u/Choice_Candy_9591

So I work at a small family firm. There are two attorneys, one is on family leave at the moment. The main attorney is old school and gives us our tasks by tapes. I kid you not, I get like a minimum of ten tapes a day to type out. He doesn’t check his own emails, so I have to go through his email and print each one out and put them in a folder so he can review them, and then he gives me another tape with his response. I’m a legal assistant and I do pre litigation work such as intake screening, opening files, and following our client’s treatment. I also do litigation work such as helping with briefs, mediation, discovery. I have to do this all while I have my own emails I have to check, and at the same time, I have to complete each task on every memo tape, while I have another list with all the tasks he gives me verbally in our case meetings. The other legal assistant quit because of the work environment and lack of organization and support. The work load has become so unbearable and It has started to affect my life. It is also a family firm, so I can never complain when there is any unprofessionalism, and anytime when their family members make a mistake it is either swept under the rug or blamed on me. For example, the attorney on family leave was supposed to be in charge of the minors comp (keep in mind this is my first year of being a legal assistant, I didn’t know when a minors comp is filed it is assigned a probate number, I was barely trained). So in my ignorance, I kept checking for a hearing with the case number, and never saw a hearing assigned, and I never saw a notice in my inbox or the attorney’s. Unfortunately, we were served electronically with a notice, but it was moved out of the inbox by someone who didn’t download the documents. So I then I get a call from the department clerk saying the attorney has to appear for the hearing. The attorney missed the hearing. And then the office manager messages me saying that she had a notice of department assignment on her scanner, and guess what, the notice was mailed to our office 2 months before the hearing. I was blamed for the calendaring mistake. Now I am drafting a declaration explaining my mistake to the judge. Then another time, my attorney told me to file a request for dismissal, no one has ever taught me how to do one, and there are no other legal assistants in the office. So I go to the associate attorney and they hand me a template and told me to follow the template. This attorney was already annoyed with my questions. This specific matter had multiple defendants and only one was supposed to be dismissed without prejudice. So I go to the associate attorney and explain I am supposed to dismiss one party without prejudice, and they grab my draft and barely explain what that means and says with a very annoyed tone “you learn by doing it” so I did that and filed the request for dismissal. I ended up dismissing every party in the case. Luckily the judge ended up re-opening the case, but I am constantly put in these situations over things I can’t even control nor know how to do. I’m just so overwhelmed and feel so stupid all the time. What should I do, and is this even normal? Are all offices like this.