September 21, 2022 • 13 mins
Paralegals are trained to assist lawyers by researching legal precedent, investigating facts or preparing legal documents. They also conduct research to support a legal proceeding, to formulate a defense, or to initiate legal action. Paralegals must be able to document and present their findings and opinions to their supervising attorney. They need to understand legal terminology and have good research and investigative skills. Familiarity with the operation and applications of computers in legal research and litigation support also is important. Paralegals should stay informed of new developments in the laws that affect their area of practice.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:01):
98 seven Shattuck were 98.7% of our students earn a career.
On this episode, we'll explore Chattahoochee Tech's paralegal program. We'll
be talking with one of the instructors and students about
the program and leave out the law and order jokes
or references.
S2 (00:17):
My name is Amy Ray Davis, and I am the
lead instructor for the Paralegal Studies Program at Chattahoochee Tech.
I call myself the accidental paralegal. I came into the
legal field because my father was getting divorced and he
had a friend who was an attorney, and he needed
someone to basically pick up where his paralegal was not
(00:39):
going to be able to. She was out on maternity
leave and I ended up doing all the typing and
I kind of fell in love with the industry. And
I continued working as a paralegal up until I decided
to go to law school and got out of law
school and then decided, you know what, I want to teach.
S1 (00:58):
So what exactly is a paralegal?
S2 (01:00):
So apparently go is someone who the lies between the
legal secretary and the attorney. I can give you like
the technical stuff, which is where they're going to do
like all the documentation and whatnot. But in reality, they're
kind of like the backbone to any kind of case.
They are the ones that are going to be putting
together all of the research and they're going to be
(01:21):
forward facing to the clients and they're going to be
preparing all the documents and stuff like that. And I
always tell them, I said basically, you know, you guys
are the ones who are putting together what the attorneys
are going to go into court and argue.
S1 (01:33):
Why did you get into the program?
S3 (01:35):
Criminal justice itself is something I've always been interested in.
And I had originally started and criminal justice to go
for forensic psychology. And then when I found out that
Chattahoochee was doing the paralegal program, I had already been
looking into it for quite some time at this point.
S4 (01:54):
My name is Regina LaBelle, and I'm a staff member
at Chattahoochee Technical College, and I've been there for 15
years now. I am now enrolling in a new program,
paralegal studies. Well, actually, I'm enrolling in this paralegal studies
program is for something that I've always wanted to do
(02:15):
in law. And I know I didn't want to be
an officer. So I thought there's other avenues of being
in the law field. So I thought paralegal would be
something that I would be. I like research, so that's
something that I would like to do.
S1 (02:29):
What is the program all about? What does it actually entail?
S2 (02:32):
So we have two different avenues for them to take,
and it's either going to be the diploma program or
it's going to be the associates program. Now, the first
three semesters of the diploma program is going to directly
mirror what's in the associates program. Just the associates will
go a little further in the first three semesters. We're
(02:52):
going to cover things like criminal law and criminal procedure,
which is usually one of the favorites of people. We're
going to cover the introduction to paralegal studies and particularly
the ethics that they have to follow. There's a lot
of things that you have to make sure that you
pay attention to, like not getting into unauthorized practice of
law and things like that. They probably will never even
(03:15):
begin to guess how many times people are going to
come to them and say, I have this problem. You know,
can you tell me what this is? And it's going
to be their family or their friends. And then you've
got clients who are still going to come and go, okay,
but what's the outcome that I can expect or what's next?
And all of those things. They have to learn how
to say no, you know, and how to to bridge
those gaps. In terms of other classes, we're going to
(03:36):
do torts, which is like your personal injury, defamation, you know,
things like that, battery trespass to your land. We're going
to do contracts. The one thing that I will say,
contracts almost made me drop out of law school. It
was so hard, but it was because it's taught in
a very different way. And I didn't realize it until
the very end because people kept saying, No, just stick
(03:57):
it out, it's going to click and it did click.
But the one thing I took away from that is
that is hands down, like the most important class, I think,
out of all of them, because contracts rule our lives.
S1 (04:08):
What makes this program.
S3 (04:09):
Different with that is also if they also don't want
to take that long time, but also as well, you know,
if you do decide to go to law school, even
as you just told practice, actually what I learned as
just the law school portion itself is three years. But
if you start with the paralegal program and the way
they've shaped it, not all of them, but the majority
(04:31):
of your classes, especially once they get the accreditation, are
transferable to law schools. There is one I was looking
at most schools if you can justify like this class
I took takes everything and has already taught everything that's
on this person's syllabus. And you still have your syllabus
from this class here. Most schools will do that.
