Entitled 26-year-old lawyer insists he take over seasoned paralegal's case prep, only to jeopardize losing an important client

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  • A young male lawyer in a suit checks his watch as he speaks on the phone.
  • Eleven minutes. In front of the client.

    I work as a paralegal at a mid- sized litigation firm. My job is to build case files, manage discovery documents, prepare trial binders and make sure deadlines don't get missed. It's
  • detail work and a lot of it. The attorneys I support have been here a long time and they trust the process because the process has never failed them.
  • About a year ago we got a new associate, call him M. Fresh out of law school, top 20 program, very aware of both those facts.
  • A paralegal folds her arms while sitting at her desk in the office of a law firm.
  • Smart guy genuinely but the kind of smart that hasn't been stress tested yet. He started making comments in case prep meetings about how the filing system was "outdated" and how the way we
  • indexed discovery documents was "inefficient compared to how they did it at his internship." Every time. In front of the partners.
  • A shot of the hands of lawyers and clients arguing across a table in a conference room.
  • One of the partners, probably just to give him ownership of something, asked M to take the lead on organizing discovery for an upcoming case. Nothing huge but a real client, real deadlines. I
  • handed him the document inventory, the chronology, the whole system. He said he wanted to restructure it his way and that he'd let me know if he needed anything. He did not let me know.
  • The deposition was on a Thursday. Opposing counsel asked for a specific set of emails from a defined date range during the session. Standard request,
  • happens constantly. M had reorganized everything by topic rather than chronology so pulling a clean date range in the room meant going through folders manually in front of everyone including the client.
  • It took eleven minutes to find a document that should have taken thirty seconds. The client said nothing during the deposition. But they called the partner directly that evening.
  • M still works here. But he sits in on my case prep sessions now instead of running them. He hasn't suggested restructuring anything since. And he takes very detailed notes.
  • ConfusionOwn8378. Tough way to learn a lesson, but those 11 minutes will be burned into his brain for years now.
  • Sounds like he's smart enough to take the learn and grow professionally from it, good for him and hopefully good for the firm if he has that sort of emotional intelligence and resilience.
  • Far_Carrot 8661. Good for you, letting him do it his way and learn, helping and teaching after. Good for the partners in not firing him, but letting him learn. And good on the poor guy.
  • That was one tough life lesson but now he's taking detailed notes after dusting him self off and getting back on the horse. I hope things. go well for you all.

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