When I graduated from college in 1984 I had no idea what to do with myself. My father [a banker] had a lot of friends who were lawyers. After about 6 months of hanging around my parents' house and working part-time at a bookstore, I was receptive to the idea of being a paralegal.
I attended the National Center for Paralegal Studies [NCPT] and my concentration was in corporate law.
I graduated and got hired to work in a law firm that focused on litigation, and I've been doing litigation ever since.
However, my first two jobs were great training. Paralegals in Knoxville were quite a novelty in the mid 1980's and attorneys didn't quite know what to do with us. So I ended up managing some small subrogation cases, and also doing things like getting deeds at the courthouse, checking lists of creditors in bankruptcy court, reviewing files at the Court of Appeals, interviewing witnesses, witnessing wills - you name it.
I also picked up attorneys from car dealerships, ran to the corner and bought sandwiches for everyone's lunch [when they were in depositions], bought Christmas gifts for wives, and on one memorable occasion I sewed a button on an attorney's shirt because he had to be in court that morning.
My dad, who ran a Trust Department for more than 30 years, said never use the phrase "That's not my job." A good lesson. I never have.
I've worked for big firms, small firms, sole practitioners, and corporations. I've primarily done personal injury, employment law, premises liability, and business litigation.
I've helped attorneys write memos, motions, demand letters, pretrial orders, reports to clients, and even trial arguments. I've written or edited website copy for several different attorneys now.
I speak "legalese" fluently but I also have a pretty good idea of what non-lawyers want to read, which isn't legalese.
When I had been a paralegal about a year, I went back to school and got a Master's in English from the University of Tennessee. I loved poetry and I wrote a lot of it. However, I also have written, over the years: newspaper articles, magazine articles, reviews of movies and plays, screenplays, two books, stories for anthologies, and more than 2,500 blog entries on my personal blog, The Crab Chronicles.
I moved to Atlanta in 1993, because the pay is better here.
I now write occasional articles, play reviews, and do interviews for online magazines.
I love to write.
If you'd like to hire me and want to see a resume, shoot me an email: [email protected] and I'd be happy to send one along.
When I first became a paralegal, my first "office" was an old desk in the corner of a secretary's office. I didn't have a computer or even a typewriter. Below is the desk I use now:
The desk has sure evolved over the years!
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