S4 (04:51):
Chattahoochee is a great college. We have a lot of
great professors, have great instructors who invest in the students
that come. In their classrooms. I believe we're one of
the if not the biggest technical college in the state
of Georgia. I like that the instructors invest in their
students and help them to make great career choices.
S2 (05:15):
What is going to, I think, make us different is
the fact that I'm bringing into it a whole lot
of research. I began in 2017. I started a paralegal
students group on Facebook because I noticed that in some
of the paralegal groups that I was in, a lot
of people were getting frustrated with students coming in, going,
(05:35):
I don't quite understand this. Can you help me with this?
Because it was a place that, you know, the working
paralegals were going to, you know, vent about their daily
jobs or get advice about what kind of place they
can look for for a document, things like that. But
these students needed a place to be able to go
as well. And so I created that. And it's now
(05:57):
up to like 8500 students. And it's one of those
things that it allowed me to kind of research what
schools are doing right, what schools are doing wrong and
allowed me to see, like what kind of assignments they
were doing, all kinds of things. So I got to
bring into this the perspective of what actually is going
to translate better into the actual field. It also allowed
(06:20):
me to create a lot of interesting contacts for paralegals
as well. So one of the things that we'll also
be doing is we'll be offering at some point we're
going to put together some webinars on different topics, things like,
you know, maybe how to even freelance and do things
like that if they wanted to do things on their own,
because there are opportunities that you can do outside of
(06:43):
just the traditional law practice. They don't have to just
stick with that. They can work for the courts. They
can work for corporations that have, you know, in-house counsel.
There's all kinds of opportunities for them to be able
to be a paralegal and in not be just strictly
in a law firm, but we'll be able to bring
(07:04):
them like webinars and stuff like that with demonstrations from
like law office management programs and stuff like that. I've
already contacted them to make sure that, you know, they'll
be able to come in and teach them a little something.
Because that way when our students go out into the field,
I want them to be able to say that they've
had some exposure. I don't want them to be going
(07:27):
out there just completely blank, like, okay, I've gotten my
degree and that's it.
S3 (07:32):
What I've learned so far is from our teacher, Miss
Amy Davis is a paralegal, basically can do everything a
lawyer does and has a full understanding of the law.
The only thing they can't do is actually represent.
S4 (07:47):
And court as looking at the curriculum. As far as
the quality of the program, I believe that's going to
be a great program. Not many of the core classes,
but a lot of the paralegal classes that each student
will have to take in order to get their diploma
or their associate degree. The instructor that's coming in, I
(08:08):
believe she's she's new, but she seems very eager and
ready to go.
S1 (08:13):
Who would make a good candidate for this program?
S2 (08:15):
Really and truly someone who is detail oriented. But a
lot of times I've also found that they don't necessarily
know that they're detail oriented in the right ways yet,
and it's kind of like shaping us. They just have
to be willing to learn and go down a list
because a lot of the stuff that we do is
list based. When you do like intake, you have specific
(08:37):
things that you have to ask and you have specific
documents that have to be filed. And a lot of
lawyers that I've worked with over the years, like they
have these checklists and stuff. So they just have to
be willing to pay attention to what it is that
they're doing. Depending on the area of law, they might
need a real, true element of compassion. I mean, like,
if you're in like real estate law where you're just
(08:58):
doing closings and stuff like that, it's very different than
if you are working in, say, juvenile law, where your
child is in foster care or you're in, you know,
family law, where you have parents who are arguing over
their children, things like that, or you're in criminal law
and you have somebody whose life is on the line.
You have to be willing to understand where that person is.
(09:21):
You also have to be willing to kind of put
aside the things that might bother you, because morally, our
compasses don't always line up with our legal compasses, but
we still have to do our parts and be able
to be there for the clients. And since we are
forward facing that element of compassion and understanding is absolutely necessary.
(09:43):
Being a good listener to.
S4 (09:44):
Specifically that, I want to do I want to learn
more about how to do wills, power of attorneys and
one detail that goes into that and when people go
to court for doing. I want to learn a lot
more about that.
S1 (10:03):
What would you tell potential incoming students?
S4 (10:05):
I would tell students that Chateau de TEC is a
great place to learn that this program will give them
the opportunity to look at things on a different perspective
as far as the law is concerned, and to help
them maybe in life to move forward. It's going to
teach you your writing skills. It's going to teach you
(10:28):
more of your communication skills. So it be a great program,
especially for a person that's maybe shy a little bit.
It will probably bring them out of their shell just
a little bit because they're going to have to present
certain documents that is going to be needed.
