Working With Your Legal Assistant

My first job role in the legal industry was as a legal assistant.?I initially worked with lawyers and quickly became a legal assistant to law clerks.?This gave me a lot of insight into how a legal assistant is feeling about their job role and managing their related duties working with both lawyers and law clerks.

When I first started as a junior law clerk I did not have a legal assistant.?Initially, our whole department did both the administrative and billable work.?Over time we brought in a couple of legal assistants to the team but they were kept busy by the more senior law clerks.??

As I moved along in my career and got a job at another law firm I became part of a department that had shared legal assistants.?In the beginning, I felt very uncomfortable using either of the legal assistants.?Some reasons for this were that I was more junior than some of the other law clerks who were utilizing them daily. I was new and didn’t have a connection with them.?One legal assistant had been at the firm for more than 20 years so I felt odd asking her to do work for me.?The other legal assistant wasn’t very approachable and the other law clerks found it difficult to work with her.

By being uncomfortable asking for help from the legal assistants I lost quite a bit of billable time as I was doing my own administrative work.?Checking in with my manager in the first several months she asked me about how I liked working with the assistants in the department and I decided to tell her how I was feeling.?Speaking with her about this issue added a lot of clarity to my dilemma.?She spoke about how not working with the assistants would ultimately affect my billable hours, how we are a team and if we don’t use the assistants then they feel like they aren’t contributing and they might think they aren’t doing a good job.?Also, not to feel like I’m “telling them what to do” but rather I am asking them to be part of something.?That we are a team and we work together to get the job done by completing different tasks.

This conversation was key in changing my view on the challenges of trying to use a legal assistant.?I spoke with the other law clerks to find out the strengths and weaknesses of each assistant and which one to choose for different tasks.?I then began slowly approaching each of them with my requests.?They were both willing to help and I made sure to gear the type of work to each of their strengths.?I also approached our relationship as one of collaboration and not straight delegation.?This approach created a very positive experience for all of us.?In the end, we are a department and a team of professionals working together.?The legal assistants provide the support that is essential to the needs of the law clerks so that they can continue to capture billable time and show the financial value of the team.