Playing It Smart
Paralegals from both sides
reveal their winning strategies.
By Debra Levy Martinelli and Amanda Clifford
July/August 2004 Issue
In the sports world,
most athletes spend their entire careers playing one position: a
quarterback in football, a point guard in basketball, a shortstop in
baseball. Others, though, are known as utility players or those who play
both sides of the ball: the wide receiver on offense on a football team
who also is a cornerback on defense; the power forward on the basketball
court who moves to be the big man at center; the third baseman, adept at
fielding line drives, who can switch to catching pop flies as shortstop.
Their philosophy of the game might differ and their particular strengths
and weaknesses might vary, but whether they play one position or many,
they all are working together, as a team, with winning being the
ultimate goal.
The same could be
said of many paralegals. Whether because of happenstance or preference,
opportunity or timing, comfort or curiosity, some legal assistants spend
their careers on the plaintiff or defense side of civil cases, while
others work both sides, either chronologically or contemporaneously.
The Players
Stephanie Gillespie has been a paralegal for 12 years and holds a
certificate from the American Institute for Paralegal Studies. She is an
eight-year veteran paralegal of Cranfill, Sumner & Hartzog, a Raleigh,
N.C. firm with more than 100 attorneys. She helps defend litigants in
medical malpractice, property and automobile lawsuits. At the time of
publication, Gillespie was transferring to Young Moore & Henderson, a
defense firm in Raleigh.
Connie Scorza,
CLA, CAS-Litigation, has been a paralegal since 1977, and is a New York
native who earned her CLA certification in 1983 and her designation as a
California Advanced Specialist-Litigation in 1999. She has spent most of
her career representing plaintiffs in personal injury, medical
malpractice and product liability cases, and is currently working part
time for the Law Offices of R. Nathan Gonzales, a solo practitioner in
Silver City, N.M.
For 19 years,
Nita Hanson worked on plaintiff’s cases with attorney Dennis
McCarthy in Columbus, Ohio. Then, in 1999, she became a defense
paralegal in the Columbus office of Cleveland-based firm Thompson Hine,
where she currently works. On the plaintiff side, she worked on a wide
array of tort cases, including personal injury, medical malpractice,
product liability, and bad faith and HMO insurance claims. Today, she
works on complex civil litigation involving banks, manufacturing
companies, and corporations with multiple litigation matters across the
nation and in foreign countries. Hanson was recently accepted for
admission to Capital University Law School, and will begin its
part-time, evening program this August.
Vicki McCoy
has spent her 20-year paralegal career with the same group of attorneys,
and always has done plaintiff’s work. McCoy started working for a small
law firm in Columbus, Ohio in 1980 as a legal secretary. In 1994, she
and three lawyers left the small firm and joined Palmer Volkema Thomas,
in Columbus. Today, she is one of seven paralegals in the eight-attorney
plaintiff’s firm, handling mostly personal injury and medical
negligence.
With a background in mental health and
a bachelor’s degree in recreational therapy from the University of
Florida, Karen Castillo worked as a recreational therapist with
the mentally challenged and as a rehabilitation therapist at the state
hospital for the criminally insane. In 1981, she earned a paralegal
certificate at Miami’s Barry College (now Barry University) and joined
the Miami firm of Steel Hector & Davis. Twenty-three years later, she
works both sides of civil litigation. For plaintiffs, most of her work
is in employment law; for defendants, it’s primarily contract disputes
and securities litigation.
Different Game Plans
Plaintiff
Paralegals working for plaintiff firms often have a
heart for fighting injustice and want to be part of a team to right a
wrong. Plaintiff paralegals assume many duties and various roles on
their legal team.
As a plaintiff’s paralegal in medical
malpractice suits, Connie Scorza said she usually is involved with the
attorney in the initial intake interview, asking questions, taking notes
and making sure they have all the necessary information. Currently
living in Silver City, N.M., and working for the Law Offices of R.
