Many of the students in the latter two categories feel intimidated by the legal secretary students in their classes. The secretaries know so much about the law already, while the other students struggle with every new term and concept. Because of this, students with no prior legal knowledge have the misconception that they are at a disadvantage and that their prior skills don’t count. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH.
“It is not enough to aim you must hit.”
You Can Take It with You
People who are making the transition to a paralegal career can take heart in the following two concepts:
- Much of what a paralegal does has nothing to do with the law.
- Much of what the law is about is good, old-fashioned common sense.
These theories imply that all of the skills, all of the knowledge, and all of the common sense you have learned, both in your prior career(s) and in your life experiences, will be useful in your new para¬legal position.
Sit down and analyze what you have accomplished in all the jobs and positions you have ever had. Did you work in sales at a department store? Then you know what it takes to work with the firm’s clients. Have you done any type of bookkeeping tasks? If you become litigation paralegal, you may be called upon to review the books and records of companies your firm’s client is suing. Did you previously work as a carpenter or roofer? An attorney who specializes in construction litigation would be delighted to draw upon your expertise in the industry. Do you have medical office experience? Then you would be in great demand in firms that sue or defend doctors in malpractice cases. People who can decipher a doctor’s handwriting in hospital records and know the names of the various procedures and anatomical parts are highly valued.
How about your personal skills and life experiences? Have you ever completed your own tax return? Just by going through that process, you are already a step ahead if you want to work with tax attorneys. Have you ever served as an administrator for a relative’s probate? That knowledge and experience will serve you well if you decide to go into the probate specialty. Have you ever owned your own business? Then the law has already touched your life in many ways, from filing a fictitious business name statement, to incorporating, to withholding employees’ taxes. Are you a very organized individual who could, within minutes, put your hands on your 1991 tax return, the last repair receipt for your car, or your canceled checks? Those are precisely the skills you need to be a good trial paralegal.
Many people do not realize how much they know. For example, have you ever purchased or sold a house? If so, you know many things. You know that an escrow must be opened. You know that title insurance must be obtained and that you will receive a report showing what sort of liens and encumbrances are of record against the property. You know that the buyer usually must obtain a loan and that certain things must be done to satisfy the lender. A pest report must usually be obtained. An inspection is performed on the house to make sure it is structurally sound. Papers may have to be filed with the county showing that the title to the property is being transferred. A grant deed must be recorded with the county recorder. If you know these things, you already know something of what a real estate paralegal must know. And you don’t just know it, you’ve been through it. This is valuable experience in the law office. If you are competing with another person for a position with a real estate attorney and you can say you know what a grant deed looks like and you can read a title report, it may be just the edge you need to get that job.
Of course, you will learn a lot about the law and how to find it while you are in paralegal school. And there will be times that you will apply that knowledge. But the rest of the time, you will be given tasks that merely require a commonsense approach. For instance, suppose an attorney asks you to locate some hospital records for a person who was put into an asylum somewhere in the state of Louisiana in the 1920s (true story!).
Here are the steps you will have to take to solve that puzzle:
- Call the state capital and find the name of the agency in charge of mental hospitals.
- Call that agency and find out what mental hospitals were open and active in the 1920s.
- Call each of those hospitals with the name of the patient until you find the one to which that patient was committed.
- Ask the records department of that hospital what sort of document they need from surviving family members to release the records to you, and what their copying fee is.
- Draft the necessary document, have a family member sign it, and send it off to the hospital with a check for their fee.
Now of all those steps, only No. 5, the drafting of the release document, needed any sort of legal knowledge at all. The rest just required sitting down, thinking about a plan to get at the information you needed, and then having the patience to wait on the phone while being transferred from department to department until you got the right one.
BEEN THERE DONE THAT: INTERVIEWS WITH SECOND-CAREER PARALEGALS
Insurance
Rhonda Gregory Coordinated Legal Technologies
Rhonda was a six-year veteran as an adjuster for an insurance company. Her duties included reviewing property and casualty loss claim reports, interviewing the insured, locating and interviewing witnesses, reviewing police reports, and reviewing policies to determine whether losses were covered. Following all of this investigation, she would work up the files and prepare a report. On small cases, she would decide herself whether a claim would be paid. On larger cases, she would report to her claims manager.
