The SCUPA Scoop: Newsletter of the South Carolina Upstate Paralegal Association: May 2012

We had a great May luncheon. Barbara Spearman opened the meeting and announced that the next board meeting will be held at Collins and Lacy on May 16, 2012 at 12:30 p.m.

The Pro Bono committee thanked all who participated in the Hog Day event at Welcome Elementary. We have received many words of thanks from the students and the school for the work that we did.

The next Pro Bono committee event is a Suit Dive to benefit Safe Harbor. Please check your closets for any suits or other business attire that you no longer wear. We will also be collecting general toiletries such as hair brushes, toothbrushes, cosmetics, shampoo, conditioner, etc. When a lot of these women escape to Safe Harbor, they often leave with only the clothes on their backs.

As a reminder, Barbara Spearman announced that nominations for Paralegal of the Year are open and the nomination form can be found on the SCUPA website.

In addition, SCUPA is renewing their efforts to involve Greenville Tech student with our organization. A lunch was held on April 27, 2012 with John Bell and Elizabeth Mann of Greenville Tech to discuss options to get the students involved. This project will fall under the umbrella of the mentor committee. If you are interested in serving on the committee and helping out with this project, please contact Barbara.

Deborah Lawrence of Huseby, Inc. was our guest speaker and provided an interesting presentation on current trends affecting paralegals.

As we all know, the economy has hit law firms hard and they have been very slow to recover. Deborah indicated that many firms stopped offering pay raises and bonuses and are just now starting to bring them back. Many paralegals still employed are often doing the work of 1.5-2 paralegals themselves. Firms are also engaging in what Deborah termed "the dumbing down of paralegals" by limiting them to clerical work while associates and other attorneys do the work previously done by paralegals. By doing so, firms are ineffectively utilizing paralegals. Clients especially in the insurance industry are already trying to combat this by auditing bills and requesting that firms redistribute workload to the appropriate professional.

In this difficult job market where frustration levels are so high, Deborah recommended staying current on the biggest trends affecting the paralegal field such as technology, e-discovery, and the use of social media in litigation.

She recommended that we keep learning, keep networking, keep working on our efficiency, and be proactive about keeping our skills up. She suggested taking free CLEs and webinars which are often provided by legal vendors. Many of these deal with e-discovery which is a really hot topic right now.

She also suggested that we maintain an up to date LinkedIn page and to keep it separate from Facebook. She also recommended being careful about what we tweet on Twitter. Recruiters will often check these sites and may cold call you for an interview if they like what they see. She said we should be making friends and building relationships, but she warned us not to keep score if we don't see a job offer come out of our networking.

Deborah also touched upon several hot legal careers for non-lawyers: E-Discovery Professional or E-Discovery Project Manager, Legal Consultants, Mediator, Court Reporter, Jury Consultant, Compliance Specialist, etc.

In sum, Deborah encouraged us to keep our heads up in this difficult economy and to keep working to better ourselves and our skill sets.