Nathan Gonzales, she gathers records and acts as the initial liaison
between the client and the office. The first documents she drafts
comprise a settlement/demand package. If a settlement isn’t reached, she
drafts the complaint, propounds discovery and, with the client, responds
to discovery.
“When discovery responses come in, I
summarize them and see what is missing or if we need to follow up on
anything,” Scorza said.
Scorza also schedules independent
medical examinations, when applicable, and will attend if the attorney
is unavailable. “It’s a matter of firm resources,” she explained.
Over the years, Scorza has served as an
extra set of eyes and ears at depositions and hearings. “I can pick up
when a client is scared, nervous or misunderstands a question,” she
said. “Plaintiffs are typically not sophisticated litigants. It’s their
first time being involved in the legal process and they are very nervous
about everything.”
Another of Scorza’s roles might be to
contract with an outside company to prepare a day-in-the-life video
presentation and provide input on the final product.
During the 19 years Nita Hanson
participated in the representation of plaintiffs with Dennis McCarthy in
Columbus, Ohio, Hanson said she attended nearly every trial. “I was the
stage manager, making sure witnesses were where they were supposed to be
and ready to testify, and the evidence that needed to be introduced was
ready to go,” she said.
Hanson said her involvement with the
plaintiff’s side was very different from the defense side of litigation,
where she now usually operates at Thompson Hine. In a plaintiff’s motor
vehicle accident, where early efforts are made to secure a negotiated
settlement, the tasks are geared toward a presentation to the insurance
company, Hanson said. On the other hand, if it becomes clear a
settlement is not a viable alternative, the case moves toward trial.
With 20 years of plaintiff paralegal
experience under her belt, Vicki McCoy and the firm’s other paralegals
at Palmer Volkema Thomas in Columbus, Ohio, typically are assigned to
one attorney and spend much of their time behind the scenes in her
firm’s cases. “I don’t go to depositions, but I do go to some trials.
Since the attorney has to be in court, I also juggle the rest of our
caseload,” she said.
McCoy’s duties include participating in
the initial interview, working up and organizing the file, obtaining the
supporting documentation and contact with the client, the adjusters,
defense counsel, physicians and experts. She also drafts documents,
including discovery and discovery responses, and makes all arrangements
for depositions, travel, meetings and trial testimony. “The most
important tool is communication with your attorney, and I have been
fortunate to work with the best,” she said.
McCoy estimates about 10 percent of her
cases go to trial. The remainder settle, often through mediation. “I am
a big fan of mediation,” she said. “When a case is mediated, the people
involved look absolutely at the facts and sympathy isn’t a huge factor.
With a jury pool, you have to worry about sympathy or the lack of it.”
Karen Castillo, whose job is to work on
both sides of the law at Steel Hector in Miami, said regardless of which
side of the case she is on, she starts preparing for trial when the case
comes in the door. On the plaintiff’s side, she collects relevant
documents to see if they bear out the client’s story. “I keep a
numerical list of all productions during discovery and premark
deposition exhibits with numbers that will become trial exhibit numbers.
We use the same documents over and over, so by the time we get to trial,
I know the numbers by heart.
“By the time you walk into the
courtroom, you have to be ready,” Castillo added. “Whether it’s a
plaintiff’s case or a defense case, I hate to settle on the courthouse
steps. We have worked so hard to get there.”
Defense
Perry Mason and Matlock — both come to mind in the exciting
portrayal of the defense side on TV. In the real world, defense
paralegals, along with their defense teams, often find themselves
defending a client against a plaintiff out to make a fortune at the
defendant’s expense.
