Q: How long have you been working as a paralegal?
A: I have been working as a paralegal for 21 years.
Q: What work were you doing before becoming a paralegal/legal assistant?
A: I was working in a furniture factory [or] manufacturing company before I was in the legal field.
The manufacturing industry was going overseas for cheaper labor. I was in the office doing the administrative work [and] secretary work. With manufacturing moving overseas, I had to start looking into other options.
Q: What made you interested in working in the law field?
A: The legal field has a lot of admin and clerical work. I figured having plenty of experience with admin and clerical work, my skills would work well in the [legal] field.
Q: What kind of education did you have before working in the legal field?
A: I had 2 years of college in business administration, I got my business AA.
Q: What legal experience did you have before starting work in this firm?
A: I have worked with close to a dozen firms [over 15 ½ years] and I’ve worked in this firm for 5 ½ years.
Q: Are you a notary?
A: Yes, I became a notary shortly after getting into the legal field. I had to take a week’s worth of classes, each of which was 3 hours long before getting licensed.
Q: What part of your job did you find the most difficult when you first started?
A: Just the terminology differences, legal terminology was very different. I needed to learn what the legal terminology meant.
Q: Did you initially have an interest in any particular area of law?
A: Yes, I originally started in workers’ compensation. I like the challenges of it. Workers’ compensation is very broad, and cases are different. I like that it is not always the same thing.
Q: What is your favorite part of your day-to-day job?
A: I enjoy drafting motions and gathering information, discovering [information] and learning new things.
Q: What is your least favorite part of your day-to-day job?
A: Discovery, it’s just [laughs]…
Q: Are you planning to stay as a paralegal/legal assistant or are you interested in pursuing law school? Why?
A: I’m planning to stay as a paralegal and then slowly wind down. 20 plus years is a lot, and I have been burning out. I am probably going to taper off and then become a trainer.
Q: Do you ever travel for this position? If you do, what for?
A: Very little. I sometimes traveled for mediation to a different county, but never something out of state.
Q: Do you feel like there is a good work-life balance at this firm?
A: I do now. Some law firms I worked with in the past were very stressful and mentally draining due to the number of cases – the highest number I can remember having at one time was 198. Those were all, solely, workers’ comp cases.
Now [at this firm], I have about 80 on average.
Q: Do you feel like this field is particularly stressful? If so, how do you manage your stress levels?
A: It just depends on the complication of the case, but on a normal case-by-case basis, it is actually very simple and not that stressful. But if there are complications or they are more comprehensive cases, it can be stressful.
Q: How consistent is your schedule? Are you able to get home at a good time every day?
A: Very consistent. I get there around 7am, before anyone else is usually there, and leave at 4pm. At other firms, normal hours were usually 8:30am to 5:30pm and those long hours tend to leave you mentally drained.
Q: How do you manage/keep up with your schedule?
A: I have a system; make sure to get the priorities written down and then knock them out early in the day so my schedule is pretty light in the afternoon.
Q: How involved are you with managing the attorneys’ schedules?
A: Very involved. Deadline management is the most important thing. Most of it is calendar-ing deadlines because most attorneys do not pay attention to that. I manage 4 attorneys, but the main calendar I manage is for Annemarie. I manage about 80% of her calendar.
Q: What is the client contact like in your position?
A: About 60% of the job is client contact. Usually, it is minor issues like not receiving weekly checks or benefits and authorizations for medical treatment. Normal things.
Q: How often do you update clients on their case progression?
A: I usually try to call at least every 30 days, if not more. Most of the time, if a client doesn’t hear from me, they will call after 2 weeks or so. It depends on the client.
The regular clients can get annoying, but if you have the normal ones that don’t call and will talk to you every 30 days, it’s nice to talk to them and recap their case. There are the clients that call every day, sometimes twice per day, and they can be difficult to work with.
Q: Is there anything about your job you find particularly stressful/difficult to do? If yes, what and why?
A: It just depends on the client [and case]. There are very, very difficult clients that you have to try to speak with on a professional level and try to get them to be reasonable. Trying to keep professional can be difficult and if you don’t, it’s word-of-mouth reputation that is affected.
Q: If you were not working in the field of law, what do you believe you would be doing?
A: I think I would be doing some sort of case management, maybe social work. Something that deals with managing cases or clients.
Q: If you could work in another legal field, which would you choose?
A: I think it would be interesting to go into estates, wills and estates. I think it would be less stressful because clients wouldn’t be calling in pain or needing something authorized. It is mostly filing with the courts.