I work as a legal assistant. In my unit we have 2 other assistants. We assist 12 attorneys and it’s divided up by 3/4 attorneys per assistant. About 100 cases each. One of my coworkers didn’t come in at all this week to work. I assume she was sick. So my supervisor split up her attorneys so that me and my other coworker could assist them.
Part of our job is to process cases (I.e check if there’s new orders with new court dates and mail it out) and process discovery which can be a lot. I’m already assisting 3 attorneys plus 2 more bc my coworker had been out all week. I was expected to process those attorney’s cases and their discovery. On top of that speak with any clients that called in for those attorneys. I obviously didn’t know what the heck is going on in their cases.
Yesterday was the tipping point. Both of my coworkers were out. That left me alone in my unit. Instead of my supervisor being helpful in having clients from those other attorneys sent to VM, she had me take all those calls. I would’ve appreciated if she explicitly said only send calls asking about court information because I can look that up easily and fast and send those clients with messages to VM. Any clients leaving messages just ended up taking up a lot of my time because I still had to put a note about it and that could’ve been a VM. Clients would question why certain things took a while and it’s like I don’t know bro!
That took time away from me speaking with the clients from my attorneys whom I actually needed to pass messages to.
It was ridiculous that my supervisor expected me to process all the attorneys cases including my coworker who was just out for 1 day. That coworker could’ve done it when she came back on Monday because it literally takes a while for court orders to be posted.
I just hope to god my coworkers help me out like I did for them. I’m traveling soon to see my sick grandma and this Friday was too much fucking stress.
I used to work at a shitty job and thought this one was better. In some ways it is better but after yesterday it made realize all employers suck. Anywhere you work, you get overworked or underpaid or both. Your employer doesn’t care about you.