Message to New Paralegals

By: Jon Montgomery, Board Advisor Emeritus

IN THE BEGINNING
Each of us has a responsibility to encourage and mentor new paralegals and so I have dedicated this message to all recently graduated paralegals, as they are the seeds of our profession's future success. Graduation is a celebration of achievement, and congratulations are in order to those of you who recently graduated; but I want to ask you to focus for a few minutes on the future -- your future. As graduates, you have reached a turning point in your lives, a time of beginnings and of endings. It is not the endings but the beginnings that I will address.

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD
I want to encourage you to accept the challenges that are ahead of you as professionals, both on the job and in your professional life, and to assure you that much satisfaction can be derived from accepting your professional responsibility. Hard work brought you to this educational milestone in your life. You have attended classes, read your text books, law books, class notes, taken tests -- in short, paid your dues and have been found worthy of the certificate granted to you. Your efforts have resulted in a success which will be the foundation on which you can build your future professional success and perhaps the success of your profession as well.

But, as it was in school, so it will be in the work place -- you will have to pay your dues. You are entering a profession, the paralegal profession, but whether or not you become a professional is entirely up to you. Your certificate alone will not make you a professional. You may choose to do paralegal work as just a job; I know paralegals who do, but I would encourage you to choose the professional path. If you truly want to be a professional, you need to pick up the responsibility when you pick up your certificate.

CONTINUING EDUCATION
What is the responsibility you ask? It's the responsibility for the advancement of your career. If you choose the professional path, you will find that advancement of career and profession are interlinked and will be both satisfying and rewarding. What can you do to be responsible for your career and advancement, and how will it affect your profession? There are many ways. Obviously striving always for excellence, doing the very best work you can is one. Another is education. While your school work toward your paralegal certificate has ended, your education has just begun. The law is ever changing, so you will need to be ever vigilant with your continuing education to keep abreast of the latest changes and new developments. I encourage you to be enthusiastic about continuing education; being among the first to understand new statutes and cases will make you invaluable to your employer. Accept the responsibility for your own continuing education.

You will also need to educate others. You may be given simple tasks at first, and if you choose to view what you do as just a job, you may not advance beyond those simple repetitive tasks. But if you seek to educate the attorneys around you about your abilities and to seek out more and more difficult assignments you will grow in your career. You may have the fortune, as I had at the start of my career, of working for attorneys who have never used a paralegal, and who wondered openly about the usefulness of paralegals. You will, as I did, need to educate them on proper paralegal utilization. You will need to be assertive requesting assignments, to analyze their practice and find out where you can fit in. In my first paralegal position I started out just preparing simple annual minutes, obtaining client signatures and filing them away in the minute books. Before I left the firm, I participated in client meetings and was drafting everything from opinion letters to quality control plans for financial institutions. It was not an easy task convincing them of my worth, and it may not be for you, but the results are important. In my case, I was one paralegal in a firm of twenty attorneys, and while the old firm has broken up, all of the attorneys have gone on with a positive attitude about paralegals and continue to utilize paralegals in their practice, resulting in an increase in paralegal positions.

ETHICS
As you can see, you can help your career and your profession at the same time. I also encourage you to be ever mindful of professional ethics as there are ethical issues ahead that may be stumbling blocks for the unwary. I have never discussed ethics with another paralegal without hearing about the ethical decisions and considerations with which they have struggled. By doing the right thing, no matter where the sword cuts, you will be a credit to your profession as well as to yourself. Not all situations in which you will need to answer the question "What is ethical?" will be clear cut and as a person who has accepted professional responsibility you will struggle, but you need not struggle alone. The national, state, and many of the local paralegal associations have adopted ethical guidelines and codes to assist you and will always be a resource to assist you. Accept the responsibility for your professional and legal ethics. Your example of high ethical standards will give you influence beyond measure.

WORKING TOGETHER
Striving for excellence, making sure you are always current, stretching your abilities, training the attorneys you work with about the proper utilization of paralegals and maintaining high ethical standards will not be an easy task. In my own career I have been often reminded of the old man who while on a walk in the countryside, chanced upon a little boy struggling to pull up a giant weed. The man stopped under the shade of a tree to rest and watch. The little boy hardly noticed the man as he struggled with the weed, first pulling to the left and then to the right. The boy struggled for several minutes and then putting all of his effort in to one mighty pull, the weed's roots let go quite unexpectedly and the little guy fell back with a bump. The child sat there stunned and the old man said, "That was one mighty heave you gave that weed." The boy said, "It sure was mister, I had the whole world pulling against me on the other end." You should know that there are people who will be there when you feel like the whole world is pulling against you.

