yep we redact them. Also redact anything on the police report talking about liability insurance. Insurance info is scrubbed from all documents in the entire case.
I demanded $995k. She offered $400k. I countered with $975k. "Please make your counter-demand for an amount less than your original demand." ???????
At what point do you raise the issue with staff that's constantly out sick? Like I don't think she's faking it, but once/month she misses 2-3 days straight for some different issue. We're a small office so the ripple effects are a lot more pronounced. She also took off between Christmas and NYE, took 3 days in January to go to California, and became sick immediately on return. She's a good assistant, but like Saban always said the best ability is availability.
Honestly don't even know. I assume two weeks of PTO, but she's going to blow past that this year She is a good employee, but she gets overwhelmed easily. So, when she's out for a few days and the emails pile up, it's another 2-3 days before she's back operating at full capacity
If she’s following your policy, then that’s within her rights. If she has no more days by June, then that’s on her.
Here's ours. We do up to 4 weeks of PTO + 5 sick days + 2 floating days for birthdays and firm anniversaries+ 10 holidays. They get a decent amount imo PTO: Each employee begins employment with ten (10) days of paid time off (“PTO”), and then each year at an employee's anniversary he or she gets an additional two (2) days of PTO through the employee’s fifth (5th) anniversary at which time he or she would receive a maximum amount of PTO of twenty (20) days. PTO days will be scaled depending on whether that employee is on a seven (7) or eight (8) hour workday. By way of example: Employee “A” has been with the Firm for 4 years, and is in her 5th year with the Firm, so she needs to have 18 days of PTO (her 10 original days, plus 2 additional days for each of her 4 years of service). If her "days" are on the 7 hour scale, this would total 126 hours -- calculated as 7 hours times 18 days of PTO. If her “days” are on the 8 hour scale, this would total 144 hours – calculated as 8 hours times 18 days of PTO. There is no distinction between “PTO” and “vacation” leave. The employee is free to use his or her PTO as he or she sees fit. ADDITIONAL PTO: The Firm also provides one floating day of paid leave for birthdays, to be taken at any time throughout the year with Partner notice and approval. The Firm also provides one day of paid leave on an employee's anniversary day with the Firm (to be taken on the Friday before or Monday after should that anniversary fall on a weekend) (may be modified with prior Partner approval). Both of these days of additional leave are also scaled for the 7 or 8 hour workday, as applicable. SICK LEAVE: The Firm provides five (5) days of sick leave per year, from the time of employment with the Firm (scaled for the 7 or 8 hour workday). That number does not change with an anniversary. MATERNITY/PATERNITY/EXTENDED ILLNESS LEAVE: The Firm may provide additional paid Maternity/Paternity/Extended Illness Leave time on a case by case basis, upon notice and request to the Partners. Generally, this extended paid leave will consist of one paid day (of either seven (7) or eight (8) hours, depending on the employee’s regular workday) per workweek of leave required/taken, up to a total maximum of twelve (12) weeks. HOLIDAYS: The Firm provides paid holiday leave for the following holidays, also scaled for a 7 or 8 hour workday, as applicable. As applicable, exact dates for holidays are determined in advance by the Firm if a holiday falls on a weekend. 1. Memorial Day 2. Independence Day 3. Labor Day 4. Thanksgiving Day 5. Friday After Thanksgiving 6. Christmas Eve 7. Christmas Day 8. New Year’s Eve 9. New Year’s Day 10. Mardi Gras Day
Think it’s easy to forget about how a conversation like that affects the person. She will go home crying and it’ll probably change her entire life for a few weeks if not longer
Most of them have worked for us for a while . So they are all well over 10 days of PTO and several of them are approaching 20 PTO days. What are you giving ?
I'm not doing anything yet. But, when it starts affecting everyone else I feel like it does warrant a convo.
Unlimited sick days and I think officially 3 weeks a year but really don’t check and we are very much check emails and kind of work the Christmas and new years weeks
Well I do have some employees getting more PTO than yours are getting. I guess you have me on the unlimited paid sick days.
My paralegal does so much work for me that she could take every Friday off to come kick me in the face and I’d still give her a huge bonus
This makes me quite jealous. When I joined my current firm, paralegal had been doing corporate work for decades and was way more valuable than I was. Since she retired 3-4 years ago, my team hasn’t been able to find a stable replacement that’s worth a damn. Current paralegal has the aptitude* but is chronically out with personal or family health issues and always slow to respond even when she’s working (at home or in the office). But we’ve hired several “replacements” to work alongside her and they’ve never managed to work out. *Except for the fact she indents the introductory sentence/paragraph of her emails, which grinds my gears like no other
I've had good luck hiring for my assistant role by just hiring people who seem smart and having my current paralegal train them, but i'd be completely lost if my paralegal quit.
