hello, i have been working at my job for about 8 months now. this is my first full-time job out of undergrad and i’m working as a legal assistant while i work towards applying to law school.
when i started my position, i was hired to replace a previous assistant who had been working there for nearly 35 years and was incredibly close to the attorneys i now currently assist. everyone in the office praised her for being best of the best and so i knew i had big shoes to fill. she left pretty suddenly as her mom was ill and so i never had the opportunity to learn the ropes from her. my supervisor who hired me did not train me at all and has even made comments in the past that the training for assistants at this firm is awful. also, i happen to assist the most demanding attorneys in the office, so just my luck (i don’t mind the work, just makes the learning curve a little more).
anyways, i started in my position really excited and felt as though i was able to pick things up and completed tasks as they came to me only making a few hiccups here and there. i assumed i was doing well as i hadn’t heard any negative feedback for months. now, for the past few months, my supervisor has began to meet with me frequently and is constantly comparing me to the old assistant and saying i’m not proactive enough and making some harsher comments. i don’t mind the feedback but she didn’t train me and when i ask for advice on how to be more proactive, she basically tells me that i need to figure it out.
i’ve tried different ways to be more proactive and ask for more work, but this has led me to make a lot of mistakes lately. i feel as though shes already looking for reasons to put me down and i’m very nervous for our next check in. one thing that especially makes me insecure is that (part of my job is filing my attorneys emails) i constantly see her exchanging emails with my attorneys them bcc each other on their exchanges with me and i don’t think they realize i can still see them even though they deleted them. just makes me feel like an incompetent piece of shit tbh.
im so used to excelling at what i set my mind to but i feel so defeated and insecure and that i’m ruining an amazing opportunity. any advice is appreciated.