Stephanie Gillespie works on the
defense side at Cranfill, Sumner in North Carolina, to help litigants in
medical malpractice, property and automobile lawsuits. Before Gillespie
joined Cranfill, Sumner, however, she worked in a plaintiff’s firm for
four years at Hafer, McNamara, Caldwell, Carrway & Layton. “There is a
different mind set when you approach a case from one perspective or the
other,” she said. “When you are representing the defense and putting
together discovery, you have to determine how the plaintiff was injured,
and that person wants someone to pay money to compensate him or her for
his or her injuries. [On the defense side] the mind set is that anything
out there could have contributed to the injury, and you need to find a
way to figure out whether the plaintiff had the injury before the
incident and whether there is anything that would mitigate the damages.”
Gillespie said although her
responsibilities vary depending on the case, she follows a similar
procedure regardless of the subject matter — she conducts a conflicts
check, sets up a file and gets an extension to answer the complaint or
any other discovery request when necessary.
Gillespie assumes a primary role during
the discovery phase of medical malpractice litigation, drafting initial
discovery requests that include two sets of interrogatories. Discovery
responses are another of her primary responsibilities.
Although her firm employs nurse
paralegals who review medical records and prepare chronologies in
medical malpractice cases, Gillespie has that responsibility in her
other cases.
Gillespie also locates witnesses and
helps determine what experts might be necessary. She said she rarely
attends depositions in any of her cases. “We work for insurance
companies, which usually will not pay for multiple people to go. If I
can’t bill for my time, it’s not a good use of my time,” she said. “But
if a case is document intensive, sometimes the attorneys will want me
there.”
Hanson’s experience working on the
defense side varies from that of Gillespie’s. Hanson attends key
depositions, most evidentiary hearings and all trials. “I start to fill
out my checklist when I get the trial date. It helps me remember to get
everything in line, like where witnesses are and how to contact them,
and what evidence will be admitted under what rule and through which
witness,” she said.
Like Scorza for the plaintiff, Hanson
provides an extra set of eyes and ears for the defense. “I take lots of
notes about what the lawyers on the other side say the case is going to
be about, keep track of whether witnesses say what we expect them to say
or whether witnesses testify contrary to their depositions or documents.
I can see whether jurors are engaged and how they react.”
Hanson also said it’s important to look
at jury instructions early in a defense case. “Those are the
instructions the jury will be given on what the law is,” she said. “If
you look at them early in the case, you start to figure out what
witnesses and evidence will get you there. It’s a creative process.”
Over the years, Hanson has learned how
to look at the big picture. “You have to focus on more than how to get
from point A to point B to point C. When you are at point A and you know
you eventually need to be at point Z, you have to ask, ‘How do A and B
fit? Can I jump ahead to G?’ Instead of each task being an isolated
activity, all are targeted at a single goal,” she said.
And Hanson knows about putting the
pieces together to reach that goal. “I spend a significant amount of
time as the document management point person, keeping track of what
documents were produced to whom, on what basis, and in response to what.
I know which documents are key and what technology we will use,” she
said.
Castillo’s approach to a case varies
depending on which side she is working. “When you represent the
defendant, the plaintiff already has his story. You have to take that
story and see if it stands up, see how you can break it up. You try to
become creative and go on the offensive,” she said.
When representing a defendant, Castillo
investigates the veracity of the plaintiff’s allegations. “I find the
defense side more challenging because you have to unravel the
plaintiff’s story and poke holes in it,” she explained. “If there is one
thing I have learned, it’s that documents don’t lie. When the documents
are originally prepared, people are not thinking about suing somebody;
they are just documenting what happens.”
After more than two decades as a
paralegal, Castillo said she can look at the big picture in a case and
very quickly come up with a game plan. “I ask myself, ‘How do we want to
use the information, and what do we want to get out of it?’” she said.
“On a contract dispute case, the correspondence will be important; on a
product liability case, the correspondence isn’t as important as
employment, insurance, background and medical records. In both
instances, we come out with a story and often can turn the tables on the
other side.”
Commitment to
the Game
One important consideration when working for the plaintiff or
the defense is the time commitment involved. There are no hard and fast
rules when it comes to how much time a defense paralegal will work
versus the time commitment required of a plaintiff paralegal.
