Episode 7: Interview with Alethia Bundy

Transcript

Tara.edwards 0:01

Hello, my name is Tara, and welcome to Sister-in-Law, the Paralegal Journey, a podcast about the careers behind the case files. Whether you work in law, work alongside the legal profession, are thinking about a career in this space, or simply want an honest look at the paralegal journey, you're in the right place. Welcome back to Sister-in-Law, the paralegal journey. If you ever found yourself asking, is there a legal career path outside of the traditional firm model, this episode is for you. Today's conversation is about non-traditional legal roles, the kind of roles that don't always come with a law firm letterhead, but still rely heavily on legal training, statutory interpretation, investigation, and advocacy. As you listen to this episode, please ask yourself these questions, do I see my legal career as a job title or as a set of transferable skills that I could use in non-traditional roles, and what roles already exist that rely on paralegal skills, even if they don't carry the paralegal title? I'm joined by my good friend, actually, she's honestly more like a sister, Alethia Bundy, who took the path many people didn't even realize as an option. Alethia went to law school in the, UK, worked, returned to Canada, worked as a maintenance enforcement officer with the government of Alberta and now applies that legal and enforcement experience in her current role as a project manager. She's not a practicing lawyer, but she is a legal professional in every sense of the word. Today we're gonna talk about law school, how maintenance enforcement closely parallels paralegal work and how legal skills translate far beyond the titles. Hello, my sister Alethia. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please introduce yourself to the listeners.

Alethia Bundy 1:55

All right. Hello everyone. My name is Alethia Bundy. I am currently a IT project manager at one of our top Canadian banks, and I am very excited to talk to my sister about basically how I was legally trained and how I kind of moved unconventionally through my career in the last 10 or so years. Yeah. I'm happy to be here. Let's get started.

Tara.edwards 2:19

I love it, Alethia, I really do, and I think you have so much insight for the listeners. So let's take it back and start at the beginning. What drew you to the legal field and what made you decide to attend law school in the UK?

Alethia Bundy 2:32

Okay. Wow. I wanted to be a lawyer basically, since I was seven or eight. As I got a little bit older, I did like the idea of basically being an advocate, which I didn't have those words back then, but I liked the idea of a lawyer knowing how to defend themselves and defend other people. So when I had the opportunity, I said. Why not? So that's law school in general, in the UK honestly, it was far away. It was a new experience. And, the UK has similar, legal structure to Canada. So I figured it would be a good transition after completing my bachelor's degree in environmental politics and the sociology of law. So it was a natural progression for me.

Tara.edwards 3:12

I love this athia. I really do. And it's just giving the listeners an even more open glance on how traditional roles don't always fit. Did you go to law school with a clear idea of what kind of career you wanted afterward?

Alethia Bundy 3:26

Not really, to be honest. Even though I said like I wanted to be a lawyer, I wasn't sure if that was really the path that I was definitely gonna go down. It was a type of education that I wanted. but was really into environmental protection at the time and I thought, okay, well let's see what law school's like and see if I can merge those two worlds together. Then as I went through law school, I did like the community impact aspect of it. But no, there was really no clear career goal. It was just a matter of getting a certain type of education and exposing myself to a different world that I hadn't really been a part of before.

Tara.edwards 4:02

So let's just talk about when you returned to Canada and your path didn't really follow the traditional law school and being a practicing lawyer. Can you talk about the transition and how you came to work as a maintenance enforcement officer with the government of Alberta?

Alethia Bundy 4:22

Okay, once I graduated law school, I came back to Ontario and I was looking for legal assistant jobs to get exposure in firms. So I was applying for jobs and I realized that there were a lot of barriers that I didn't expect, and surprisingly, even though I had a law degree from the top, 10 schools in the UK, they were treating my degree like I got it from Uzbekistan. They did not, they were not kind to me at all, but I realized that by the time I graduated I didn't necessarily want to do my NCAs. I said maybe that's not the path for me right now. I wanted to work. When I realized that, I wasn't what they were looking for necessarily in the Ontario market I said, you know what? I am looking for another opportunity. And I wanted to apply my, education and the skills I had already to, public service because that was a place that I expected to work at at some point in my career. So I had moved to Alberta on a whim where I just needed a change of scenery and I just applied, really. I was working for the municipality of, Edmonton. And I just saw a posting for Maintenance enforcement and it seemed like things that I could do. The role required an understanding of family Law Act, how to negotiate with certain people, things like that. So it seemed like a role that I could transition into.

Tara.edwards 5:49

Good. How did you feel redefining what your law degree looked like?

