Lead Litigation Paralegal

Job Summary

The Lead Litigation Paralegal plays a critical role in supporting the firm’s labor and litigation teams by leading a team of litigation paralegals—either within a single office or across multiple locations—focusing on team performance, professional development, and operational integration.

Key responsibilities include providing feedback on performance trends, supporting paralegals in compliance with billable hour requirements, overseeing the approval process for timecards and coordinating leave requests with the leaves team, maintaining adequate team coverage, ensuring compliance with firm and office protocols and guidelines, managing workflow efficiency and cross-office work, and helping to advance firm-wide initiatives. In collaboration with the Litigation Paralegal Manager and the Director of Legal Operations, the lead will also contribute to strategic efforts such as interviewing, hiring and onboarding candidates, and supporting mentorship and training programs.

This position carries an annual billable expectation of 1,250 net hours, enabling continued engagement in hands-on paralegal work. The lead will work closely with firm leadership to support program management, drive process improvements, and coordinate key initiatives. The individual will continue to perform a wide range of standard paralegal duties necessary to meet the reduced billable hour requirement of 1,250 net hours.

Essential Functions

Lead Responsibilities:

• Lead team of litigation paralegals to enhance team performance with excellent work product and client service through implementation of quality assurance, standard operating processes and training.
• Responsible for timely approval of timecards and management of absence requests.
• Ensure team’s compliance with firm and local office policies.
• Collaborate with Paralegal Manager to leverage resources across offices for optimal utilization and efficiency.
• Partner with Paralegal Manager on paralegal compliance with billable and non-billable hours expectations, work performance, work product, as well as other administrative challenges, and coordinate improvement plans as needed.
• Lead the onboarding process for new paralegals, ensuring seamless integration and clear communication of firm policies and performance expectations.
• Partner with Paralegal Manager to provide paralegal training, assess competency levels, and collaborate with the Learning & Professional Development team to identify training gaps and develop targeted learning resources.

• Collaborate with Paralegal Manager to complete and administer mid-year and year-end evaluations.
• Support and implement firm-wide and Practice Group-specific best practices to promote consistency and operational excellence across paralegal teams.
• Leverage paralegal experience to drive process improvements in areas such as billing efficiency, mentorship, and workflow optimization.
• Collaborate with Paralegal Manager and leadership to identify common challenges, skills gaps and inefficiencies to develop strategic solutions.
• Make measurable contributions to the success of the paralegal program through relationship-building, mentorship, training initiatives, and improved organizational workflows.

Paralegal Responsibilities:

• Wide range of experience in paralegal tasks reflecting required level of experience including, but not limited to:

• Demonstrate comprehensive knowledge and understanding of rules of civil procedures, and awareness of developments in appropriate forums.
• Demonstrate strategic thinking and initiative with case assignments.
• Draft documents in federal and state court and agency matters, and arbitration proceedings including motions, pleadings, notices, correspondence, etc. with attention to detail.
• Analyze, review and organize documents and data from materials produced during discovery; prepare/coordinate document production and responses to discovery requests including review of privileged documents.
• Prepare deposition and record subpoenas according to state and federal regulations; coordinate production of third-party records and summarize same; prepare deposition outlines and summaries.
• All aspects of trial and arbitration preparation, including familiarity with courtroom technology and trial software.
• Conduct legal research, including but not limited to, Lexis and Pacer research as well as basic cite-checking.
• Liaison with courts, opposing counsel, and litigation vendors, including process servers and couriers.
• Presentation of case summaries and courses of action to assigned case attorneys.

• Responsible for personal billable time entries and maintaining billable hours requirements.
• Responsible for personal time management and productivity.
• Maintain 1,250 personal billable hours requirement while balancing supervisory tasks.

Qualifications/Skills Required:

• Minimum 7 years of litigation paralegal experience, including 2 years at Jackson Lewis or relevant experience.
• Proven track record handling a wide range of litigation tasks with minimal supervision.
• Comprehensive knowledge of litigation processes and paralegal responsibilities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Highly detail-oriented with strong analytical and problem-solving abilities.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple tasks under pressure and meet tight deadlines.
• Proficient in leveraging firm resources to ensure attorney support and efficient task completion.