The Beginning

I went to college like a good girl, got married, and was a very happy stay at home mom for fifteen years. Oh I always worked....usually at night until my children entered school and I began working during the day as a substitute teacher. Wow I thought this is great I have off when they do, can spend the summer home with them without paying a million dollars for day camp and do not have to worry about about being late when it snows. I thought I would do this subbing gig for a while until I landed a "real" job. I applied for many positions and soon realized that having my Bachelor's degree not working for the past fifteen years equated to....well let's just say a job that requires you to ask if you want fries with that. By the way did I mention our interoffice corresponding was still done via that yellow envelope. Email, excel, online research......how did I miss that? I quickly realized I needed to make up for lack of experience or education and do it quick before I had to start writing out checks for their college. Teaching! Yes why did't I think of that......all this could be mine and I could retire happy and actually be allowed to eat in the teachers lounge without dirty looks. So I did it. I could have taken 21 credits for my teaching certificate or an extra 11 credits and I would have my Master's. The icing on the cake is that I received a scholarship to pay for half of it. Two years of chaos and I finally walked proudly among my fellow peers with my shiny new degree in hand. Did I mention that I failed to get the memo that in New Jersey teachers would be losing their jobs by leaps and bounds? Yes oh and did I fail to mention that because the teachers union is soooooo strong there is no negotiating when it comes to salary? You get paid according to how many credits you have. So my new Master's just raised my asking price by about 15,0000 a year. I did several leave replacement positions and finally landed an interview with the big wig at a really good school in the next town. I walked into the office of Ms. H and after a brief,,,,,really brief period of pleasantries she got up and shut the door to her office. Her words ring in my ears today like she is sitting right in front of me. She said to me...."I have read your resume and have been in this business for many years and after spending five minutes with you I realized you are a great teacher. Here is the problem, I should not be telling you this but you are genuine and I feel I owe it to you. I have only found a handful of teachers like you in my career and usually snatch them up right away. I have had to turn some of the best away in the last six months. I have been told to hire young and cheap." What this means in teacher talk is a new graduate with their bachelors degree and little experience that will not squawk at the low salary and does not care about pension etc at this time in their lives. She told me that over the next two years their teaching staff will be cut and those in my area which is Special Education will be offered .9 which equates to just below full time and no benefits. I was crushed and left feeling terrible but I wanted a job that I could have some retirement and security. Indeed the teaching world will balance itself out but I need it now.

My pre baby days were spent working at various in insurance companies doing claims, customer service etc. I rang up the company I left when I was pregnant with my first child. It was the only skill I knew and still understood. I also applied for a job as an insurance clerk who emailed me that she was interested but than never heard from her again. Luckily my old employer rehired me and at last I was gainfully employed with a pension, sick days etc. The drawback was it was really not enough money to live on and quite frankly it was pretty rote which was great when I was 22 but now I found it to be boring. Three months into my new job I get a call from the other insurance job asking me if I was still looking, apparently a woman came in and told her she was a whiz and she hired her only to have her turn the office upside down in a matter of a month. I will call this woman H ......mainly because my boss who I will call Ms. P when referring to H usually calls her hurricane H. I explained to Ms. P that I was happy at my job and AM a teacher who is doing this temporarily until a teaching position opens. I tell her my salary and basically leave it at that. Ms. P asks me to come in for an interview that she can match my salary and let's just talk. I agree, after all it is only temporary so why not get more money while I am waiting for my teaching job to open right? Ms. P is an attorney and explains that the girl who worked for her for many years had a baby and did not want to return to work. She hired H because she had many years of experience and seemed like a perfect fit. Here is one issue......remember hindsight is 20/20 *****The woman who worked for Ms. P for so many years did such a good job that Ms. P could not begin to describe the duties or how one goes about said duties because she really never had to deal with them. Anyway H came in and messed everything up and Ms. P was in a pickle. Ms. P offered me more money, a flexible schedule and a cozy environment to work in....being a solo attorney makes like that much easier. She told me that the bulk of the work involved EOB's and stuff like that along with basic secretarial skills. Ummm I don't have any secretarial skills but I have a Master's degree and have figured out how to do a bang up powerpoint presentation. OK I say let's try it and see how it goes.....after all it is only temporary since I AM a teacher and will teach when the market opens up.

RULE NUMBER 1!!!!!!! THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A TEMPORARY PARALEGAL.......IT IS LIKE BEING A LITTLE BIG PREGNANT.....IT CANNOT HAPPEN.......I REPEAT .....IT CANNOT HAPPEN.
The following week I learned that all those eob's I read have to be compiled into a brief and oh yes the adversary usually likes it more than one day prior to a hearing. In order to complete said brief one has to scan it through a machine. ***Helpful hint*** If you are not familiar with usual office equipment like a scanner do not wear a sweater that has dangly cute tassels on it and get all proud of yourself because you can scan a document and suddenly realize that one of your cute tassles has gotten aligned with the paper feeder and you are now being sucked into the office machine. Embarrassing, and possibly costly I quickly got shot down a few notches at this new "Temp" position.

I am now into my fourth month of my "temp" job and have decided to write this blog to hopefully teach anyone out there who has zero experience in the legal field what it is about from the inside. You cannot skim the edges as a paralegal/legal assistant you will have to learn everything there is to know about motions, doctrines, orders and OMG how critical it is to know that one cannot ever email a Judge only fax or there goes your head. I hope through my experience here people who are interested in the legal field or have any inkling of what it is like to work in as a paralegal/legal assistant or whatever you want to call yourself what it is really about.