Rochester Paralegal Profiles: Katherine Manns

Daily Record (Rochester, NY), Sep 28, 2006 by Tara E. Buck

Recently designated as "Paralegal of the Year" by Legal Assistant Today magazine, Katherine Manns has spent the last 20 years working with Phillips Lytle LLP's Buffalo office.

"I came right here after I graduated from college with my associate's degree," she said. "I worked on a full-time temporary project originally, and was offered a full-time permanent position in the environmental department. I took it and then in a couple of years I went back to get my bachelor's degree" in legal studies.

The award recognition makes Manns feel "giddy, and I'm sure that's the most unprofessional thing to say, but it's nice to be recognized."

"As far as I'm concerned, this is just what paralegals do. We always wear more than one hat. It's an award for all of the paralegals in Western New York, not just for me. It was terrific to be the person they named, but you can't do it without the other paralegals behind you. We all network. We all work together. This is a tribute to every paralegal in Western New York."

Manns works as an adjunct professor teaching an introduction to paralegal studies class at Hilbert College.

"We took a whole semester, if not two, of legal research," she said. "I don't think law students take that much. ... I sometimes think there's a real wall or ceiling that paralegals run into, because you always fluctuate between support staff and legal staff, depending on where they want you to fit in, and it's across the board. You hear it at paralegal association meetings: For benefits, you fit into the support staff, but in other things you fit in with other staff. You hear, 'You can't make too much more money because you're getting close to an incoming associate.' Well, no offense, but who do you think helps the incoming associates? It's tough. It can be very frustrating, but it can be very rewarding."

Manns, too, is actively involved in her local association, the Paralegal Association of Western New York. She chairs a fundraising auction committee that funds the group's scholarship award, and is a past president. She does volunteer work as an arbitrator for the Better Business Bureau, and has two children, a seven-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. She and her husband, Dan, are currently expecting a third child.

"I always knew I wanted to be in the legal field from the time I was probably a junior in high school," she said. "I didn't know if I wanted to do law school, ... and I looked into court reporting. I knew I wanted a little bit more than a legal secretary as far as responsibility, and 'paralegal' was a new and upcoming field. Hilbert was a great school with an ABA-approved program, so you couldn't ask for anything more in your backyard."

She specializes in environmental law, but "I answer to and work with just about every attorney in the trial department when I do litigation support. I do billing for some, I do litigation support for others. It sounds very heady, and it's not meant to, but there's someone constantly at my door asking questions, needing help, something like that."

In 2004, as Electronic Case Filing was introduced to the Western District, the court asked Phillips Lytle to introduce the process to area firms. Manns was picked to oversee the process, and she worked with other firms, also, to share her knowledge of e-filing.

She helps anyone within her firm who has a technical problem, as well. She trains others on the use of LexisNexis, Opticon and TimeMap software as well as CT Summation and Verdict Systems' Sanction.

"The database manager and I work so well together, and have in the 20 years I've been here, that we finish each other's sentences," she said. "It's uncanny. ... But there's no real career track for paralegals in Buffalo. It's not like in bigger areas, like New York City or California where there's different levels you can grow into. Here, it's once a paralegal, always a paralegal. I knew I wanted more but I didn't know how to go about it. I talked to some of the partners and we ... created this little niche and it's worked out great."

She tells her paralegal students one of the most important things they can do is "write, write, write."

"And take those computer courses. You may think it's not going to be a problem, that you'll have a secretary and they'll be able to handle things, but there's so much you can do before it gets to a secretary. You have to have an understanding of what's going on."

"I think there are some out there who don't know how to use paralegals, and don't know how to trickle the work down to be more efficient for their clients, who are more savvy" today than when she started out. "But I think paralegals could be used better and more often on projects and that would create more time for associates and the partners to gather more work or get more work in the door. We can do a lot more than some people realize."

Manns "took ownership of our electronic filing initiative," David J. McNamara, a partner at Phillips Lytle, told Legal Assistant Today. Her "efforts to put our firm at the front of our local court's conversion to electronic filing and those efforts were widely acknowledged and praised by court personnel and attorneys in our firm."