 3 that you need to draft the demand letter.
Instead of drafting the medical records requests on two of them and then responding to some emails, and then drafting one of the demands and then switching over to some other project, why not block out one hour, shut off your notifications and do all 5 medical records requests.
Then take a break, answer your emails and voicemails for an hour; then block out two hours to draft all 3 of those demand letters.
I think you’ll find that it will take you less time because your mind is focused on that one particular type of task or project. Time-blocking can do wonders for paralegal overwhelm.
Get Your Questions Answered
I’m starting a new kind of episode that I may do once a month if I keep getting the number of questions I’ve already received. We sent out an email to our subscribers and said Ann wants to do an Ask Me Anything episode, so send in any question you have that will help you in your paralegal career and gain confidence as a paralegal. I’ve looked at all of them and don’t even think I’ll get through them in one episode. There are some GREAT questions! If you’d like an opportunity to send in your questions for the Podcast Show subscribe below!
Meet the Author
Ann Pearson is the Founder of the Paralegal Boot Camp, and host of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, and passionate about promoting the paralegal profession.
Ann spent 20 years working as a paralegal manager and a litigation paralegal before opening the Paralegal Boot Camp in 2010. Her training programs focus on adding immediate value to a paralegal’s career and bridging the gap between what a paralegal learns in school and what they actually do on the job.
When Ann is not working, you can usually find her somewhere near the ocean – either boating, scuba diving, or rescuing sea turtles.
