CALSPro - California Association of Legal Support Professionals

A Message From The President: Have You Decided This Is Your Career Yet?

Posted April 24, 2018 in Membership

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By Larry Kirlin

Who are we?  I mean, who is CALSPro and who are our members?  Let me start with the latter.

The way I see it, our members are the people who have decided to call the legal support industry their profession. Just because you work in the profession doesn’t mean you’ve accepted it as your profession.  Although some of us were born into a family business, most of us came into it from another door.

I started in the business as a microfilm camera operator, a.k.a. filmer, while going to college. By the time I graduated years later, I was fully entrenched in the business. I didn’t exactly decide to make this my profession — it kind of just snuck up on me and next thing you know, here I am. There was a point, however, that I realized I was part of the profession and decided to make it a career. That’s about the time I joined CALSPro.

The truth is, there have been many, many times when I wanted to throw in the towel and look for a different career. This mostly happens when a client decides to push my every last button and I say to myself, “They don’t pay me enough to deal with this crap!”  Then a day later I get a call from a different client thanking me for pulling off a miracle and it reinvigorates my spirit. Anyone know where I’m coming from?

So, back to the other part of my original question, who is CALSPro? CALSPro is an association of people who have decided to be part of the legal support profession. Not only do they want to be part of it, they want to initiate change and ensure the profession thrives for future generations.  The members of CALSPro appreciate the work that comes to them because of their membership but it is not the primary reason they are members. The primary reasons they join are to protect, promote and educate.

My question to non-members is, have you decided this is your career yet?  If you like what you are doing and want to keep doing it, then jump on board.  Make the decision to join CALSPro and be an active participant in your future.