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When I came to the USA, I needed to find work and found that acting here was an aspiration to all rather than the profession of a few. I found a job in a realty company and then my friend Mimi who was working for Pfizer as an outside contract paralegal gave me an introduction to her boss and that is how I began to support lawyers. Mimi moved on to White & Case in New York where she also secured me a position on the evening staff. This quickly gave me an introduction to the world of the paralegal and within three months was invited to take over my supervisors position, becoming the evening coordinator of Legal Assistants. My boss had been instrumental in creating the Legal Assistant in USA and was a great mentor to me. At some point I felt that I needed to move from a life of evening work to come out into the sunshine. I took over a large litigation from the case manager who had moved on to greener pastures. I had already discovered my pension for computers and software applications and fit in well with this technological nightmare. A year later I was invited to join the Litigation Support department of White & Case and remained there for a year until I was discovered by the Director of Litigation Support and Chadbourne & Parke. It was not long until we were plunged into Tobacco Litigation, having to create a department in-house that could securely process a whole company worth of paper. I moved from the assistant director position to take over when my boss left in 1997 to work at an Appellate Printing company. We were in the process of handing over our tobacco work to a firm in Atlanta, as well as maintaining support for the remaining practice. Personally there was many things going on with my family across the pond and I was offered a supporting role in a high profile Off Broadway show called The Mystery of Irma Vep. I decided to leave the fabulous world of Litigation to the docile comforts of New York Theatre. I then went on to work with another Off Broadway show called The Countess. So three years after Chadbourne, I was an unemployed actor. I called a good friend in the business to se if I could get some temp work. She was in fact looking to fill a position at Schulte Roth & Zabel. I went to work as their IP group manager of Litigation Support. A large team that was imported from a smaller firm and in the midst of heavy litigation with a confusing set of data. I was very happy when a call came about a year later to meet with people at Davis Polk & Wardwell, an extremely reputable law firm. I joined them. All there were more than capable of dealing with the amount of work that came through the door and I really was scrambling to find a point to my position. After a year we parted most amicably and I did some work with a friend who was building a small business and continued to do some small productions with friends. I continued to explore Litigation Support work and went to work with a good friend who had been with me at Chadbourne. That is when I went to Debevoise & Plimpton to work in his department as a project manager. It was actually great to be in the trenches again and the department was incredibly busy. It was in my time at Debevoise, when I received a call from the owner of Counsel Press. This was the Appellate Printing company that my former boss from Chadbourne had joined. The owner of Counsel Press was looking for someone to head up a new division that would do document archiving work for New York Courts and maybe as I had some connections to law firms, also branch out into some Litigation Support services. He explained how his staffing paradigm would be to employ people who were registered disabled. I suddenly saw a chance to do something worthwhile and something that I would never be able to do in the New York City Law Firm environment. I began at LT Data Tech and built the business from scratch. The court’s work was difficult to maintain and I was able to bring in quite a bit of work from my law firm friends, processing email and electronic data for review. I was feeling that I could do more for my clients and was given the chance to move to a more established Litigation Support vendor. This was short lived, as I soon discovered that sales is not my forte. I tried very hard, but for me the product and work are where my passion lies and I couldn’t bring in the kind of work that my boss had fantasized about when he hired me. So now I am back to working in the trenches for the Atlanta law firm I gained so many flight miles from in my Chadbourne days. King & Spalding I am very grateful for the opportunity to be of service, bringing my experience and passion to my new employer.
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