In Part I of this two-part series, we talked about appropriate attire and creating reference tools to facilitate your paralegal job. Part II below covers ways in which new paralegals (and veterans for that matter) can simplify their workloads: 

Create and Use Checklists for Multi-step Projects.

If you have a multistep assignment, closings, preparing a divorce submission package, submitting personal injury documents, class action suit prep, motion prep and filing, it is a good idea to create a checklist of the steps involved – all the way down to the check you have to get from accounting before you walk out the door to partner’s signature on X document.  The reason is because when you are multitasking, and your phone is ringing, and your son is calling and you’re hungry and your boss needs your notary skills now, you are still expected to be able to pick up where you left off and cover every step of that process of the project you are working on so that your motion is not rejected or papers don’t bounce at the agency you are filing them with, etc. 

Find a mentor

You are looking for that maternal/paternal person you can go to when you have questions after something has already been explained to you or when you’re expected to know something that you have no way of knowing.  This person is also your “go to” gal or guy when you are not sure what certain protocol or office cultural pc. 

Always Take Good Notes.

It’s up to you to accelerate your grasp of what’s going on. Take copious notes.  When the person who is doing the explaining pauses, quickly fill in the full word of the shorthand word you just wrote. You may not remember what it was short for later.  Don’t take sketchy notes that you are not going to be able to interpret later just to look like you are paying attention, because you will find that the empathy stops right there.  Take what you are taught, mull it over, practice it at home, read it, study it, Google it until you know it.  If they use a word you don’t know, write it phonetically and look it later in all its permutations.  

Being a paralegal is a very rewarding and extremely exciting job.  But when you are new and you take what you are learning for granted and don’t really put too much heed in instruction, sometimes it can feel like running from first grade to high school in twelve days.  Today, you will learn to count to ten.  Tomorrow, you will be expected to know how to count to ten on your own.  That means, tonight you should practice counting to ten, over and over and over until you can do it on your own.  Why?  Because tomorrow is addition.  And the next day is multiplication. The next day is fractions.  The next day is algebra. The next day is Trig. The next is AP Trig. 

You are a paralegal.  This means you are a professional in a high intelligence, fast paced field.  You will be expected to keep up. AND YOU CAN.  Even people who don’t learn on the spot under pressure have learned to do their paralegal jobs well, because they understood that if you study for the “A,” you will get the “A.”   However, when you slack off, no one is going to sympathize because everyone is too busy keeping up with their own assignments and keeping up with the changes that constantly take place in the field of law.

Stay on your “A” game and maintain systems that facilitate your workload and that of the attorney you work with. That’s what you went to school to do. That’s why you were hired.