S3 (10:46):
Because I feel like it is like a lot of
information just coming at you all at once. So once
you get yourself organized and you get yourself like on
a set schedule, it is more manageable because overall it's
just it's going to be a lot of information up
there is pretty amazing and anything you might need help on.
She's always there. She'll break stuff down to make sure
(11:09):
you understand it.
S1 (11:11):
You're not the typical student, but do you have any
advice for the younger students?
S4 (11:15):
I would say to a student that's coming right out
of high school, I believe that students should probably go
to either a tech school or a junior college because
you want to get acclimated into the college. The institution
is different from being in high school because in college
no one is going to really become check out for
(11:36):
you as far as if you want to come to school,
you come to school. If you don't want to come
to school, you stay at home or you do whatever
you want to do. But just know that your grade
is going to reflect what you've done in class. So
your grade is your pay. As far as you know,
you're going out and getting a job and you want
(11:59):
to get your wages when your grade is your wages.
S1 (12:02):
So here's the important question that I think everybody out
there wants to know what do paralegals make?
S2 (12:07):
So, Robert, half is a major staffing agency for the
legal industry and they are the ones who put out
a legal guide for in regards to salaries and whatnot.
And the average salary is anywhere from 31,000 all the
way up to $89,000, with the average being around 53, 54,000.
(12:30):
A lot of that's going to also depend on where
you're working. Are you working in a smaller office? Are
you working in public interest? Because if you're working in
public interest stuff, you're going to be, you know, working
with lower budgets. A lot of times nonprofits are the
public interest entities and they don't always have a lot
(12:51):
of money for lawyers, let alone paralegals. But it's one
of those things that's kind of a passion project that people,
you know, they just feel compelled to do that work.
And I commend them for that. They do actually really
amazing things. You also have to factor in a lot
of other things, too, like you have depending on where
you work. It's like any other job where you're going
(13:11):
to have perks that are involved. Some bigger firms are
going to have a lot more perks with more vacation
or more for one K. That's one of the things
that I've been kind of looking at as well in
terms of like what jobs the students that have been
in my groups have been getting and I have noticed
that it does run the gamut of getting just paid
(13:33):
to I'm getting paid with medical or with a week's
vacation or whatever too. So those perks, I think, always
definitely factor in and make your your pay a little
bit better.
S1 (13:44):
For more information about the paralegal program at Chattahoochee Tech,
visit Chattahoochee text edu. Thanks for listening to 98 seven
Chattahoochee text for 98.7% of our students earn a career.
98 seven Shattuck were 98.7% of our students earn a career.
On this episode, we'll explore Chattahoochee Tech's paralegal program. We'll
be talking with one of the instructors and students about
the program and leave out the law and order jokes
or references.
S2 (00:17):
My name is Amy Ray Davis, and I am the
lead instructor for the Paralegal Studies Program at Chattahoochee Tech.
I call myself the accidental paralegal. I came into the
legal field because my father was getting divorced and he
had a friend who was an attorney, and he needed
someone to basically pick up where his paralegal was not
(00:39):
going to be able to. She was out on maternity
leave and I ended up doing all the typing and
I kind of fell in love with the industry. And
I continued working as a paralegal up until I decided
to go to law school and got out of law
school and then decided, you know what, I want to teach.
S1 (00:58):
So what exactly is a paralegal?
S2 (01:00):
So apparently go is someone who the lies between the
legal secretary and the attorney. I can give you like
the technical stuff, which is where they're going to do
like all the documentation and whatnot. But in reality, they're
kind of like the backbone to any kind of case.
They are the ones that are going to be putting
together all of the research and they're going to be
(01:21):
forward facing to the clients and they're going to be
preparing all the documents and stuff like that. And I
always tell them, I said basically, you know, you guys
are the ones who are putting together what the attorneys
are going to go into court and argue.
S1 (01:33):
Why did you get into the program?
S3 (01:35):
Criminal justice itself is something I've always been interested in.
And I had originally started and criminal justice to go
for forensic psychology. And then when I found out that
Chattahoochee was doing the paralegal program, I had already been
looking into it for quite some time at this point.
S4 (01:54):
My name is Regina LaBelle, and I'm a staff member
at Chattahoochee Technical College, and I've been there for 15
years now. I am now enrolling in a new program,
paralegal studies. Well, actually, I'm enrolling in this paralegal studies
program is for something that I've always wanted to do
(02:15):
in law. And I know I didn't want to be
an officer. So I thought there's other avenues of being
in the law field. So I thought paralegal would be
something that I would be. I like research, so that's
something that I would like to do.
