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Jenice wrote:
** <<To the list members: How many paralegals among us (current
** and former)? How transferrable are the skill sets?>>
Having been a paralegal in what now seems like a former life, I would say
that there are many skill sets that I have transferred. These include:
1. Interviewing - getting information out of lawyers is like pulling teeth,
but I had to do it. Need I say more? My experience has helped alot when I
have had to interview SMEs, developers, etc. I learned to know what I am
talking about before I start to asking questions. I learned that you must be
as educated as possible on a subject so that the questions you are asking
are not a waste of the interviewee's time.
2. Writing - I have learned how to be clear and concise. One of the biggest
jobs I did as a paralegal was to organize and summarize about 50 thousand
documents for a real estate case. Keeping it short and sweet was a must.
Getting all the important information out of a document and summarizing it
so that someone else would know all the relevant points.
3. Research - How to find out what you don't know. Where to look for
information. How to "ingest" the information once you find it, without
reading for the rest of your life. In other words how to look for the
important points and skip the muck.
4. Communication - How to talk to people about things that they don't know
or understand, and translate the "jargon" into meaningful information. In
other words, how to take the super technical information and translate it
into words and illustrations that the novice can understand. How to
understand people (whether they are lawyers, clients, SMEs, etc.) and keep a
discussion on their own level of understanding.
And last but not least, (and I hope there are no lawyers on the list that
will be offended by this) I learned how to deal with super-difficult people.
When I was a paralegal some of the lawyers I worked for had the "holier than
thou" attitude. When I had to interact with them, I learned not to take it
personally; that the problem was theirs not mine.
Kathi Jan DeGuzman
Technical Editor
Marketing - Customer Tools
kathi -dot- deguzman -at- nextel -dot- com
Desk: 703-433-3727
PTN: 703-675-2966
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