My workload was so great, and my stress level so high, that I had to choose between this job and my mental health. At the end, I had 104 active lawsuits. I had to share a secretary with seven other attorneys, so I had 4 hours a week of secretarial support. I felt sorry for my secretary who accepted this highly unusual arrangement. She was the best secretary in the office, so she was punished with the biggest workload of all. But she had no time to be an assistant to me. I had to do my own scheduling of everything. I had to do my own data entry. After Covid struck, workloads greatly increased. Instead of having 24 hours to respond to a client email, we were instructed to respond to any and all client email within four hours. Well, when you have 10-15 depositions and court hearings on average every week, it's impossible to keep up with 100 emails a day. I was tardy in responding to an unimportant note, and five hours later, the claim rep sent a second email to me, copying my boss, and this was counted against me as "an escalation." The work load was so heavy that I spoke to my managers several times. I was told that I have such a high file count because of my experience level. But there are still only 24 hours in a day. After working 7 days a week for months, I had to choose to save myself by leaving. I regret having this company's name on my resume due to its poor reputation in the community among judges and lawyers and its reputation for super high turnover, and I am stuck for the rest of my career explaining why I quit. I took the job despite a low salary because six weeks of PTO is great. But I could not afford to take even Sunday off without falling behind.
