For those of you who have been formally given the title of “senior paralegal” what are the qualifications for that title at your firm? Does your firm do promotions from paralegal to senior paralegal? At my firm we are all simply just “paralegal” (we all fully handle our own dockets, no assistants) and I would like to help develop a concrete career track for paralegal to senior paralegal.

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Where I currently work I just got a promoted to senior paralegal. It goes with how many years of experience you have under your belt and what all you handle in your responsibilities.

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My old firm had a career path model. Each level identified objectives you had to meet to get to each level and years of practice did not matter. Once you did reach Senior your billable hour expectation also went up.

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Not off the top of my head. To be honest, most of us hated it and thought it was stupid because some of the stuff they wanted you to accomplish was not always possible in some groups. I never met anyone that actually like it, for what it's worth.

Every firm’s qualifications vary. You could be senior by experience and expertise, and not by title. After 5-6 YOE, I would consider myself “Senior” since I do attorney level work.

Right, I consider myself the same but wanted perspective from paralegals at firms who have the difference in title.

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I work at a 50 Amlaw as a SLP. Definitely based on years of experience but the description for it includes handling all aspects of discovery and trial prep without needing attorney supervision. Basically knowing all the steps and anticipating what’s needed without having to be directed.

So other than years of experience are there any concrete metrics that qualify you to be a senior paralegal at your firm? I’m trying to present a guideline for such. All paralegals at my firm do attorney level work so that’s not really a differentiating factor here

Adding - drafting motions, attending trial, etc. but biggest part is discovery and trial.

Quite honestly, I don’t really know what the difference would be, even though that’s my title… I came from another firm that did one very specific type of law and when I applied for senior paralegal at my current firm, they took me right away because practically no one has experience in this field. My job is to manage the caseload of 5 attorneys—start to end of each case. Keep caselists up to speed, monitor all the ongoings of the field and how it affects each case, manage intake, and manage 3 legal assistants. It’s a pretty hefty job because, since I’m also a law grad (no bar license yet), they give me complex research projects as well. So I’m guessing, they labeled the job as such because you’re managing everyone on the team. Like i said, i have my law degree, but I also have 10 years of experience working as a legal assistant and then paralegal, and I have an LLM. I would NEVER recommend going to law school for these crazy degrees to be a paralegal but I definitely do recommend specializing in one specific, niche area of law and learning how to manage a big caseload. If you do that for long enough, you’ll be able to apply to newer and better paid jobs as a PL in that field and eventually find a job as a senior.

My thing is I am senior by experience and caseload, but I would like the title. So trying to get my bosses to implement some type of formal path to “senior” (even though I am already there)

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I just worked with our firm leadership to establish a Senior Paralegal position to recognize some of our top talent and help distinguish levels of experience.

What did that end up looking like?

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