The officers, directors, and others involved in the local, state, and national paralegal associations know how difficult it can be at times to be a paralegal and they are always there to help. Your professional responsibility should also extend to your professional associations. You may think that all issues affecting paralegals have been decided, but this simply is not so. For example, in the last several years the California Alliance of Paralegal Associations ("CAPA"), in cooperation with the National Association of Legal Assistants, developed a voluntary certification program for California paralegals to give all California paralegals an option for additional advancement of their careers, and now CAPA is pursuing the passage of a paralegal definition by the State Bar Association. The issue of regulation of paralegals is being debated all across America with legislation ranging from registration to licensing being discussed in the legislatures of some states. This issue is your issue, and as a professional you have a responsibility to get involved.

How the issue of regulation is resolved will impact your career, as it will the paralegal profession. Our profession could be ended as we know it or greatly expanded depending on the ultimate outcome. Each of you has the opportunity to participate in the direction and focus of your profession by becoming involved in your local, state, and national paralegal associations. Hundreds of paralegals nationwide have worked very hard for many years to achieve the professional standing the paralegal profession enjoys today. Those who have come before you have cleared the path of many obstacles, paving the road you will now tread with opportunity and new possibilities. It is up to you to maintain what we have achieved and to widen the road of our profession for those who come after you. Accept the responsibility of involvement in your professional associations.

IN THE END
Accepting professional responsibility is giving of yourself to your employer and to your profession, and I can assure you that there are financial rewards you will gain from such a commitment, but please remember: not what we gain, but what we give, measures the worth of the lives we live.

Congratulations graduates, and welcome to the paralegal profession. As you pick up your certificate don't forget to pick up the responsibility too and get active in your local paralegal association.