In Hanson’s experience, she said the
time commitment on the plaintiff and the defense sides of a case is
about the same. “Each side often disrupts the timetable of the other
side by raising unexpected issues, or by raising expected issues at
inopportune times.”
Because of the nature of trial work,
the time commitment has always varied greatly from week to week, Hanson
said. “Trial time often is dawn to dusk, but other events cause peak
periods of activity, such as major filing deadlines, major depositions
or the times when the firm is retained to handle a major new matter.”
As a plaintiff’s paralegal, Scorza said
she works long, hard hours during trial.
The hours McCoy works as a plaintiff’s
paralegal vary depending on her attorney’s trial schedule and the
client’s schedule and availability. “It’s definitely not a nine to five
job. It’s not unusual to work extra hours during the week depending on
your various deadlines and commitments,” she said.
For Gillespie, the time commitment as a
defense paralegal depends on the case and trial she is working on. “More
often than not, I work regular hours. If we are preparing for trial or a
motion, I might work late some evenings and on weekends. At my current
firm, overtime is definitely the exception and not the rule.”
Litigators who work on large-scale
commercial litigation put in a lot of time, according to Castillo. “I
can work 10 hours a day, five days a week on regular days, plus weekends
for large filings such as motions for summary judgment or briefs in
appellate courts. Sometimes, preparations for large trials require us to
work six days a week for up to three months, 10 to 12 hours a day,” she
said. “It takes a lot of time to leave no stone unturned.”
Some paralegals find the salary varies
in accordance to which side of a case they work. “My impression is that,
almost universally, defense firms pay more,” Hanson said.
Castillo said she has heard if a
paralegal works for a plaintiff-oriented law firm, there are some hefty
bonuses available.
Gillespie has personally seen a
difference in her pay since she has been at a defense firm. “There was a
difference in the pay scale in my case. I received an increase in salary
when I moved to a defense firm.”
Gillespie added that although she can’t
make a blanket statement about salaries, in her experience she has found
that the size of the firm also makes a difference in salary. “It has
been my experience that larger firms tend to offer higher salaries than
smaller firms. I know of paralegals at plaintiff firms that receive
higher end-of-year or holiday bonuses or receive bonuses throughout the
year, which might make up for the possibility that they have lower
salaries.”
Building a
Team
Due to the time expended on a case, paralegals form working
relationships with clients.
Gillespie said her relationships with
nonmedical malpractice clients often begin with the initial contact. “A
lot of the time, I will send a letter stating the firm has been retained
by their insurance company to represent them and ask that they call us.
I will interview them over the phone or get them to come to the office
to meet with the lawyer and me. Other times, I will set up a time for
the lawyer to meet them outside the office, and sometimes I go along,”
she said. “I try not to do anything where my time isn’t billed. That can
be frustrating, because I [originally started out at] a plaintiff’s firm
where cases were handled on a contingent fee basis and I went wherever
the lawyer went. On defense cases, I am sometimes limited in what I can
do. But clients need to know the lawyer and the paralegal, and they need
to know us more than just on the phone.”
Although many of the cases in which
Scorza has been involved have long since been resolved, she said she
carries them with her. “You don’t forget about cases,” she said,
commenting that many sensitive cases dealing with injury still cross her
mind today.
McCoy said her favorite part of the job
is the initial client interview. “I feel like I am meeting for the first
time someone I will spend a lot of time with over a long period. Clients
talk about what they have been through and how their injuries have
affected their lives. That interview is the first piece of the lawsuit
puzzle,” she said.
Whether a paralegal works for
plaintiffs or defendants, McCoy said, it’s important to follow your
heart. “You need to have a cause, an issue or people you believe in,”
she said. “You have to care.”
