Year in Review
Debra Baker, 2016-2017 Chair
As outgoing Chair of the Paralegal Section, I wanted to thank our membership for another great year. This past year I have enjoyed serving as Chair of a section that started back in 2010. There have been many changes throughout the years in our profession as well as our Paralegal Section. The fact that the TCBA has a Paralegal section is a testimony to the Tulsa area legal profession in that they recognize Paralegals as a part of the legal profession. As members of the TCBA, we are so very excited about what lies ahead for our section and our profession. I wanted to recap some of the events of the 2016 and 2017 year. Several members of the TCBA Paralegal Section met this past September to discuss activities and topics for the monthly meetings. Our focus would be on meetings that contained helpful information to assist our membership in personal and professional growth. As Chair of the section, I attended Tulsa Community College’s Orientation meeting for Paralegal Studies. It was exciting to learn how the program is conducted and to see so many students preparing to work as paralegals. I also represented our Paralegal Section on a panel at the University of Tulsa’s Focus Group for ABA approval of the Paralegal Program for the University of Tulsa. Our first meeting of the 2016 - 2017 year was on October 6th with Litgistix presenting a program on Searching Techniques for E-Discovery Review. This presentation included information on using new Cloud based software, CloudNine. Luke Harris presented demonstrations on the software and its benefits in management of a case.
6 Tulsa Lawyer
At our November 3rd meeting, Karlyn Apon, from Doerner Saunders Daniel & Anderson, presented a slide presentation on Due Diligence in Corporate Transactions and Related Searches. Karlyn also prepared a handout that included public websites for searching for corporate documents. Our section had an evening meeting on December 1st at the Spaghetti Warehouse. There was a round table discussion on current topics and issues in the legal profession. We also agreed to adopt a family through the Family & Children’s Services 2016 Holiday Challenge. We adopted a single mom with three children and with the generous donations from our membership, we were able to provide a special Christmas for this family. On December 13th there were several members that met to wrap gifts and the gifts were presented to Family & Children’s Services to be delivered to the family. On January 12, 2017, Meredith Lee, Online Document Review Supervisor from Avansic, presented information on E-Discovery Cost Strategy for Small, Medium and Large Cases. There were numerous questions asked about the different e-discovery methods and cost effectiveness. Ms. Lee presented several different case scenarios and ideas for cost effectiveness using E-Discovery. The February 2nd meeting was a round table discussion on Paralegal Professionalism led by Beth Nellis. Other topics and issues concerning paralegals were also discussed. On March 2nd, Mr. Tom Vincent, from Gable and Gotwals, spoke on “Practical Cyber Security: The First Line of Defense.” Mr. Vincent spoke on the review of security requirements for different types of information, and how to apply them; understanding the risks applicable to that information, and the different ways information may be lost or compromised; and learning practical steps one can take to increase the security of that information for clients, firms or companies.