Alethia Bundy 5:54

Oh, how did I feel? Terrified, and in some cases confused. My family didn't understand what on earth I was doing, and a lot of people didn't get it. They thought that once you go to law school, you become a lawyer and anything else was a waste of your time. So it was actually very terrifying to, have no, prescribed path. When you're in law school, there's a very straightforward process that you go through. You finish your law degree, you do your article in, you write the bar, and then you're a lawyer So that's the general sense of it. And once I realized that I had to redefine what that meant for me and how I was going to use my degree, I was basically making it up as I went. So it was very terrifying. There were moments where I felt like, I can decide how my life is and how I use the skills that I've obtained that a lot of people just don't have. But it did take me a little bit of time to get the confident feeling or the feeling of a bit of victory, to be honest, to be able to say, I use my degree the way I want to, not the way it's necessarily, um expected of me to utilize.

Tara.edwards 7:04

Right, and let's lean into that for a bit, what would you say to senior legal assistants or paralegals who are just really stuck in that place of uncertainty?

Alethia Bundy 7:15

Ooh. Okay, so it might sound generic, but you just have to be confident in what you are capable of, confident in the education you do have, confident in your job experience. And to be brave, you basically have to be brave enough to make your own decisions and to not feel confined by what everybody else is doing. So if you can do that, and you obviously being a paralegal and a legal assistant, requires a lot of skill and it requires a lot of grit. And if you can harness that and be brave enough to kind of forge your own path, then you'll be fine. If anything, you might actually end up with a career that you would've never expected, and it can be quite rewarding, especially because you did it your way.

Tara.edwards 8:03

I love this. Girl, you're speaking to my heart. So for the listeners who may not be familiar with maintenance enforcement, can you explain kind of what that role looks like and what it involves?

Alethia Bundy 8:15

Okay, so maintenance enforcement, it's a provincial program that's run under the Ministry of Justice. So each province will have a version of maintenance enforcement. It basically manages all of the court orders that people would receive and collects money towards, spousal support or child support and variations of those things.

Tara.edwards 8:37

So when you look at your day-to-day work as a maintenance enforcement officer, where did you see clear parallels with paralegal work? I was a collections paralegal and I've discussed with you, what paralegal roles look like. Where do you see the parallels in that, with the paralegal work?

Alethia Bundy 8:55

Well actually it was through those conversations with you that you pointed out, you're a paralegal. I was like, oh, I never, thought about it like that. I started off as a case officer, and then I moved into financial examinations officer. I specifically worked in the inter-jurisdictional unit of, um, of that program. And what that meant is that whoever was deemed the party that pays the support, they lived within the province, but the families that they were supporting were living outside of the province. So what I would do is I would basically go through the files that were assigned to me. I would review the court order that, applied to that file, and then I would search around to, to assess whether or not that file or technically that payer was in compliance with their court order. It was basically my job to contact the right party to investigate why we were stepping outside of that court order and how to get us back on track. So now when it came to being a paralegal, it does require you to read court documents and understand how does it work with the Family Law Act and how can we get compliance? So I think that is, that's a big part of a paralegal role as well.

Tara.edwards 10:14

You've listened to my podcast, Alethia, and you know that I talk a lot about professional identity, in various different forms. So the one thing I wanna talk about, is how senior legal assistants or paralegals sometimes struggle with the identity when the role doesn't fit so neatly in that box that they've gone to school for, that they've envisioned. Did you ever feel pressure internal or external about not being a practicing lawyer even though your work was deeply legal?

Alethia Bundy 10:45

Oh, a hundred percent. Externally, people will question you for sure. Some people saw its value and, saw that it was uncommon, but it is a transition that makes sense. But I think the biggest pressure, would be internal because I knew what my options were and it was hard to choose like the less beaten path. in terms of that, I would say that I put the most pressure on myself for not being, a practicing lawyer. Regardless of whatever my job did, because anyone in the field can recognize that there is authority in the ability to call yourself a lawyer. But I think as we mature and as we find other meaning or other importance in life and, and deeper meaning in what we do, a lot of those pressures go away. Um, as long as you don't hinge your hat on other people's perceptions, it really, it doesn't matter, and it just takes time and effort to find value in what you're doing and to not put a lot of weight on the prestigious feeling of being a lawyer. But it is something that, it does cross my mind from time to time, but at the end of the day. I made my choice and I can always change that choice if I wanted to.

Tara.edwards 12:05

And so what would you say to someone who worries that stepping outside a traditional role somehow diminishes their career?

