Following our day in the life of a paralegal in our Aviation team, we spoke to Pedram Bani Asadi, a paralegal at Stewarts in the Commercial Litigation department.
Pedram works closely with fee earners on a range of case-related tasks and provides administrative support. In his role, Pedram works on high-value and complex disputes with clients ranging from FTSE 100 companies, Fortune 500 companies and other international corporations to institutional investors, foreign governments, public bodies and individuals.
9:00
I start my day by replying to emails with a warm coffee from the office by my side. I use my notebook to create a to-do list and note down any tasks that need completing throughout the day, prioritising them in order. I also plan using the Outlook calendar, which helps me keep track of what I need to do each day.
9:30
The case I am working on involves a large public institution bringing fraud claims exceeding $1bn against over 40 defendants based around the globe. Most mornings, I receive an email from a fee earner with a list of updates that need to be made to our court bundles and the judge’s court bundles These bundles provide the judge with easy access to all relevant documents needed for the hearing.
Along with other paralegals I create two physical folders, which include making a cover sheet, index and spine for the folder as well as handwriting tabs and printing the specified documents. Afterwards, I insert the updates into our bundles. Towards the end of the week, we go to court to update the judge’s 20+ bundles that we created. I have been able to attend court on numerous occasions, and it is deeply fulfilling to see the judge using the bundles I have spent time creating.
11:00
iCompli is the software we use to make labels for archiving. As preparations are being made for a new floor in our London office, we have been asked to investigate boxes of old files and folders and create labels for them for easy accessibility. This training is one of the many types of training offered to us to keep our skills sharp.
Today I went to the coffee bar in the office, which was a wonderful opportunity to grab a chai latte and catch up with colleagues.
13:00
For my lunch break today, I decided to attend an in-person event called “The Confident Connector”, led by lawyer and public speaker Akil Hunte. This energising session (part of Learning at Work Week, co-ordinated by Stewarts’ Learning & Development team) was designed to reshape my mindset towards building relationships with colleagues and clients, level up my networking skills and importantly, lunch was also provided. Attending the session reaffirmed to me that building strong relationships is an important aspect of my role, as teamwork and collaboration are key to providing a high-quality service to our clients.
14:00
Unlike other paralegals, who tend to work on various cases, my current role is to support the fee earning team on one large case, which is expected to last into 2026. As a result, part of my role includes attending court to support counsel with any urgent tasks such as printing documents referred to during the hearing. Today I had the opportunity to sit in and listen to the arguments made by leading counsel, helping me better understand the complexities of the case.
More recently, I have also been responsible for taking notes of important issues raised during the hearing, which I do by attending the hearing remotely and monitoring the trial transcript. After the hearing I provide my note to the fee earners in my team, who then use the note to cross-check any action points arising from the hearing that day.
16:30
After court today I had a catch-up meeting with the case paralegal team and our supervisor. We have meetings on a monthly basis to check in on capacity in the paralegal team, catch up on any case developments and discuss any upcoming deadlines or tasks that will require additional paralegal team support. They are also a great opportunity to reflect on what has been going well in our work and discuss areas for improvement, so that we can consistently improve and gain as much experience as possible from our roles.
17:40
I refer to my to-do list to ensure that all tasks have been actioned and check my inbox one last time. I then release my time entries on our tracking software called Intapp. Releasing your time entries at the end of each day is important both from an internal and client management perspective. Internally, it is important for our supervisors to be able to see the work we are doing each day, so that if anyone in the team has capacity, work can be redirected to them and that capacity can be utilised. From a client management perspective, if time entries are not released daily there is potential for those time entries to be missed when providing costs estimates to clients.
18:00
It is time to attend the Stewarts choir. Every week, colleagues from different departments gather to harmonise together and sing beautiful and catchy tunes. This week is no exception. We sing songs from La La Land and The Lord of the Rings. I have heard that if you get lucky, you might even get to sing some tunes from Wicked!
Concluding thoughts
No matter where you are in your legal career, take a moment to appreciate the position you are in and how far you have come. You are living someone else’s dream. As an eight year old playing with my friends after school in the nearby park in Iran, I would never have dreamed of a life living in the best city in the world, working with colleagues who I can confidently call friends and progressing my career in an industry I love.
Photo on the Left: (Credit to Harry Palmer for this lovely photo)
Photo on the Right: (Credit to Giorgia Treggiari for this amazing photo)
You can find further information regarding our expertise, experience and team on our Commercial Litigation page.
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