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1) I worked fifty hours more than required in August. FIFTY. Five. Zero. I took all or part of four days off without putting in for leave, and I still worked that much over. (I'm salaried.)
2) I put in 14 hours of work this past weekend, including all functional hours of Sunday ...
3) ... and then came in this morning to discover from my friend Z, our intake paralegal, that my boss had changed the way we evaluate family-law cases so that many, many more could conceivably come flooding through our door, because he doesn't feel we're helping enough people.
(But that's not because we're falling down on the job, or doing something wrong, or Just Not Frakking Well Working Hard Enough. That's because there are sixty-two million people in the US right now who are eligible for our services, meaning that their household income is at or under 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines for their household size, and there are a little less than four thousand federally funded legal-services attorneys in the country. There are also a fair number of legal-services attorneys in the country who aren't federally funded. A very generous count of those folks doubles the number of civil attorneys for poor people in the US. Call it 8,000 attorneys for 62 million potential clients. By my math, that's 7,750 people who need help for every one legal-aid attorney.
(... yeah, I got nothin'.)
For the record, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I am the attorney in the office who handles the bulk of the family-law cases we keep in-house. And yet, somehow I had no idea the floodgates were about to be opened until Z thoughtfully gave me an update.
... yeah, I (still) got nothin'.
4) I ran a report over the weekend against our client/time database comparing my case-closure rate with those of my two full-time colleagues. In my coming-up-on-seven years, I've closed two hundred and fifty more cases than my supervising attorney - who started three weeks before I did - and over three hundred more cases than my other full-time colleague. And that does not count the two hundred family-law cases that I don't get credit for closing because I filtered them to our pro bono network - as my boss desired - rather than handling them in-house.
I don't even know what to DO with that.
5) My damn right elbow hates where my work desk mousepad is. Also, our coffeemaker is broken. (What, you expected more boring attorney drama? Caffeine deprivation and tendonitis, people: these are the tragedies of our times.)
2) I put in 14 hours of work this past weekend, including all functional hours of Sunday ...
3) ... and then came in this morning to discover from my friend Z, our intake paralegal, that my boss had changed the way we evaluate family-law cases so that many, many more could conceivably come flooding through our door, because he doesn't feel we're helping enough people.
(But that's not because we're falling down on the job, or doing something wrong, or Just Not Frakking Well Working Hard Enough. That's because there are sixty-two million people in the US right now who are eligible for our services, meaning that their household income is at or under 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines for their household size, and there are a little less than four thousand federally funded legal-services attorneys in the country. There are also a fair number of legal-services attorneys in the country who aren't federally funded. A very generous count of those folks doubles the number of civil attorneys for poor people in the US. Call it 8,000 attorneys for 62 million potential clients. By my math, that's 7,750 people who need help for every one legal-aid attorney.
(... yeah, I got nothin'.)
For the record, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I am the attorney in the office who handles the bulk of the family-law cases we keep in-house. And yet, somehow I had no idea the floodgates were about to be opened until Z thoughtfully gave me an update.
... yeah, I (still) got nothin'.
4) I ran a report over the weekend against our client/time database comparing my case-closure rate with those of my two full-time colleagues. In my coming-up-on-seven years, I've closed two hundred and fifty more cases than my supervising attorney - who started three weeks before I did - and over three hundred more cases than my other full-time colleague. And that does not count the two hundred family-law cases that I don't get credit for closing because I filtered them to our pro bono network - as my boss desired - rather than handling them in-house.
I don't even know what to DO with that.
5) My damn right elbow hates where my work desk mousepad is. Also, our coffeemaker is broken. (What, you expected more boring attorney drama? Caffeine deprivation and tendonitis, people: these are the tragedies of our times.)
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I'm in awe by what you do and how you keep having the energy to do it. (I'm still worried that you're overtaxing yourself, but there's a reason I decided not to study law myself, becauste the situation's not any better in Germany.)
Ask for a raise? :D?
*snuggles* Boo, broken coffeemaker. Do you at least have a kettle so you can make tea?
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♥
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welcome to my world. I wish my friends weren't here w/me, as I wouldn't wish this on anyone.
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I'm on inpatient service this month. On paper, I'm working 80-90 hours a week; 4 days off a month. But I go in early every day because there's just SO MUCH to do, and I spend my evenings charting or on the phone with insurance companies trying to get prior auths for meds or crying my fucking eyes out because someone suggested their taxes would go down if we just "let those people die" and I was so angry all I could do was cry and work harder. I don't know how you've done this, every single month, for as long as you have. My soul hurts already. *great big hugs*
Also, our coffeemaker is broken.
I fully appreciate the horror of this situation. *terrified muppet face*
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Please take a moment amidst the horror of your overwork to be fiercely proud of yourself for how many people you have helped. And then put that positive energy into your search for a new job.:)
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I wish I had anything more concrete to offer than just compassion.