Flexible hours but you would work 20 hours or so. You would start as a 1099 independent contractor. And while you might prefer to remain at 1099 and that might be possible you maybe familiar with California's statutory framework regarding classification of independent contractors and employees (the ABC test) and would eventually almost by necessity become a W2 employee within a year or so.
About the job:
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY: You would print to pdf each email we receive each day that relates to a legal case and upload it to the correspondence file of the case to which it refers in our practice management software called mycase. You would provide a summary of the emails we received each day to me via text. There are certain emails which are emergencies. We would describe those types of emails and when we receive one you would text me and several others to alert us to the emergency. There are some emails that don't relate to a case those emails would be described in your summary. My firm mostly does family law and criminal cases.
You would work every day but you could check the emails at 10:00 a.m again at 12:00 p.m. and again at 5:00 p.m. So a lot of the day would be free.
SECONDARY RESPONSIBILITIES: In many of the emails there will be attachments. Generally those attachments are called pleadings (legal papers). You would upload the attachments of the email into the appropriate folder. For example if the enemy lawyer sends us a motion to compel further responses to legal questions that would go in the folder called pleadings associated with the case identified in the email. You would store the attachment to the email into the pleadings folder and identify it. Often the name of the document attached to the email speaks for itself. For example John Smith motion to compel in the case John Smith versus Jane Doe.
Sometimes the attachments are not pleadings. For example, I might hire accounting expert called a forensic accountant and he might send me a report. In that case it would go into a different folder associated with that case because it's not a pleading it's a report and while I'm explaining all this I'll mention that the name of the folder to which it would be added is called the discovery folder.
We get a whole lot of emails. Some of them have attachments. You have to download the attachment and put it into the right folder. Nobody expects you to know what the right folder is right now we teach you all that stuff.
TERTIARY RESPONSIBILITIES: You will be taught how the attachments that are pleadings relate to times and dates: in the law if we file a motion against an adversary they have a finite period of time within which to file written response to our motion and serve it on us (that is send it to us) and file it with the court. If the adversary files in motion against our client, then we have a finite. Of time within which to file a written response and serve it on the adversary lawyer.
Logically, if one side (ours or theirs) files a motion to have a hearing that hearing will occur in a court that has a location, on date that is specified, at a time that is specified. You will learn to calendar the date of the hearing. The date the responsive lawyer paper called a pleading is due Etc. Nobody's expecting you know anything about this. But it is kind of cool and we'll teach you how to do it.
Very Awesome Things That Are Not Requirements:
a. Familiarity with mycase or clio as the practice management software you would use to calendar, obtain tasks, store data, etc. There are similar practice management applications outside the law for accountants and doctors and what not. It's necessary that you have that you have used one before, but it would be cool.
b. Familiarity with calendaring and storing data in a database.
Requirements:
a. Very good computer. Not an ipad. Not a mac. A windows operating system computer. I don't care if you mostly use it to play Call of Duty as long as it's a Windows computer and you need Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel. Got to have it. No exceptions.
b. Strong internet connection.
c. Commitment. This is a pretty cool job you can do it from the beach if you have the type of mobile phone that has a personal Wi-Fi that's got some juice. But you need to be there.
You don't have to be there at 8:00 a.m. you don't have to sit around. But you have to be committed to the job because your job is mission critical.
Some days you'll have less work than other days. And if you want more stuff to do we can give it to you outside of the primary secondary and tertiary responsibilities I've described; that's cool with us.
But the person that would be well suited to this job is a person that did good in school. Remember when you had to write a term paper? If you're the person that started writing it about a week after they gave it to you and did it bit by bit over the term you'd fit well here. If you're the guy that does everything at the last minute, this is not the job for you.
No weekend work. Unless you want it. But it's not required. Can take days off within reason. Don't want to work on Friday because you're heading to Mammoth? Got it you can do that. But not every Friday; in other words we expect you in the game most days.