We tried that by having the good paralegal train her replacement. But the replacement left by mutual agreement about 6 months after the first retired
Good legal staff is extremely difficult to come by. Most of the time we have to just find someone with the requisite traits with no experience and train them from the ground up.
I think this is what it comes down to. And most good staff is with bigger firms that take care of them financially. Very hard to hire someone away. Need to find someone relatively young (late 20s/early 30s), smart, train them and hope they don't leave.
I have 3 legal assistants who work for me now. Prior to working for me one was leasing apartments, one was front desk at a dentist and other was a yoga instructor. We had to encourage one last year to look for another job. She was a paralegal who had experience who was a friend of my associates husband or something and she just didn’t want to do stuff the way we wanted it done. the three with 0 legal experience don’t know how to do anything other than the way we trained them. I’ve also made it so if they left they would all have to leave for less money and way way less work/life flexibility. also, doing little shit that doesn’t mean much to you can mean a lot to them. The rodeo is a big deal in Houston with a concert each night. I tell all of them to pick a concert they want to go to and I buy two tickets for them. Every thanksgiving week I put a card with $300 in it so they can go Black Friday shopping. If it’s a three day weekend we always close at 1 on the day before the weekend starts. Little stuff like that goes a long way with staff
None of this fixes chronic absenteeism, which was Nug’s initial question and a dilemma I also share. Letting folks have MLK Day and Juneteenth off isn’t a panacea, unfortunately
MLK Day and Mardi Gras day are often in fairly close proximity, so having one off rather than the other is pretty common in places that celebrate MG
I really like that black Friday idea. We used to give Christmas bonuses at our Christmas party . The staff leaked to us that they'd rather have it earlier in December so they could use it to help buy Christmas presents . So we started giving it earlier. We close the office a few days a year -because I don't want it to infringe on their personal time , and take them to: (1) A baseball game , get a suite, get a full food and drink spread, and get ubers for everyone. This is probably the most popular one . (2) Take them to a nursery , let them pick out whatever pumpkins and fall decor they want, and let them decorate the office with pumpkins and said decor , which surprisingly they really love to do . We don't do these every year but other stuff we've tried (1) Habitat for humanity . They liked it. (2) Place that has go karts, bowling, laser tag, arcade games , and a bar /restaurant . They liked this (3) Margaritaville: This was a total bust. The rock wall they wanted to climb was closed until way later . The food sucked and they all got sick after eating it . There is an outside area on the water with rides that was closed until like 5PM. I like your idea for the rodeo. There is an amphitheater here with decent concerts . We could do something similar. Also we have the same situation to where we pay them in the 99th% for our area so we don't have a ton of turnover from that.
I find it's difficult in an office our size (give or take 15 people) because you've got a core group of 7-8 people and you’re constantly having to find people that fit well with that core group.
I’m 3/3 on hiring assistance with no legal experience -front desk girl from a chiro clinic (left to go work for the SEC after a zoom call from Greg sankey) -assistant wedding planner (left because her significant other had a mental breakdown and relocated them) -assistant manager at a bar. I just interview and look for smart people who are used to dealing with assholes. Anyone can learn to send scheduling emails and put dates on my calendar. 2/3 I found by offering my friends a bounty of $250 if I hired the person they brought me.
The answer is to determine if she has a disability. If not then have a discussion with her about the effect of her absences that are outside of the permitted vacation and sick days. Also curious whether she gets paid when out sick after using up her vacation and sick days.
While I think she has some health issues herself, a lot of her absenteeism is due to family issues and having to care for her kids--plus the kids of other family members, I think. Life stuff. Hopefully it's just a stage. I don't really care about sick days or what she gets paid so long as it's enough to keep her here long enough to outgrow these issues because she's smarter than the average bear. Also I think I'm talking about a different kind of paralegal than one who sends calendar invites or schedules things. I'm looking for someone who can draft routine corporate documents, spot issues, and be able to look up the law distinguishing a Florida LLLP from a Virginia LLLP. Basically an associate with a lower hourly rate for routine work. The paralegal I was venting about has taken an interest in partnership tax more than most associates.
yeah if you find someone like that giving them a pretty long runway on dealing with life events is smart. also, more generally, we all need to be cognizant of what we say to our staff. something we say in a offhand way that we don't even remember ten minutes later could be something they latch on to and dont forget
my associate has been going through some personal stuff for the last month and has probably only worked half of it. she is so valuable she could probably do that for another six months without me saying anything other than what can i do to help
It's a very important skill that's taken me years to learn. Edit: mainly when providing constructive criticism
They exist! They’re just hard to find and typically 50+ years old and been working for 15-20 years already
they do exist. and if you have one, it's really hard to envision what the upper limit is for what you'd pay to keep them.