Telling partners that your caseload is becoming unmanageable Forum

[Anonymous User]

I have been working at a small, general practice law firm for about six months now. The firm never had any associates before, and recently hired myself along with another recent law school graduate. Each partner does not keep track of the work that I'm assigned by the other partners, and all of the partners continue to give me work. About 50% of my assignments consist of gathering medical records and other tasks that are suitable a paralegal, but all of our paralegals have a lot on their plates already and I'm not sure whether I'm allowed to delegate any work to other staff members. I'm starting to feel overwhelmed, it is taking me forever to get around to taking other non-time sensitive assignments, and I'm afraid that I'm moments away from making a fatal mistake. What is the best way to let the partners know about this?

[lawschoolftw]

How much are you working right now?

[Anonymous User]

Why wouldn't you just tell them? Seems like having a frank conversation where you are upfront and honest about how long it may take you to get to a certain thing would be better than not saying shit, and then all of a sudden you missed a huge deadline..

Why wouldn't you be able to use paralegals? What else are they there for?

[smallfirmassociate]

"I've got a lot of tasks right now that would be appropriate for a paralegal to manage, like gathering medical records. Could I delegate that? And would there be a preference on which assistants I would have work on it?"

"I'm getting busy. I don't want my caseload to become unmanageable, so one option would be if I could delegate some of the discovery type of tasks to a paralegal..."

I don't know; you'll figure it out. You're seriously asking people on the internet how to form one or two sentences of basic information in conversation. You're overthinking this.

[Magic Hat]

"Hey boss man, I've got a lot of stuff on my desk from you and other boss man. How should I prioritize?"