While performing her job duties, Rhonda often had contact with her employer’s law firm. The law firm personnel admired Rhonda’s thoroughness and good judgment, and asked her occasionally if she ever thought about becoming a paralegal. Rhonda laughed, as nothing was further from her mind.
One day, Rhonda was struck by the dreaded “D” word downsizing. Her position was eliminated, but she was rescued by the admiring law firm, who gave her a job working up plaintiff personal injury cases. Her responsibilities were very similar to what she had been doing before. She gathered the factual information about the case, interviewed witnesses, and gathered relevant documents. The only work she had not done before was drafting the initial complaint and other legal documents. Recognizing that she needed a better education in the law, Rhonda enrolled in paralegal school at night, and after a few years earned her certificate.
“The best carryover skills I took with me from my insurance career,” said Rhonda, “were my ability to read contracts” (i.e., insurance policies) “and to interview witnesses to obtain the facts.”
That switch in careers 17 years ago changed Rhonda’s life forever. From her start in the personal injury area, she went on to work in other specialties, including tax, ERISA, transactional, corporate, probate, and business litigation. In 1989, she opened her own business as a freelance paralegal, Coordinated Legal Services. Her developing love of and knowledge about computers over the years has led her to embark on her latest business venture. Rhonda is now the proud owner of Coordinated Legal Technologies, specializing in researching and evaluating software for law firms. She develops computer protocols for complex document management and provides law-specific software consulting and training.
Chemistry
Tammy Parubchenko Rogers & Wells.Tammy was content with her career in the sciences, working for a synthetic chemical research company. Her current assignment was doing pure research to find new insecticides and herbicides. Tammy’s first step was to spend a lot of time in the library doing research. Once she had located a compound she wanted to test, she would get approval from the Ph.D. chemist in charge of the lab. It was then her job to order the chemicals, glassware, and any other supplies she needed and start the project. She would perform the analysis of the chemicals and then prepare the analogs (all of the variations of the compound).
After a time, Tammy began feeling very unwell. She was constantly tired and sluggish. After going to several doctors (all of whom told her nothing was wrong with her), she found a bright internist who recognized she was suffering from an allergic reaction to the chemicals she was surrounded by every day. Her doctor advised her to seriously consider changing her career.
Tammy returned to school to get a degree in political science. While in school, she learned of the paralegal profession, which she previously did not even know existed. It sounded interesting to her, so she earned her certificate while finishing her degree.
Around the time Tammy was finishing her schooling, the school received a call from the legal department at DuPont, a huge chemical corporation. DuPont’s patent attorney, himself holding a Ph.D. in chemistry, wanted a new graduate with a technical background to help in the intellectual property department. Tammy filled the bill. She was put to work handling DuPont’s worldwide patent filings. Later, she was allowed to begin doing patent prosecution at the U.S. Patent Office. This involved a lot of technical research into what is known as “prior art,” or inventions that had already been patented that were similar. It was her job to then show the Patent Office how her company’s new invention was different from the prior one.
“My research skills from chemistry have been invaluable,” says Tammy. “A paralegal needs good organizational skills. You have to be very organized in chemistry, or you’d blow yourself up!” she laughs. “One also needs patience and persistence in dealing with the Patent Office. I also learned those skills in the laboratory.”
Tammy eventually tired of her long commute to DuPont and took a position in the intellectual property division of a large law firm, where she currently specializes in patent litigation.
Click here to find patent attorney chemistry jobs.
Teaching
Darlene Johnson State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company Waiting for the telephone to ring was the spark that ignited Darlene Johnson’s paralegal career. Darlene had a degree in English and a teaching credential that allowed her to teach any grade from kindergarten all the way through high school. With two small children to raise, she decided to become a substitute teacher, so that she could work when she pleased. The arrangement was working well until one year when six weeks went by without a single call to teach. Darlene had enough of the waiting game and took a part-time job. While there, she learned through a coworker of a position that had opened at a legal publishing company in town. This company published the official Illinois appellate reports, and Darlene saw there the opportunity to use her English major. She was hired and began working in the editorial department, reading, editing, and correcting the legal opinions before they were published. Toward the end of her tenure, she was even writing some of the head notes.
