Stuff I Miss About BigLaw . . . and Stuff I Don't! (Plus, a Bonus)

No really! Quit laughing! There are things I miss about my life in BigLaw! Such as:

1.  I miss having all my MCLEs and training programs paid for by someone else.
2.  I miss having a team of staff to manage.
3.  I miss the opportunities to teach training programs.
4.  I miss the afternoon latte breaks. Note: there is no Peet's Coffee in walking distance of my home office :(
5.  I miss specific people. Attorneys I liked working with. Fellow staffers who were helpful, knowledgeable and a kick in the ass.
6.  I miss the Word Processing Department! (But now I’m oh-so-skilled at formatting those documents myself!)

Stuff I'm not missing even a little about my former life in BigLaw:

1.  I don't miss getting yelled at by attorneys. (Not that that ever happened . . . )

2.  I don’t miss the all-nighters. Thank god my current boss doesn't allow those. :P
3.  I don’t miss the commute. Not. One. Bit.
4.  I don’t miss the billable hour minimum.
5.  I don’t miss the terrible vending machine food in the lunch room.
6.  I don’t miss being stuck with the terrible vending machine food when I’m too busy to find something better to eat.

And as an added bonus, things I love about being a virtual paralegal:

1.  I love the variety of projects I work on – an even greater variety of work than I experienced in any one law firm.
2.  I love learning about the varied cases of my clients in different practice areas.
3.  I love not commuting! (See #3 above.)
4.  I love the flexibility to exercise and run errands in the middle of the day if I want to.
5.  I love the tremendous sense of ownership I have over every aspect of my work, now that I’m a business owner.
6.  I love the technology I utilize to work remotely.
7.  I love the ability to say NO, when no is the best thing for me or for my business.

8.  I love some of the things marketing a business compels me to do. Such as professional networking events, writing my newsletter, Twitter and blog reading as industry research.
9.  See how long this list is?

Things I love not so much about being a virtual paralegal:

1.  I don’t love the inconsistent cash flow.
2.  I don’t love all the annoying administrative details - business taxes, licenses, accounting.
3.  I don’t love some of the things marketing a business compels me to do. Such as cold – or even warm – calling, marketing ROI analysis, tooting my own horn.
4.  See how short this list is?

What do you love/love not so much about your work?

Method to My Madness: Getting More Done

Running my own business requires a different mindset about time management than that which served me as a law firm employee. I have many more tasks requiring my attention, and a different set of priorities. This has necessitated a "re-think" about the organization of my time.

As a paralegal in a law firm, my to-do list flowed from my case deadlines, and assignments from attorneys. After all, most case deadlines are pretty non-negotiable! That motion must get filed by this time on this date, and I must move heaven and earth to make that happen. And when a partner calls wanting something done, the only appropriate response is, “On it!”

Now as a virtual and freelance paralegal, I still have deadlines for case work assigned by my attorney clients. But on top of that, I also have a host of business related tasks I must perform. No matter how much client work I have in the pipeline (and I want to have a lot!), I ignore these other tasks at my peril, because my flow of future client work depends on them.

When I first started this business, I naturally used my old method of a long, daily list of to-dos, largely driven by external deadlines. But when I began adding those business and marketing related projects into this list, two things happened.

First, the list got overwhelmingly long!

But second and perhaps more problematic, because the business related tasks didn’t usually have the hard deadlines that the client projects did, they got shoved to the side. Or they led to a lot of disorganized and confusing “project jumping.” My sense of the priority of these business tasks was so subjective and fear driven, that I found myself switching from one thing to another to the point that little got done.

I needed a better way.

I've posted before about my realization that I need a strategy for prioritizing my to-dos. As my thinking has evolved – or perhaps as my frustration level has become unbearable – I’ve also realized I need a structure. Something to keep the daily list below 25 items. Or even if I'm using the post-it method (which is that your daily list has to fit on a post-it - see here), I need something to prevent those items that never make it onto the post-it from completely falling through the cracks.

So now I’m trying the “days of the week” method. In other words, categories of projects are assigned to different days of the week.

Now, some tasks need to be done every day. Like client work – I do whatever it takes to get it done, get it done well, and get it done on time. Also exercise – I really try to do this every day. Also Twitter, reading and commenting on blogs, and other social media activities – I spend time on them most days, although not the same amount of time each day. (Why waste time on this? See here and here.)

Another item I can’t assign a day to is in-person networking events. I see big benefits from these for my business, so I attend them whenever they occur and schedule everything else around them.

But the bigger biz-related projects? I’ve assigned them days. For example, I reserve the same day each week for working on my Newsletter. (Not a subscriber? See the sidebar!) I reserve a different day each week for article writing. And yet another day for my website. Etc.

