The Paralegal Coach

We’re pulling this one out of the archives for our new listeners because this is such an important message for every paralegal to hear!

In this solo episode of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, Ann Pearson takes a deep dive into what it means to have paralegal career security and some methods paralegals can look at to achieve that starting now.

Show Highlights

• Why your paralegal career security is just as important as (or maybe even more than!) your job security
• Additional professional certifications that can increase your career security
• Combining your paralegal skills with an area that you enjoy working in

Episode 13: 8 Mindsets That Could Be Hurting Your Paralegal Career

Episode 1: Get a Paralegal Career Development Plan

Episode 12: How to Turn Your Performance Review Into a Career Development Opportunity

Episode 46: Paralegal Career Mobility: What it is and How to Get it

In all of our podcast episodes, we try to give paralegals an actionable strategy that they can take away from the show because we know your time is valuable.

In this podcast episode, Ann Pearson gives paralegals a list of additional professional certifications they might want to consider working towards that will bring them a higher level of career security.

Start your Career Development Plan with this free template that you can customize.

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode, Ann answers a question from a paralegal enrolled in the Personal Injury Paralegal Boot Camp: What do I do if I’m starting at a new law firm and I’ve just been assigned to 60 active personal injury files? How can I possibly get up to speed on all these new files without something slipping through the cracks?

You’re not alone! It’s typical for personal injury paralegals to manage anywhere from 50 – 90 or more active pre-litigation personal injury files.

In this episode, Ann gives you three steps that will help you get a handle on those personal injury files. She also provides you with three longer-term strategies to use if you’re new to being a personal injury paralegal.

1. Get the free Personal Injury Case Checklist
2. Check out the additional personal injury paralegal resources below!

19 Tips to Streamline Records Retrieval

Personal Injury Paralegal Boot Camp

Tips for Preparing the Personal Injury Demand Package

5 Tips for Fast Tracking Disbursement After Settlement

Paralegal Tips for Negotiating Client Bills and Liens

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode, Ann brings to light an issue that we’ve all experienced, whether it’s working in a law firm, a corporate legal department, or another organization in the legal industry: the negative nelly who complains about everything.

What can you do if you work with someone who even complains about things like your employer wanting to pay for your professional development?

• An actionable strategy if you are the negative nelly and complain too much
• An easy way to get the negative nelly to stop complaining
• How to avoid becoming a negative nelly yourself

1. Kill them with kindness if you can
2. Steer clear of the negative nelly and the gossip group
3. If you’re the negative nelly: stop ruining it for everyone else!

Podcast Episode 14 (How the Scarcity Mindset is Hurting the Paralegal Profession)

Podcast Episode 34 (Guest Interview “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.”)

Podcast Episode 46 (Paralegal Career Mobility)

Podcast Episode 47 (How to Get Your Attorney to Invest in Your Career Development)

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode, Ann Pearson gives you some insight into the things you can do to accelerate your career as a litigation paralegal.

The Litigation Paralegal Career Accelerator is a framework developed to look at the 3 key categories that can be good predictors of success: mindset, behaviors, and skills. But Ann explores these even further to give you three areas within each of those categories and a sort of checklist to use as you’re developing your career.

• Are you someone who thought you would be getting on-the-job training when you first started your litigation paralegal career?
• What to do when you’re new and you’re not sure where to get started with your own training.
• Make sure the courses you take are solving a problem! Don’t just take a course for the sake of collecting a CLE certificate.
• What if it didn’t have to take a decade to see success in your career?

1. Write your own Career Development Plan using a template here.
2. Get a printed view of the different sections of the Litigation Paralegal Career Accelerator here.
3. If you’re new to litigation, enroll in the Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp or another comparable training program so that you are not waiting on others to control how successful you can be.

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, Ann Pearson discusses how a litigation paralegal can start a trial notebook (a/k/a trial binder) early in the case instead of waiting until the notice of trial. In doing so, you will be well ahead of the game when it comes time to prep for trial.

Also, throughout the life of the case, the trial notebook is a useful tool when it comes to staying organized and up to date on the case.

Your Actionable Strategy

1. Join Ann for the free litigation masterclass coming up next week.
2. Get a printed view of the different sections of the trial notebook here.

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, Ann Pearson gives you case management tips to help you get up to speed fast on your case and to know what the attorney needs before they ask for it. Ann gives you tips on how to become the information manager on your cases instead of just a document manager.

In the episode, Ann also refers to a PDF detailing the 3 steps that you can use to become an information manager that you can download here.

Show Highlights

• You’ll know what your attorneys need before they ask for it.
• Your attorneys will think you’re the rockstar paralegal who can read their minds!
• ​This low-tech method doesn’t require expensive case management software, and it will allow you to be the master of information on all of your litigation cases.

Your Actionable Strategy

1. Download the 3-Step Plan for proactive case management.
2. Join Ann for the free litigation masterclass coming up next week.
3. Start a Players List, Case Chronology, and Case To-Do List now for one of your cases.

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show Ann Pearson gives you tips on how to ask your attorney to invest in your career development and what to do before you ask. She also gives you some insight from a manager’s perspective on things like when to ask and how to increase the likelihood of getting a yes.