S1 (02:29):
What is the program all about? What does it actually entail?
S2 (02:32):
So we have two different avenues for them to take,
and it's either going to be the diploma program or
it's going to be the associates program. Now, the first
three semesters of the diploma program is going to directly
mirror what's in the associates program. Just the associates will
go a little further in the first three semesters. We're
(02:52):
going to cover things like criminal law and criminal procedure,
which is usually one of the favorites of people. We're
going to cover the introduction to paralegal studies and particularly
the ethics that they have to follow. There's a lot
of things that you have to make sure that you
pay attention to, like not getting into unauthorized practice of
law and things like that. They probably will never even
(03:15):
begin to guess how many times people are going to
come to them and say, I have this problem. You know,
can you tell me what this is? And it's going
to be their family or their friends. And then you've
got clients who are still going to come and go, okay,
but what's the outcome that I can expect or what's next?
And all of those things. They have to learn how
to say no, you know, and how to to bridge
those gaps. In terms of other classes, we're going to
(03:36):
do torts, which is like your personal injury, defamation, you know,
things like that, battery trespass to your land. We're going
to do contracts. The one thing that I will say,
contracts almost made me drop out of law school. It
was so hard, but it was because it's taught in
a very different way. And I didn't realize it until
the very end because people kept saying, No, just stick
(03:57):
it out, it's going to click and it did click.
But the one thing I took away from that is
that is hands down, like the most important class, I think,
out of all of them, because contracts rule our lives.
S1 (04:08):
What makes this program.
S3 (04:09):
Different with that is also if they also don't want
to take that long time, but also as well, you know,
if you do decide to go to law school, even
as you just told practice, actually what I learned as
just the law school portion itself is three years. But
if you start with the paralegal program and the way
they've shaped it, not all of them, but the majority
(04:31):
of your classes, especially once they get the accreditation, are
transferable to law schools. There is one I was looking
at most schools if you can justify like this class
I took takes everything and has already taught everything that's
on this person's syllabus. And you still have your syllabus
from this class here. Most schools will do that.
S4 (04:51):
Chattahoochee is a great college. We have a lot of
great professors, have great instructors who invest in the students
that come. In their classrooms. I believe we're one of
the if not the biggest technical college in the state
of Georgia. I like that the instructors invest in their
students and help them to make great career choices.
S2 (05:15):
What is going to, I think, make us different is
the fact that I'm bringing into it a whole lot
of research. I began in 2017. I started a paralegal
students group on Facebook because I noticed that in some
of the paralegal groups that I was in, a lot
of people were getting frustrated with students coming in, going,
(05:35):
I don't quite understand this. Can you help me with this?
Because it was a place that, you know, the working
paralegals were going to, you know, vent about their daily
jobs or get advice about what kind of place they
can look for for a document, things like that. But
these students needed a place to be able to go
as well. And so I created that. And it's now
(05:57):
up to like 8500 students. And it's one of those
things that it allowed me to kind of research what
schools are doing right, what schools are doing wrong and
allowed me to see, like what kind of assignments they
were doing, all kinds of things. So I got to
bring into this the perspective of what actually is going
to translate better into the actual field. It also allowed
(06:20):
me to create a lot of interesting contacts for paralegals
as well. So one of the things that we'll also
be doing is we'll be offering at some point we're
going to put together some webinars on different topics, things like,
you know, maybe how to even freelance and do things
like that if they wanted to do things on their own,
because there are opportunities that you can do outside of
(06:43):
just the traditional law practice. They don't have to just
stick with that. They can work for the courts. They
can work for corporations that have, you know, in-house counsel.
There's all kinds of opportunities for them to be able
to be a paralegal and in not be just strictly
in a law firm, but we'll be able to bring
(07:04):
them like webinars and stuff like that with demonstrations from
like law office management programs and stuff like that. I've
already contacted them to make sure that, you know, they'll
be able to come in and teach them a little something.
Because that way when our students go out into the field,
I want them to be able to say that they've
had some exposure. I don't want them to be going
(07:27):
out there just completely blank, like, okay, I've gotten my
degree and that's it.
S3 (07:32):
What I've learned so far is from our teacher, Miss
Amy Davis is a paralegal, basically can do everything a
lawyer does and has a full understanding of the law.
The only thing they can't do is actually represent.
S4 (07:47):
And court as looking at the curriculum. As far as
the quality of the program, I believe that's going to
be a great program. Not many of the core classes,
but a lot of the paralegal classes that each student
will have to take in order to get their diploma
or their associate degree. The instructor that's coming in, I
(08:08):
believe she's she's new, but she seems very eager and
ready to go.