After five years, Darlene was beginning to get bored. One of her coworkers at the publishing company was a paralegal, and Darlene became intrigued with the idea of becoming a paralegal herself. She went back to school and took some paralegal courses. She was hired by an attorney for whom she was interning and worked for him for the next six years doing family law and criminal work. Darlene enjoyed writing appellate briefs and credits her English background, which gave her confidence in her ability to research, write and edit. “My teaching background was also of great help,” says Darlene. “I was used to speaking in front of groups, so I was not intimidated during my interview. Plus, teaching children gives you a great deal of empathy about what other people are going through, and you learn to understand things from other peoples’ points of view.” Darlene believes this empathy helped her in dealing with clients in such sensitive areas as family law.
Desiring more job security, Darlene left the small law office and took a position with State Farm. She worked for several years for the corporate secretary, researching licensing and corporate issues and preparing databases. She now does research and prepares memos on insurance and coverage issues. Darlene recently completed her master’s degree in legal studies at the University of Illinois. She keeps her teaching skills sharp by team teaching “Introduction to Paralegal and Law Office Management” classes with an attorney at Illinois State University.
Banking
Deborah L. Fechik
Ruden, McClosky, Smith, Schuster & Russell
Deborah turned her construction and savings and loan background into a high-level paralegal position without even earning a certificate. After working for a time for the vice president of construction of a development company, Deborah took a position in the construction lending department of a savings and loan company. Following the closing of a loan, Deborah would set up the files for and monitor the construction draws against the loan. Contractors and borrowers would come in with draw requests, and it was her job to make sure they met the S&L’s requirements. She also monitored the interest on the outstanding loan and was responsible for analyzing whether the loan was on schedule or whether the funds were being depleted too quickly.
When the savings and loan industry began to get shaky 10 years ago, Deborah decided it was time to move on. A friend in a large law firm told her about a temporary job that was available, and Deborah decided to take it while searching for another position in the banking industry. Once the firm learned of her background and discovered she had a degree in finance, they offered her a position as a real estate paralegal. Although she had no formal paralegal schooling, Deborah was given plenty of on-the- job training.
“My business and finance background really helped me,” says Deborah. “I had working experience from both a developer’s point of view and a lender’s point of view. I was able to compensate for my lack of legal knowledge by putting all that information together and knowing what the steps and mechanics were of that particular area of the law. All I needed to learn was how to actually draft the documents.”
Deborah works in the commercial real estate department of her firm. She does title review, research and analysis, survey review and analysis, and document preparation. She is heavily involved in real estate closings.
Medical
Diana Thompson Dowling, Aaron & Keeler
As a board-certified respiratory therapist, Diana worked in hospital intensive care units, treating people with lung disease, monitoring patients post-surgery, and caring for people on ventilators. She also worked with premature infants, monitoring their blood gases and treating them.
After 12 years of working nights, weekends, holidays, and 12 hour shifts, Diana had enough. Casting around for a new career, Diana considered law school but didn’t want to make the necessary time commitment because she had two young children at home. Realizing she always had an interest in the law, Diana decided that a paralegal career would be a good alternative, so she enrolled in a correspondence course.
The course took her a little more than a year to complete. She felt isolated without having any other students with whom she could study, but she stuck with it. After receiving her certificate, Diana took an internship with the local public defender’s office. She was interested in criminal law and thought that she would pursue that specialty, but a position opened up with a senior partner in a mid-sized firm doing medical malpractice insurance defense and plaintiff’s personal injury work. Diana seized the opportunity.
“It was an easy transition for me,” says Diana about her first paralegal job. “A large portion of my work involved obtaining and reviewing medical records and helping the attorney understand what sort of care had been given to the patients.” Diana also helped prepare the cases for trial, including working with the firm’s consultant and expert witnesses. “They liked working with me,” said Diana, “because I could speak their language.”
After working several years in a medical/legal setting, Diana decided it was time to broaden her horizons. Now an experienced paralegal, she easily landed a position in her current firm, where she works in business litigation.