Show Highlights

• What if your law firm doesn’t have any specific budget dollars set aside for paralegal professional development?
• What is the worst time of year to ask for funds when you work in a law firm?
• Nine questions that you need to be prepared to answer when you ask for professional development funds.

You can fast-track your career with our 3-Step Roadmap to Manage Cases Like a Rockstar Litigation Paralegal! If you are new (or fairly new) to litigation, this free guide will help you get a handle on your cases and be able to anticipate what the attorney needs before they ask for it.

GET A COPY OF THE FREE GUIDE HERE

Your one actionable strategy is to be prepared before you ask! The 9 questions that Ann wants you to be prepared to answer before you ask for your attorney to invest in your career development are (be sure to listen to the episode for more details on each of these):

1. What is the name and a brief summary of the program that you want to attend?
2. What is it that you expect to learn or take away from that program? In other words, what skills will you be gaining?
3. What is the cost?
4. Is there a discount if the firm wants to send more than one of you?
5. When and how will you access the training?
6. Will it require you to travel?
7. Are you going to need to take time off to attend? If so, are you wanting to get paid for that time or use your PTO time?
8. What is the ROI to the employer and to your attorney specifically? What problem is it going to solve for them? Instead of telling them what you’re going to learn, be able to explain how what you are going to learn is going to benefit them. 
9. Not so much a question, but a bonus step to do in advance of asking…prepare your written career development plan! Here is where you can get a template for one to get you started.

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

What is paralegal career mobility? It is setting yourself up with the knowledge, skills, and experience that will give you the flexibility to do work that might not even have the word “paralegal” in the title. It could also mean upward mobility in your current paralegal role.

In this episode, Ann interviews Kim Bookout, a former litigation paralegal who embraced and adopted eDiscovery early. That allowed her to move into a litigation support position and later into a role outside the traditional law firm environment.

Kim shares her tips and specific things you can do today for paralegal career mobility. Listen all the way to the end because, in addition to career mobility, Ann asks Kim for some advice on dealing with some difficult personalities at work.

Kim Bookout gave us some actionable strategies to help create mobility in your paralegal career.

1. Be professional and kind to EVERYONE.
2. Hone your skills.
3. Meet people.
4. Be ready for when the opportunity presents itself.

Listen to the episode to hear Kim talk about the importance of each of those actionable strategies.

Listen to the podcast episodes Ann mentioned:

Alternative Paralegal Career Options

Paralegal Career Security

Meet Our Podcast Guest

Kim Bookout is a Solution Consultant at Opus 2, where she helps legal teams all over the country effectively use software to analyze key documents, build case chronologies, create deposition designations, and prepare for trial.

Prior to joining Opus 2, Kim had over 20 years of legal experience, beginning as a commercial litigation paralegal and later moving into a litigation support position.

Connect with Kim on LinkedIn

Are You New to Litigation?

You can fast-track your career with our 3-Step Roadmap to Manage Cases Like a Rockstar Litigation Paralegal! If you are new (or fairly new) to litigation, this free guide will help you get a handle on your cases and be able to anticipate what the attorney needs before they ask for it.

GET A COPY OF THE FREE GUIDE HERE

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this episode, Ann interviews Eda Rosa, a freelance paralegal who started her own company to find better balance and more freedom. But, as she reminds us, there are trade-offs to consider when you’re breaking out on your own. Eda gives listeners the pros and cons of being a freelance paralegal to help you make a better-informed decision if you’re on the fence about breaking out on your own.

Sure, you get to decide how many hours you work and when you work them; but you’re still working for lawyers who have time crunches and urgent deadlines. Eda gives you tips on how she’s been able to make it all work.

You can fast-track your career with our 3-Step Roadmap to Manage Cases Like a Rockstar Litigation Paralegal! If you are new (or fairly new) to litigation, this free guide will help you get a handle on your cases and be able to anticipate what the attorney needs before they ask for it.

GET A COPY OF THE FREE GUIDE HERE

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.

In this solo episode, Ann announces a paralegal survey that the Paralegal Boot Camp developed to get answers to some of our burning questions.

Questions like: Are you happy with where you work?

Do you feel valued and appreciated?

What could your employer do to improve your level of job satisfaction?

Other Episodes Mentioned:

Episode 38 on how to get past paralegal burnout.

Episode 22 was an interview with a fellow paralegal who gave us some great tips on self-care.

Also, in Episode 13 when Ann interviewed Dan Moulder about mindset shifts at work.

LISTEN TO ALL PODCAST EPISODES

Actionable Strategies

Ann gave two actionable strategies in this episode:

1. Take the paralegal survey: https://paralegal-bootcamp.com/survey
2. Share the survey (or the podcast episode) with at least three (3) of your colleagues or friends who are paralegals.

Are you a paralegal who wants to skip the learning curve and kickstart your career?

The Paralegal Boot Camp offers online courses to fast-track your paralegal career, including a course on how to master your attention to detail. View our course offerings.  

https://paralegal-bootcamp.thinkific.com.

For more resources, visit our podcast page and blog.