Alethia Bundy 12:14

I would ask them the question, what do you mean by tank your career? All the skills we have in this industry, being legally trained, it transfers so well to an incredibly diverse, source of industries. So if you have legal education, you're trained, and you also have the experience, you basically have to assess yourself. You have to turn your attention inward and ask yourselves the hard questions of what skills do you have? What kind of career do you want, and what impact do you want to have in this world? I can recognize how difficult that is'cause I understand the worries, I understand the fears. It's absolutely terrifying to do non-traditional roles. We're no longer in the space or in the generation where careers have to be linear, and if they're not, you're negatively judged. If anything we have fully moved into a space where dynamic careers and sometimes the outlandish pivots are celebrated. Some of our best leaders come from spaces you would never expect. And I think that once you work through that fear or those worries of stepping outside of a traditional role, you will be able to open yourselves up to the absolute greatest feeling to know that you have acquired skills that no one else will have, or very few people will have in your space. You can really dominate if you can really build your confidence and be clear on what value you bring and strengthen your skills, especially your legal skills, you can easily dominate in any space you go to.

Tara.edwards 13:48

You're now working as a project manager, which at first glance doesn't scream legal career, but can you walk us through your background in law and maintenance enforcement that prepared you for your project manager role?

Alethia Bundy 14:01

Oh yes, I definitely can. So, I did return to Ontario, I left my role, with the maintenance enforcement program during COVID. Came back to Ontario and I was looking for another opportunity. My sister suggested that maybe project management was something that I would be good at, because like I have pretty strong interpersonal skills, building rapport came naturally, but honestly, it was a perfect fit because I already had the social skills and the analytical skills that were razor sharp because of law school, and negotiation skills that I picked up in maintenance enforcement. So once I had that, it gave me a bit of a shoo-in, but what really, I think, solidified my candidacy as a project manager, was my ability to manage finances and my ability to understand compliance and risk. So I could easily demonstrate that I had the ability to read complex documents and break them down and I can get people on board, to a certain idea or a certain direction that's necessary.

Tara.edwards 15:07

I think that it's really important for people to also understand the fact that, when you have transferable skills, these things can be transferred into whatever you choose them to be transferred into. And the job role may not necessarily be titled, legal assistant or paralegal but when you look at what they want, how do the skills that you currently have fit into what the person wants. Which is basically what you're saying. You had skills that fit. So the next question is, do you see your current role as a continuation of your legal career just express differently.

Alethia Bundy 15:47

In terms of my legal career, it would be a completely different expression because I work, a bank, but the department that I'm in is financial crimes. So there are a lot of regulatory issues that we need to be aware of while we are doing certain projects, that requires us to work with our legal team so, I would say that it is a bit of a continuation. The fact that we are legal professionals, we have a certain competency that a lot of people just don't have. So not saying that we're any smarter, we have different aptitudes, so when you have a legal background, you are able to translate the most complicated things into layman terms to make it applicable in different spaces. And be persistent in difficult situations where people are trying to hide things from you so we know how to sniff out bullshit. Let's be honest. Let's call it what it is. We can sniff it out and it's no different in a technology space because certain tendencies can, be detrimental to the project, detrimental to a case or a file or you moving forward through a certain process. So knowing how to lean into that, how to articulate yourself well enough that people are able to give you that information. I think the most beneficial to your listeners is that, once we talk about not doing it the traditional way, it is so easy to feel like, Ugh, I wasted my time with this course, or I wasted this time with this diploma, or whatever, or degree. But the proof is in the pudding. There is nothing that we do that will go to waste if you use it. Even the idea of going through the legal process of filing something, the skill it takes to do it right will forever benefit you in every area of your career.

Tara.edwards 17:38

What kinds of non-traditional roles should legally trained professionals be paying more attention to?

Alethia Bundy 17:45

Well, I'm a project manager right now, and project management I think is a fantastic place for legally, trained people to be. I think we would have a lot better contracts, we would have a lot better business to client relationships. So business and corporate roles, risk management, governance roles, also people who have to, look at regulations, who have to look at, company policies because our analytical skills, our understanding of regulatory frameworks, like it is very valuable. We can be assets in the space of business development or, contract negotiation, procurement roles. I've met quite a few people who have moved into the technical space. You can get into sales, you could be a product manager, cyber security. That's a big thing. So technology in the legal field, would, be one of the first places you should look because we know working in firms or anywhere close to the law is that the legal field is, archaic.

Tara.edwards 18:44

Daniel Foster, who's a licensed paralegal out in Ontario, actually talks about nepotism and that it's about who you know You and I talk about this all the time, so for the listeners, her and I talk literally every day about the career space, about entrepreneurship, about, you name it, we talk about it. But, one of the biggest things that we also talk about is the fact that if you want to do something, go seek out the person who's doing it. So, hang around that circle. If somebody's doing it already, why would you try to recreate the wheel yourself? Just go hang out with those people. I sent a message to somebody on LinkedIn. I was like, girl, you're living the life I want to, so, can I have a Zoom chat with you? And, it ended being such a great conversation. All because I just sent a message. Now on the flip side to that, I have sent a message and been like, I noticed that you do X, Y, and Z, can I please talk to you about it and I got a hard no. Those hard nos, at first I was like can they take the entire Alberta space themselves? And then I stopped and I was like, people who do that have a limiting mindset and also have a competitor's mindset. So, that's not somebody who I want in my space anyway.