Hanson said on the plaintiff side, she
was the point of contact for clients. “I formed a very personal
relationship with them. I was involved in a very emotional part of their
lives — either they had been hurt or someone they loved had been hurt or
killed. There was a significant amount of hand-holding, which (for the
most part) I liked. I liked giving them a listening ear and sometimes a
shoulder to cry on.”
On the defense side, Hanson said she
has much less direct client contact. “Sometimes I will work on one
matter for a client, never to encounter them again. Over the last five
years I have had the privilege of developing relationships with
representatives of a number of our corporate clients. In fact, a friend
of mine who is now the director of legal services for a design/build
firm has retained Thompson Hine on a number of legal claims. It’s
different, to be sure, but similar in that I am passionate about our
clients receiving my best efforts, always,” she said.
Castillo said the side of the case she
works on has nothing to do with the relationship she has with a client.
“I have cried for our clients, and not looked favorably on others.”
And Gillespie said helping someone get
through the maze of the legal process gives her great satisfaction. “The
closest some clients have come to litigation is watching ‘Law and Order’
on TV. Then they get something in the mail asking for $500,000 and their
first thought is they are going to lose everything. It’s a very
stressful and emotional time for them. It’s a good feeling to know I
have helped them. At the end of the day, I feel I have accomplished
something and have done something good.”
Choosing Sides
Many variables come into play and influence paralegals to
work for either a defense or plaintiff firm, or both, and they usually
prefer one side over the other.
Gillespie prefers the defense
perspective and working on medical malpractice cases. “I don’t know how
to explain it, other than to say that my philosophy is more in line with
defense work,” she said. “There are people who are legitimately injured,
but there also are people who think they are going to file a lawsuit and
get so rich they will never have to work again.”
Although she does favor defense work,
Gillespie credits her early years on the plaintiff’s side at Hafer,
McNamara with providing the foundation for her defense work. “Those
attorneys taught me everything,” she said. “They made sure anytime there
was an opportunity to learn, I went. It was both a job and an
internship.”
It’s plaintiff’s work that has always
given Scorza the most satisfaction. As a plaintiff’s paralegal, her job
is to help determine how clear liability is, the extent of the
plaintiff’s injury, and whether he or she was contributorily negligent.
“I also want to know whether the client is interested in getting
better,” Scorza said.
The transition from plaintiff to
primarily defense work has not always been easy for Hanson, but she said
it always has been rewarding. “I feel fortunate to be associated with
Thompson Hine,” she said. “The breadth of cases I have had an
opportunity to work on has been very good for me.”
Hanson admitted, though, that finding
passion can be more difficult on the defense side than on the
plaintiff’s. “It’s harder to find one person to care about, but if you
can find a legal issue you care about, you can be passionate and be a
good advocate. You will not do just a good job, you will do your best
job.”
The bulk of McCoy’s cases are personal
injury and medical negligence. “I like personal injury cases more.” She
said medical cases are hard to deal with emotionally and often result in
permanent injury or death, and the families are more affected.
Castillo said she doesn’t have a
preference to working for the plaintiff or defense side. “Just give me
something I can sink my teeth into. Who needs to read legal thrillers? I
live them.”
Gillespie, who is the two-term
immediate past president of the Raleigh-Wake Paralegal Association,
frequently shares her professional experiences with paralegal students
in a local law office management class. As a guest speaker, she tells
them to talk to a lot of working paralegals and figure out what piques
their interest. “Whatever you do — whether it’s plaintiff or defense —
you are not married to that. When I started out [on the plaintiff’s
side], I didn’t know at first it was not right for me. I tell students
to try out different things and ask themselves, ‘Do I love it? Am I
learning and getting experience?’ They may decide it’s not for them, but
they will take with them everything they learned.”
All-around
Players
Despite their different approaches and regardless of whether
they represent plaintiffs, defendants or both, one thing is certain: All
five of these advocates are team players who have found their rightful
positions in — or, in sports parlance, on — the field of law.
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