Paralegals On Wall Street? Who knew?????

If you had told me a few years ago that I would be working at a bank I would have told you were crazy. After all, was I not the kid who hated every single one her math classes? Was I not the kid who cried while doing math homework? I don’t remember anything from any of my algebra classes…. heck I even have trouble figuring out percentages. Yeah, I truly am a math hater. I fully understand the interest others have with numbers as well as how great it would be if I could understand them myself. Alas, numbers and I are not friends. I would even venture to say we are mortal enemies.

Today, after suffering through high school math and algebra and trying to avoid as many number related classes in college, I am a paralegal at a bank. Really, there are quite a few of us and we have our plates so full these days, we barely have time to breath.

Admittedly, my days are totally different from yours (if you are working at a law firm). First of all, I don’t have to bill my time. Although I was never one who dreaded the end of the month. I was able to figure out a process where I could keep myself organized and have all my time entered and correct by the time the end of the month came up. See this article I wrote a few years back, in fact, I trained the new paralegals on how to enter time and how to stay organized. These days this is not an issue at all. That goes for all the paralegals who work in house.

These days I’m not preparing for trial or preparing or summarizing depositions or even reading medical records. These days I busy myself with regulatory research and meetings with other lawyers. Yes, when I put it this way it sounds sort of boring doesn’t it? I can hear you guys saying “regulatory research” and what do you do with it? Well, let me tell you.

So remember a few years back when our financial world took a nose dive? When there was so much uncertainty as to whether or not our money would still be in the bank when we woke up the next mooring? Well, the regulators – these are the people who make the laws for the various industries – were also worried and therefore started making new rules/regulations as well as tightening up existing rules. There are so many new rules and regulations coming out that at times it’s hard to keep up. So my days go something like this……

Find new laws and analyze them for impact on the particular area of service (the industry term is line of business) that I cover;
Have some coffee;
Summarize and present at monthly meeting with the business;
Have more coffee;
Track changes to existing laws and advise business and risk about these changes;
Attend meetings and have some coffee;
Ensure that policies and procedures are in place (working with compliance); and
Have some more coffee;

So the above are just things that I do on a day to day except for number 2 that one happens on a monthly basis but I still prepare for it on every day. Meetings in the corporate world are packed with power point presentations (the business doesn’t want to or have to the time to have to learn a law) power point presentations make it easier to understand what legal is saying. They couldn’t be bothered with us….. the business is there to make money and they feel we are there to stop them……. It’s actually fun to be a part of this.

My days don’t end with that. In between getting all that done I work with compliance – compliance is there to ensure that the business is actually doing what legal has advised them to do. At the end of the day my job ends when I the business as been advised of what the law is saying. I am not responsible for the steps they take to accomplish that. That is the job of compliance and risk together. Those two groups measure the risk associated with a particular part of the business and they decide how to comply with the law.

Think of the particular businesses within a bank as my clients. The difference is, my clients don’t walk in from the street. They walk the same hallways I do, eat in the same cafeteria (yes, the food is actually very good there) and sometimes are even colleagues with whom I go out for drinks or coffee. Like you, I am not responsible for what my client is doing after they walk out of my office. However, I have to be prepared to defend my client even if he does not follow my advice…. Does that make sense?

I hope this helped you understand a little bit about what goes on in the legal department of a bank. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear from you.