What’s helpful about this is it thwarts my temptation to switch projects every time I get an idea. Say I get an incredibly great idea about organizing an article I’m writing. Typically I would start worrying about the article, and maybe I would even stop what I’m doing to work on it. But this way, I jot the idea down, tell myself I’ll flesh it out on my article writing day, and then continue what I was doing. Or suppose I get a sudden surge of panic that my newsletter isn't ready and it has to go out next week - OMG! I tell myself to relax, that I’ll finish it on my upcoming newsletter day. And I go on with what I’m doing.

Another benefit is that I can actually assure I will get to my accounting, and other administrative stuff! After all, I’ve reserved Mondays for that! It makes it much harder to come up with a convenient excuse to avoid working on that stuff I don't enjoy but need to to!

This method is working for me at the moment, and I find I’m managing to move more projects forward. How about you – what do you do about managing your to-do list?

The Law School Controversy Be Damned, Congratulations to New Lawyers!

Some readers might be aware that there have been a lot of blog posts and tweets flying about the blawosphere and twitterverse recently about the wisdom of pursuing a law degree. The argument goes that law school is expensive, the resultant school loan debt is enormous, and there are no jobs! This topic has been batted about for some time now, but the most recent furor was instigated by last weekend’s New York Times piece called Is Law School a Losing Game?

Now, I’m not about to weigh in here on the relative pros and cons of a law school degree. I never wanted to go to law school myself, but I’m certainly glad that many did, or I would never have had a career in the field, and I wouldn't have such great attorney clients now.

No, I’m writing to celebrate those recent grads I know who did decide law school was for them, who passed the bar, and who now are eager to do something worthwhile with their careers.

Last night I attended the Sonoma County Bar Association’s New Admittees’ Reception. Present to be honored were about ten recent admittees to the California Bar. I managed to meet most of them. They attended a variety of (mostly) California law schools, and their ages varied, (in fact, one graduated from Stanford 34 years ago, and practiced for many years in other states), and some have landed jobs and others have not.

But as I mingled around and spoke with them, I was impressed and heartened by two things: First, each of the new lawyers I spoke with is proud of his or her achievement and excited about the law. And second, although there are regions of the state with bigger law firms, presumably higher salaries, and possibly greater job prospects, these folks choose to live and practice here, in slower-paced, somewhat rural Sonoma County.

As blogger and JD candidate Jack Wittington has pointed out, not every law school student is just in it for money, fame and fortune. Many choose this career because they believe they can help others doing it. The brand new lawyers I met last evening all certainly fit into that category, and my figurative hat is off to them!

So congratulations, I say, to new lawyers here in Sonoma County, in California, and everywhere!

Virtual Paralegals in Litigation Part 5: Delegating Appropriate Tasks

A virtual paralegal can offer huge benefits to a litigation practice, providing savings in both time and money. The purpose of this series has been to discuss those benefits, and answer some of the questions litigators have about working with a virtual or remote working paralegal.

In recent posts I discussed a way to think about the title "virtual paralegal," the readily available technologies virtual paralegals use, issues related to document security and confidentiality, and developing trust in a virtual paralegal.

Today we discuss a final area to consider when contemplating working with a virtual paralegal:

Delegating Suitable Tasks. Some lawyers believe that all the work they require simply has to be done on-site. Or said differently, they believe they need the immediacy of a paralegal close at hand for urgent projects.

Let us concede that there are a small number of tasks which cannot readily be performed from a remote location: making copies, for example, or meeting with clients, experts or witnesses.

However there are a host of tasks that are perfectly suited for a remote working paralegal. These include drafting correspondence, discovery, discovery responses and simple pleadings. They include performing suitable legal or procedural research. They include reviewing documents, preparing document productions, and summarizing depositions. They include cite checking briefs, downloading case law, and e-filing documents.

For example in my own business, I have performed on line and law library research on procedural issues and drafted memos outlining my findings for attorney clients. I have uploaded all relevant statutes and case law to an on-line shared document folder for my clients' review. I have drafted and served notices to all parties in my clients’ cases. I have reviewed and organized client documents, both in paper  and electronic formats. I have bates numbered documents for production. I have reviewed document productions to compile data needed for motions. I have drafted declarations and assembled their exhibits.

These are just a few examples of the many services a virtual paralegal is able to provide to litigation attorney clients, working remotely from his or her own well-equipped office.

A competent virtual paralegal can help an attorney evaluate which projects are best suited for his or her assistance, and can help break the project down into tasks which the attorney can delegate to both in-house and remote working staff. A virtual paralegal can help streamline the case load of any litigation practice. Litigators can not only reap the benefits of a contractor working only when needed, but can also save the costs of providing space, equipment and supplies.

It’s a win/win for us all!