Video Interview with Olivia St. Clair Long
In this video interview for the podcast, I talked to Olivia St. Clair Long, owner of a law firm in Illinois, what are some of the top skills or traits that you look for in paralegals that you also look for in your associates?
What are three "must-have" skills for paralegals?
And not just skills, but also, what are the skills or traits that you also look for in your new associates that align with the same skills for paralegals?
I asked Olivia this question after working with her for the past few years to develop an associate training program that was based on the training I provide to paralegals in my Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp. Olivia purchased that paralegal training program years ago, and she also put a few of her law clerks (associates in training) through the Litigation Paralegal Boot Camp.
1. Attention to detail
Q – What goes through your mind as a law firm partner when you’ve received work product that is the second or third time that there are errors in that work product?
A – Sure. Well, honestly, I try not to take it personally. It truly feels when someone isn’t proofreading their work that, they feel that my time should be spent correcting their work rather than spending their time making sure they are giving me the best work product possible.
I know they don’t mean it that way, but I definitely struggle not to take it that way. And you don’t want my headspace there. If you work for me, right? You don’t want me to think that you don’t care and that you feel wasting my time is an appropriate thing for you to do. That’s not great. That’s not a good place to be.
I’m not really a managing partner because I don’t have partners. I’m a principal attorney, and the difference is that I own the whole thing. My name’s on all of it. I bear all of the risk. Any money we’ve ever gotten is with my credit. Any systems we’ve ever made are with my effort.
So, when I’ve created systems and done training to prevent those types of errors that I’m seeing, and then I see those errors, it is quite frustrating and difficult for me to put it in perspective that this person who’s given me this work is learning and, you know, things are hard. So, once I do that little brain check and put myself in perspective, I really try to reinforce my systems with folks and say, “Hey, so when you’ve done work, and you don’t print it out and proofread it, and you don’t give it to another person to proofread and think about that, right?”
That means time management.
That means communication and cooperation.
When the associate attorney or paralegal doesn’t take the time and effort to do that, it really does feel like, okay, well, that’s against our core values. Our firm is collaborative and supportive. You not taking the time to do the things that we’re teaching you to do is a problem.
My [billable hour] rate is too high to bill for proofreading and formatting. I can’t do that. And so it actually is burning my time because the other thing I have to do then is call you back in, remind you that you’re supposed to give me good work, which is something I thought you knew, right? And then we have to have a conversation.
Is this because you didn’t know what to do, or is it because you didn’t do it?
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2. Communication skills
Q – When you mentioned communication skills, you said “communication up and down,” can you explain that?
A – This was the hardest part for me as an associate. This is very difficult. Actually, in many ways, it’s easier for me to run my own firm and not have anyone to report to or with at my level, as opposed to how hard it is as a senior paralegal or a junior associate.
An example is a junior associate and a senior paralegal working together and they decide to file a case downtown because we file everything downtown. They make that decision, and they don’t tell me.
In that example, there might be a strategic reason where I don’t want to file it downtown because I happen to know which judge sits in family law in a particular district where I would prefer to have filed it.
It seems small, but unless they flag that for me (communicate up) and say “hey, we’re going to file this today,” they wouldn’t know that I might not want to file it downtown.
Then there’s the part where if somebody is new or a paralegal has, the scope of their purview of a case, usually it’s not as broad as the managing attorney on the case. And so, a paralegal may have a different idea of what an appropriate reaction to something is, as opposed to what a junior associate thinks, as opposed to what the senior partner thinks.
It’s as easy as CC’ing me on an email. Hey, Olivia, we’re planning to do this, this, this, and this. We’re planning to do it by about 4 today. Do you have any other ideas or concerns that we need to address about that?
That kind of foregoing communication is super helpful because I’m not going to hold you to it later when you guys made decisions that you didn’t want to run up the flagpole.
And then the other part is that time management piece we talk about, right? When you want your work to be perfect, and you need someone else to review it, you can’t procrastinate. You can’t just drop it on the paralegal and expect them to be able to say no to a whole bunch of other people’s projects.
There’s managing up and down within, in terms of time management skills too, which paralegals all have to deal with too because usually, they’re dealing with lit support, they’re dealing with vendors, they’re dealing with people who are making copies and delivering them; they’re making sure that the courtesy copies got done.
Paralegal resource: Get the 7 C’s of Paralegal Communication Skills.
3. Ownership of work
Taking ownership of your work is being the information manager, the project manager. That’s what it means to me. There is a huge difference, from my perspective, in giving the assignment to someone who I know is paying attention like a project manager or the information manager.
There’s an example that you use in the Litigation Boot Camp that I love. You say that the paralegal becomes aware of a new dump of documents that has increased the scope of the project. You could fire off an email, but the partner might be caught up in other work.
You can’t just check off the box that the CYA email was sent. Instead, you follow up. You provide proposed solutions to the problem. Everyone knows what a CYA email looks like and it’s not a good look for you.
There is a way to take too much ownership. I’m thinking of two different scenarios in which that could be true. One of them is what you said, which is doing stuff someone didn’t tell you to do. I do think that is a bit of a lapse of communication, right? Because a paralegal could say, “Just so you know, what I understand the next steps in the case are, are these.”
Those next steps would mean that I might need to start filling out this, this, this, and this to get it prepped. Or, “I see you have a case management conference in 60 days. The district we filed in has a very complicated case management order. Would you like me to start filling it out? “
That’s great because it shows me you know exactly what you’re doing.
You’re super proactive. It’s going to be in 60 days, right? It is a very complicated order. The one I’m thinking about is like a five page order. It has all the discovery deadlines. It’s a whole thing. It does take a long time to do, and I would rather not do it at the last minute.
But I also might not want to bill a client for that right now. It’s case by case. So you might let me know what you think the next steps are and what you’re doing. Also, that is a very nice record for your review, right? Here’s me being proactive. Here’s me letting you know what the next steps are. Here’s me managing the case actively.
Meet the Podcast Guest
Olivia St. Clair Long is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, and is licensed to practice law in both Illinois and her home state of California.
During more than 15 years as a litigator, Olivia transitioned from successfully representing institutional commercial litigation clients of AmLaw 100 firms to establishing her own boutique firm in Illinois, specializing in family law and litigation.
Olivia is also co-founder of the Litigator Launch Pad, an online training program that walks new litigation associates through a proven framework to accelerate their career success and reduce the partners’ time spent training them.
