Sam Rad
October 1, 2023
My name is Sam Rad and I’m a friend of the paralegal community and a mentor to so many and a mentee to some.
A lot of paralegal students and people who have just gotten their license come to me and they ask advice as to how they can build their business, how they can work for someone, how they can join a firm when they have literally no experience. Not only they don’t have experience in the legal industry, but because some of them are younger, they don’t have transferable skills from their former employment to bring over.
It’s interesting because a lot of paralegal sole practitioners or those who have a mini firm of some sort, those who are looking to expand are always looking to hire someone with experience and then the new paralegals are saying well, where can I get that experience?
This is something that was never taught in school or during their placement and sometimes their placement do them justice. They didn’t really learn what they were supposed to learn, they were doing some small little work in the office, helping paralegals with some administrations and unfortunately they didn’t learn much.
In most of the resumes that we get from younger paralegals, they talk about how they’re great at research but then they don’t do research as to how they need to learn what they need to have by way of experience, themselves.
So here is what I am going to share as an advice and something from my years of experience so that paralegals and newly licensed paralegals can benefit from.
Let’s just say you want to get into an office that does a lot of POA, criminal matters, HTA, whether it’s going to be LTB or small claims or any other areas of law that you’re interested. Before you go to an interview, it is my sincere request for each one of you, or my sincere advice to all of you is that learn, learn and learn, everything you need to, because all the information is available online.
If you’re good in research, you can literally find all the information. What do I mean by that? Let’s just say you want to get into traffic ticket part of the legal services. There are certain courts in the GTA. Let’s say we have the Old City Hall court courtroom number B, C, D, or L4 Appeal Court. In Toronto West we have W7, W5, in Toronto East we have E4, E5, E6. Then we have the Richmond Hill Court R3, R4. We have the Newmarket court A7, A6, A2.
All the zoom links for all these courts are available online. Let’s just say the traffic ticket court has four tiers, 9:00, 10:30, 1:30, and 3:00. Pretty much sign in every day and observe.
Observe as much as you can.
How do you address the court? How is the matter put over? What is the legal lingo that is used? What are the charges that are being played down to? Is the plea acknowledgement going to be read on record? Why does someone ask for an adjournment to get disclosure or to file a charter application under Section 11B? What is 11B? Google it, find out. When you prepare your 11B, how is it prepared? Who do you have to serve? Where do you have to file? What do you argue? You just have to observe and listen and learn. How do you order disclosure? How do you schedule a Crown pre-trial?
All these stuff are questions you need to ask yourself and unfortunately, and I can say this with almost certainty, that most schools out there, most colleges out there, don’t teach you these things, and it is disheartening because this is what you need to learn because this is the experience you need to have.
If you’re interested in LTB matters, get the zoom links from many of the paralegal groups on Facebook. Create yourself an account, get into the LTB portal, find out which notice are needed for what. What is an N4? What is an N12? What is an N11? What sort of supporting application goes with it? Then go into the LTB portal, find those forms, create an account, just get in there and fill the forms. You don’t have to submit it. Create a fictitious scenario in your head and then go ahead and do that.
Small Claims Court, the same thing. Create an account under One Key. Try to find out how to upload documents. What documents are needed to be uploaded on statements of claims, on defences, on affidavits of service, on motions? Find all this information.
Right now, I’ve given you three week’s worth of work that you could do by yourself. One week dedicated to HTA matters, one week dedicated to small claims, one dedicated to LTB.
If you’re interested in criminal matters, for example, they’re now amalgamated into the new courthouse ( 10 Armoury), but if you basically search for all the links of criminal courts in Google, the first search that you’re going to find on Google, scroll all the way to the bottom. You’re going to find the chart with all the PDFs. It has the links to all the criminal courts in Toronto. You will basically get into the set date court.
There is a counsel sign up sheet where you can go and find out how to add your name on the sign up sheet. You can check the court docket from the court docket list and then find out how to do Control + F, locate the name of your client, find a line number in fictitious stories added into the sign up sheet, and then observe. Basically changing your username on Zoom to an observer and get in there and start observing.
How is the Crown attorneys going through the list of all the Councils first and then the paralegals? I know my friend Marian Lipa, pretty much changed the Solicitors Act and made an amendment to it that paralegals should never be segregated. I was hoping that more prosecutors would actually follow suit – they don’t.
So paralegal students, agents are still on the right side of the sign up sheet. Counsels are on the other side so you’re going to have to wait for your turn, which is a good thing because when you sign in to criminal courts, you get to hear what lingos are used, you get to see what is the preferences of the JP’s. When you’re speaking to a matter you first identify yourself, hello my name is … I’m here on line number .. whatever, then you go quiet. Then you give a clerk a chance to find the information. Then you put your name on the record and say what you’re doing. The dance of back and forth of who says what when is kind of different in the criminal set date courts than it would be in the traffic tickets courts – slightly different. Get yourself familiar with what is bench warrant with discretion? Why is bench warrants with discretion getting rescinded? What is the designation for Counsel?
All this stuff is what you need to teach yourself, and if you ever want to join a firm and you don’t have this experience and if they tell you, listen, are you willing to work for about a month or two for free, some people say well what do you mean you want me to work for free, you want to sort of slave me and whatever. It’s a personal preference. Listen, if somebody is giving you their time, their experience to train you because they want to hire you because in you they have seen something that is beneficial to them, so my suggestion is take them up on their offer. If it was me 25-30 years ago, I would take them up on their offer. I would work for free because would I rather sit at home for two months, do nothing, send out resumes, go to interviews, get rejected because I don’t have the experience? Or would I go somewhere that established for two months, learn everything, show them my willingness to learn, show them I’m coachable, but before doing that, do my homework, teach myself this stuff so when I go there I can automatically be different?
Listen, if you want to be better than anyone else, all you have to be is different. How are you going to be different? Teach yourself something. Invest in yourself. I have literally given you information as to how to get yourself prepared for HTA, criminal matters, LTB, and small claims, what you need to do to prepare yourself and invest time in yourself for the next three weeks and believe me, when it’s time for you to go to an interview with no experience, what you’re going to show them that you can do if someone says here’s a ticket, just go ahead and file a NIA for it. You know exactly how to file a NIA, you know where to order disclosure, you know the e-mail addresses of all the prosecutors in various jurisdictions, you know the links to LTB, you know the links to One Key for small claims, you know how to get into criminal court and search the court docket.
I’m telling you, watch this video again or this blof again, start making notes….this is pretty much the best advice that I can give to the new licensees, people who don’t have a lot of transferable skills, or people who have life transferable skills but not skills in the legal industry. If you do this, you’re automatically different and better than the other people and you can give yourself to work.
Author Sam Rad - Current case manager of We Defend You Legal services and former president of Paralegal society of Canada before the regulations.