Chere B. Estrin started her career as a paralegal in Seattle and quickly rose through the ranks as an administrator in two law firms. She soon realized she had reached the top of her profession and became frustrated with this predicament. So she quit her job and started her own business, a temporary legal staffing company based in Los Angeles.
"Unless you're an attorney, you cap out. So I had pretty much gone as far as I could go in a law firm," she told LawCrossing. "It's hard to get ahead in an environment that doesn't allow you to move up. I mean even partners, once you make partner that's it."
Her staffing company was such a success that she sold it to Spherion, a Fortune 500 firm, and became national director of the increased staffing unit. After a few years in the corporate world, Estrin grew antsy again. Her entrepreneurial instincts told her it was time to start a new company, which she did in the form of a smaller staffing company.
Author or co-author of eight books in the legal field, including The Paralegal Career Guide, The Successful Paralegal Job Search Handbook, and The Attorney Career Guide, Estrin was the career-advice columnist for six years for Legal Assistant Today magazine and has written numerous articles for local and national publications.
Estrin, who holds a Master's Degree in Employment Development and a Ph.D. in Human Resources Development, says it's crucial for people to identify their talents and distinguish them from their emotional passions. She was emotionally involved with the law, but her talent, she says, is training people and building companies.
When her staffing businesses struggled after Sept. 11, 2001, Estrin started a new business, Career Coaches International, which combined her skills. She coaches people in the legal field how to ascend beyond the standard ceilings in law firms so that they avoid routinization and repetition in their work.
"People look for a vertical climb up when there is none, and instead, they need to look for a horizontal climb. So we teach them in the coaching how to have job satisfaction and increase their responsibilities and their pay check by moving in a horizontal manner rather than vertical," she said.
She says the legal field has changed dramatically via new technology over the last decade, which is why she has been updating her books. Legal staff, she says, are being given much more sophisticated assignments, which creates a greater need for continuing education. She also believes that paralegals have a more prominent reputation and that clients are more likely to place more responsibility on the paralegal.
Estrin, who helps run Paralegal SuperConferences across the country to train people and help them network, says it's not so easy to become a paralegal without the right education and urges people to complete a paralegal studies course.
"It used to be that anyone who wanted to could call themselves a paralegal, but that's not true anymore. Primarily because the profession is gaining a lot of professional recognition. Attorneys are giving paralegals much more sophisticated kinds of assignments; so you really need to study," she said.
Estrin teaches at the UCLA Extension program in Paralegal Studies, and aside from her coaching business, she still handles some staffing business, placing highly experienced paralegals in elite law firms.
The firms she works with tend to hire attorneys from the top law schools, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, etc. Correspondingly, they hire the best paralegals. She says the bright people coming out of the best schools can also be the most in need of professional coaching. She helps them with so-called "soft skills" - time management, stress management, and how to get ahead in their careers - and even more substantive skills involving litigation and corporate skills.
How does one get ahead in his/her career?
"The ticket is through quality work, education, and playing the right office politics," she says. "I think you have to be savvy in all of that."
She says many attorneys and legal staff become disenchanted with their careers.
"It isn't what Law & Order said it would be; it isn't like TV. So we teach them how to cope," she says. "It's not the easiest thing in the world to be in a law firm environment. It's crisis management. You have to be either into that kind of mentality and positive about it or you're going to have a hard time."
She says you can't be driven by fear to adjust and you should be able to meet daily crises because you never know if you're going to trial or what the other side is planning.
"In other words, your clients don't call you because they're feeling good," she says. "They call you because they need you."
LawCrossing is a very user friendly website which anyone can use easily. It provides a very good service. Brian
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