ID associate here. Kind of in the grass is always greener mindset at the moment but also curious - what does an average day look like on the plaintiff side?

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That’s going to vary a lot depending on the firm and your role. If I’m busy then I’m in the office 8:30-7:00 and often doing work on weekends. When it’s slow, I’m in the office 9:00-5:00.

Typical stuff: internal calls on the way to the office, informal collaboration in the office, formal meetings in the office, emails, phone calls with adjusters, clients showing up unannounced, putting out a fire (usually a crazy client), litigation review, property damage claims, depositions, mediations, dealing with the full spectrum of defense attorneys (some reasonable and some not, plus there’s always that erratic one with a drinking problem), dealing with staff and their issues.

Plaintiffs work is much more flexible because there is no billable hours, but you gotta get stuff done because no results = no pay. Also there’s a ton of pre-litigation work to do that ID lawyers never have to bother with.

I’ll tell you though, for every one plaintiffs lawyer that is making big money, there are 49 others that are barely scraping by. True numbers might be worse than that. That ID money is at least steady.

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What’s with all the internal meetings? What do yall talk about?

I’m in office 9-6, usually do a few hours once I am home to keep up with everything and not fall behind.

Made the switch to PI after being a prosecutor and I am about 8 months in. I have around 35 cases assigned to me. I haven’t done anything too substantial so far it has mostly been responding to discovery and meeting with clients, attending hearings. I’ve taken two depositions. Haven’t done and arbitration or mediation yet. I have a lulls in my day where I am struggling to figure out what to do with. Luckily there are no billables. It’s a little boring and I am kind of in that grass is always greener mindset as well but overall it’s not bad.

Managing clients. This can be a real time sink depending on the type of firm/structure you are in. I used to work at a plaintiff firm where you had to call 25 clients a week, regardless of whether or not there was news to relay. It was terrible.

I can tell you from a paralegal standpoint everything mentioned above is correct. It is a lot of managing clients but there is a lot of money to be made. Seems like the attorneys I work for never realy have to work late or work weekends and we stay on top of our work.

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