S1 (08:13):
Who would make a good candidate for this program?
S2 (08:15):
Really and truly someone who is detail oriented. But a
lot of times I've also found that they don't necessarily
know that they're detail oriented in the right ways yet,
and it's kind of like shaping us. They just have
to be willing to learn and go down a list
because a lot of the stuff that we do is
list based. When you do like intake, you have specific
(08:37):
things that you have to ask and you have specific
documents that have to be filed. And a lot of
lawyers that I've worked with over the years, like they
have these checklists and stuff. So they just have to
be willing to pay attention to what it is that
they're doing. Depending on the area of law, they might
need a real, true element of compassion. I mean, like,
if you're in like real estate law where you're just
(08:58):
doing closings and stuff like that, it's very different than
if you are working in, say, juvenile law, where your
child is in foster care or you're in, you know,
family law, where you have parents who are arguing over
their children, things like that, or you're in criminal law
and you have somebody whose life is on the line.
You have to be willing to understand where that person is.
(09:21):
You also have to be willing to kind of put
aside the things that might bother you, because morally, our
compasses don't always line up with our legal compasses, but
we still have to do our parts and be able
to be there for the clients. And since we are
forward facing that element of compassion and understanding is absolutely necessary.
(09:43):
Being a good listener to.
S4 (09:44):
Specifically that, I want to do I want to learn
more about how to do wills, power of attorneys and
one detail that goes into that and when people go
to court for doing. I want to learn a lot
more about that.
S1 (10:03):
What would you tell potential incoming students?
S4 (10:05):
I would tell students that Chateau de TEC is a
great place to learn that this program will give them
the opportunity to look at things on a different perspective
as far as the law is concerned, and to help
them maybe in life to move forward. It's going to
teach you your writing skills. It's going to teach you
(10:28):
more of your communication skills. So it be a great program,
especially for a person that's maybe shy a little bit.
It will probably bring them out of their shell just
a little bit because they're going to have to present
certain documents that is going to be needed.
S3 (10:46):
Because I feel like it is like a lot of
information just coming at you all at once. So once
you get yourself organized and you get yourself like on
a set schedule, it is more manageable because overall it's
just it's going to be a lot of information up
there is pretty amazing and anything you might need help on.
She's always there. She'll break stuff down to make sure
(11:09):
you understand it.
S1 (11:11):
You're not the typical student, but do you have any
advice for the younger students?
S4 (11:15):
I would say to a student that's coming right out
of high school, I believe that students should probably go
to either a tech school or a junior college because
you want to get acclimated into the college. The institution
is different from being in high school because in college
no one is going to really become check out for
(11:36):
you as far as if you want to come to school,
you come to school. If you don't want to come
to school, you stay at home or you do whatever
you want to do. But just know that your grade
is going to reflect what you've done in class. So
your grade is your pay. As far as you know,
you're going out and getting a job and you want
(11:59):
to get your wages when your grade is your wages.
S1 (12:02):
So here's the important question that I think everybody out
there wants to know what do paralegals make?
S2 (12:07):
So, Robert, half is a major staffing agency for the
legal industry and they are the ones who put out
a legal guide for in regards to salaries and whatnot.
And the average salary is anywhere from 31,000 all the
way up to $89,000, with the average being around 53, 54,000.
(12:30):
A lot of that's going to also depend on where
you're working. Are you working in a smaller office? Are
you working in public interest? Because if you're working in
public interest stuff, you're going to be, you know, working
with lower budgets. A lot of times nonprofits are the
public interest entities and they don't always have a lot
(12:51):
of money for lawyers, let alone paralegals. But it's one
of those things that's kind of a passion project that people,
you know, they just feel compelled to do that work.
And I commend them for that. They do actually really
amazing things. You also have to factor in a lot
of other things, too, like you have depending on where
you work. It's like any other job where you're going
(13:11):
to have perks that are involved. Some bigger firms are
going to have a lot more perks with more vacation
or more for one K. That's one of the things
that I've been kind of looking at as well in
terms of like what jobs the students that have been
in my groups have been getting and I have noticed
that it does run the gamut of getting just paid
(13:33):
to I'm getting paid with medical or with a week's
vacation or whatever too. So those perks, I think, always
definitely factor in and make your your pay a little
bit better.
S1 (13:44):
For more information about the paralegal program at Chattahoochee Tech,
visit Chattahoochee text edu. Thanks for listening to 98 seven
Chattahoochee text for 98.7% of our students earn a career.
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Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.