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On Meeting The Paralegal Mentor

By Lynne DeVenny

I don't think I adequately conveyed in my blog post about attending the North Carolina Paralegal Association's wonderful annual conference last weekend how seriously excited I was about finally meeting Vicki Voisin, The Paralegal Mentor, even though I've known her virtually since October 8, 2008.

That's right, I know the exact date, same as I know the exact date I met my husband.

While we were both posting on a national paralegal listserv, Vicki noticed my professional signature which includes the book I co-authored, Workers' Compensation Practice for Paralegals (Carolina Academic Press, 2008) and sent me an email to say she owned a copy.

As she was one of exactly two people that I knew who had bought it, I promptly visited her website, The Paralegal Mentor, and then emailed her back with an agenda, because I was the desperate publications co-chair for a state legal assistant division at the time. Vicki's site looked like a gold mine to someone always begging paralegals to write for the newsletter. I asked her if we could re-print one of her articles, and she said "yes."

Inspired by Christine Parizo's former blog, A Paralegal's Blog, and Jeannie Johnston at ParalegalGateway, I had started this blog, but had not opened it for public viewing yet. Meeting Vicki online and seeing her website, as well as her prolific writing, offerings for paralegal education, and tremendous advocacy for the paralegal profession, gave me the courage to hit the "publish" button and join the blawgosphere.

And Vicki is the inspiration and the driving force behind Legal Talk Network's first monthly podcast for paralegals, The Paralegal Voice. She kindly invited me to participate in one of her Mastermind calls in early 2009, and after the call, said, "We should do a podcast together." I'm not even going to pretend that I knew how to do a Mastermind call, a teleclass or a podcast at that time. But Vicki dreams big, as she urged us to do in her keynote address to NCPA, and made it happen.

So, if I look a little overly excited in this picture, I was literally meeting my paralegal mentor for the first time (I think of her as my personal mentor, just as all of you likely think of her as your personal mentor :) Vicki Voisin has opened so many doors for other paralegals, and continues to inspire us every day with her big dreams.

First Post: Why Another Paralegal Weblog?

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on March 26, 2010 (boomark / email).