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Home General Information Definition FAQ Ethics Duties & Skills Fee Recovery Paralegal Programs Certification To New Paralegals Information about CAPA Events and Resources State Bar Section Partners Contact Us	A MESSAGE TO NEW PARALEGALS By: Jon Montgomery, Board Advisor Emeritus IN THE BEGINNING Each of us has a responsibility to encourage and mentor new paralegals and so I have dedicated this message to all recently graduated paralegals, as they are the seeds of our profession's future success. Graduation is a celebration of achievement, and congratulations are in order to those of you who recently graduated; but I want to ask you to focus for a few minutes on the future -- your future. As graduates, you have reached a turning point in your lives, a time of beginnings and of endings. It is not the endings but the beginnings that I will address. THE CHALLENGE AHEAD I want to encourage you to accept the challenges that are ahead of you as professionals, both on the job and in your professional life, and to assure you that much satisfaction can be derived from accepting your professional responsibility. Hard work brought you to this educational milestone in your life. You have attended classes, read your text books, law books, class notes, taken tests -- in short, paid your dues and have been found worthy of the certificate granted to you. Your efforts have resulted in a success which will be the foundation on which you can build your future professional success and perhaps the success of your profession as well. But, as it was in school, so it will be in the work place -- you will have to pay your dues. You are entering a profession, the paralegal profession, but whether or not you become a professional is entirely up to you. Your certificate alone will not make you a professional. You may choose to do paralegal work as just a job; I know paralegals who do, but I would encourage you to choose the professional path. If you truly want to be a professional, you need to pick up the responsibility when you pick up your certificate. CONTINUING EDUCATION What is the responsibility you ask? It's the responsibility for the advancement of your career. If you choose the professional path, you will find that advancement of career and profession are interlinked and will be both satisfying and rewarding. What can you do to be responsible for your career and advancement, and how will it affect your profession? There are many ways. Obviously striving always for excellence, doing the very best work you can is one. Another is education. While your school work toward your paralegal certificate has ended, your education has just begun. The law is ever changing, so you will need to be ever vigilant with your continuing education to keep abreast of the latest changes and new developments. I encourage you to be enthusiastic about continuing education; being among the first to understand new statutes and cases will make you invaluable to your employer. Accept the responsibility for your own continuing education. You will also need to educate others. You may be given simple tasks at first, and if you choose to view what you do as just a job, you may not advance beyond those simple repetitive tasks. But if you seek to educate the attorneys around you about your abilities and to seek out more and more difficult assignments you will grow in your career. You may have the fortune, as I had at the start of my career, of working for attorneys who have never used a paralegal, and who wondered openly about the usefulness of paralegals. You will, as I did, need to educate them on proper paralegal utilization. You will need to be assertive requesting assignments, to analyze their practice and find out where you can fit in. In my first paralegal position I started out just preparing simple annual minutes, obtaining client signatures and filing them away in the minute books. Before I left the firm, I participated in client meetings and was drafting everything from opinion letters to quality control plans for financial institutions. It was not an easy task convincing them of my worth, and it may not be for you, but the results are important. In my case, I was one paralegal in a firm of twenty attorneys, and while the old firm has broken up, all of the attorneys have gone on with a positive attitude about paralegals and continue to utilize paralegals in their practice, resulting in an increase in paralegal positions. ETHICS As you can see, you can help your career and your profession at the same time. I also encourage you to be ever mindful of professional ethics as there are ethical issues ahead that may be stumbling blocks for the unwary. I have never discussed ethics with another paralegal without hearing about the ethical decisions and considerations with which they have struggled. By doing the right thing, no matter where the sword cuts, you will be a credit to your profession as well as to yourself. Not all situations in which you will need to answer the question "What is ethical?" will be clear cut and as a person who has accepted professional responsibility you will struggle, but you need not struggle alone. The national, state, and many of the local paralegal associations have adopted ethical guidelines and codes to assist you and will always be a resource to assist you. Accept the responsibility for your professional and legal ethics. Your example of high ethical standards will give you influence beyond measure. WORKING TOGETHER Striving for excellence, making sure you are always current, stretching your abilities, training the attorneys you work with about the proper utilization of paralegals and maintaining high ethical standards will not be an easy task. In my own career I have been often reminded of the old man who while on a walk in the countryside, chanced upon a little boy struggling to pull up a giant weed. The man stopped under the shade of a tree to rest and watch. The little boy hardly noticed the man as he struggled with the weed, first pulling to the left and then to the right. The boy struggled for several minutes and then putting all of his effort in to one mighty pull, the weed's roots let go quite unexpectedly and the little guy fell back with a bump. The child sat there stunned and the old man said, "That was one mighty heave you gave that weed." The boy said, "It sure was mister, I had the whole world pulling against me on the other end." You should know that there are people who will be there when you feel like the whole world is pulling against you. The officers, directors, and others involved in the local, state, and national paralegal associations know how difficult it can be at times to be a paralegal and they are always there to help. Your professional responsibility should also extend to your professional associations. You may think that all issues affecting paralegals have been decided, but this simply is not so. For example, in the last several years the California Alliance of Paralegal Associations ("CAPA"), in cooperation with the National Association of Legal Assistants, developed a voluntary certification program for California paralegals to give all California paralegals an option for additional advancement of their careers, and now CAPA is pursuing the passage of a paralegal definition by the State Bar Association. The issue of regulation of paralegals is being debated all across America with legislation ranging from registration to licensing being discussed in the legislatures of some states. This issue is your issue, and as a professional you have a responsibility to get involved. How the issue of regulation is resolved will impact your career, as it will the paralegal profession. Our profession could be ended as we know it or greatly expanded depending on the ultimate outcome. Each of you has the opportunity to participate in the direction and focus of your profession by becoming involved in your local, state, and national paralegal associations. Hundreds of paralegals nationwide have worked very hard for many years to achieve the professional standing the paralegal profession enjoys today. Those who have come before you have cleared the path of many obstacles, paving the road you will now tread with opportunity and new possibilities. It is up to you to maintain what we have achieved and to widen the road of our profession for those who come after you. Accept the responsibility of involvement in your professional associations. IN THE END Accepting professional responsibility is giving of yourself to your employer and to your profession, and I can assure you that there are financial rewards you will gain from such a commitment, but please remember: not what we gain, but what we give, measures the worth of the lives we live. Congratulations graduates, and welcome to the paralegal profession. As you pick up your certificate don't forget to pick up the responsibility too and get active in your local paralegal association. BACK TO TOP OF PAGE	2008 Calendar Contact Us
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A MESSAGE TO NEW PARALEGALS

A MESSAGE TO
NEW PARALEGALS