I have been a litigation paralegal at Erickson Sederstrom for a year and a half. After my first career as a performing artist, working in law is my ‘next act’ you might say. Growing up and as a student, I was always more drawn to classes and subjects that let me read, write, and research. When I retired from professional dance, I decided to take a chance on a new field and happened to love it as it aligned with so many of my interests and skills already.
I work for 13 of our litigation attorneys in our firm, and I can honestly say every day is different. Even when I attempt to make a schedule of priorities and plan what I want to accomplish, new things arise and I am putting out small fires, so to speak, daily. While no day can necessarily be considered normal, there are tasks that I complete regularly.
Most of my day is spent tending to litigation cases involving car accidents and semi-truck accident insurance defense and plaintiff’s work. I have attorneys who work both plaintiff and defense, so it is exciting and fun to shift my mindset as I work a case from start to finish. The first task I may complete in these cases is finding and requesting the police motor vehicle accident report. This contains vital information about the parties involved and the accident itself. My primary responsibility is the collection and summarization of medical records and bills. In accident litigation, the outcome centers around the damages, or money, owed to the plaintiff. I request medical records from years before the accident, encompassing the day of the loss and up until the present day. This allows us to identify if any of the injuries they claim occurred before and may not be entirely attributable to the accident alone. I think I was meant to be a doctor in another life, so exploring and summarizing these records allow me to live in that world.
Another aspect of working in litigation deals with court documents. I may be asked to draft a pleading, a motion or a subpoena for records. If either side has filed a motion for summary judgment for example, there will be briefs written back and forth to support and oppose each argument. In this instance, my job is to draft an index of evidence and pull the evidence that will be supplied with our brief to support our reasoning. This makes me a bit of an investigator as I cull through hundreds or thousands of pages of documents to narrow it down to precise information that will be easily digestible for a judge.
I love working collaboratively with our attorneys whether it be a car accident case, employment litigation, construction defect, or a contract dispute. I have always thrived in positions that afford me the responsibility to do my job well and the means to support others as they do their best work. As I finish my second year as a paralegal, I am grateful for the education I gained and the job that entered me into the field of law. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.