Alethia Bundy 19:59

This is true. Actually, you know what, it actually makes me think of the question you asked me before about like advice someone who's feeling boxed in. You need to talk to other people and, find those people who are not in traditional roles. And I think LinkedIn would probably be a really good place for that because it's easy to literally go through people in your network who have legal education

Tara.edwards 20:23

Click on it. You know, I get that now since I've started the podcast and since I've been talking a little bit more about my career journey, I have gotten everyone from lawyers to recruiters really looking at my page. And you know what? I snoop back and then I send a message, or I just send a connection request.

Alethia Bundy 20:39

I couldn't have said it better myself, because that's basically, putting yourself out there and you know how much I hate doing that, but you know, you really have to put yourself out there and look for people who may not be doing what you're doing, but doing something different with the, education that you have.

Tara.edwards 20:55

When Alethia lived in Alberta, we did a lot of networking events together. It was good to have somebody, even though we didn't necessarily work in the same job market, but we had the same ideas, we had the same understanding, we had the same, thought process in terms of career so it was just like, let's go together. That's another thing that I would encourage people on, find a buddy. What I've learned is that, if you wanna stay poor, you're gonna hang out with poor people. And poor is not, just mean monetary, right? I mean mindset, education wise, if you don't move into the circles that you need to move into, you will stay where you are at.

Alethia Bundy 21:37

Mm-hmm. It's true, and like we said, opportunities to network changed. If you're living in a place where there's not a lot of people, you can utilize, virtual events. I have made some great connections and great friendships with people I have never met in person and that live all over the world. It was just a matter of actually being brave enough to know you're capable of doing something different.

Tara.edwards 22:00

This episode has warmed my heart. It is fire, right now. And I just,

Alethia Bundy 22:07

Likewise.

Tara.edwards 22:07

wanna thank you so much for just being open and sharing your experience helping re-look and reimagine what a legal career can look like for paralegals. And when I listen to your career, it, has been such a great reminder that you could take a journey into rewarding paralegal career that may not look like the traditional role, and that the non-traditional roles still rely on the same paralegal skills. If a listener would like to ask more questions about the project manager role about law school, or just about the things that you've gone through in general, how can they connect with you on social media?

Alethia Bundy 22:46

Thank you Tara. The best way first off is to connect with me on LinkedIn. I am quite active there, so if you have any questions at all what we've discussed, or you wanna have a deeper conversation, you can definitely reach out to me there. Now, in terms of, project management, I've shared what I've done, what I'm doing currently and what I've done in the past. Through my legal education and my time working in public service. And lot of the advice that I have given is based off of, having confidence in yourself, getting to know yourself, and really going against the grain, actually. so I know that over the years. As I kind of fumbled my way through my careers and all the pivots, that having guidance on how to make these changes was really something I needed and that I didn't know how to find. I have been working on initiatives, to be the service that I didn't have when I was going through those moments of transition to help women make transitions when they know that they're high achievers, regardless of being in the legal industry or not, but they want to have more results in their lives. So I have created the Advocating Auntie brand where I basically help high achieving overwhelm women finally achieve and live the life that they are capable of. So if that's something that you're interested in and you need some guidance on how you can be confident in your careers or move through your life with conviction to really cultivate and execute, reach out to me on LinkedIn and we can have, uh, a in-depth conversation there.

Tara.edwards 24:19

I love this Alethia. I love this so much and it's really important that, we support each other in these spaces. Career growth is really hard. It's hard to manage, it's hard to understand, especially when you have so many things happening. So I'm really happy to hear that you have started the Advocating Auntie and that you're helping women navigate this space.

Alethia Bundy 24:39

Thanks Tara.'cause honestly, it really. something that's true to my heart and it did take me a lot of time to be in the place to say that I'm confident to go against the grade and to really forge my own path. It can be lonely, it can be terrifying, and I think that if we had more access to real world examples of other women who have done this that we would be able to move faster. And I think that we're in a, a technological age and we know AI is everywhere. And I think that as professionals and as women in general, we need to adapt to speed and executing quickly and moving forward with the things that we want to achieve in life.

Tara.edwards 25:21

I love this. Thank you so much, Alethia.

Alethia Bundy 25:23

Thank you, Tara. It's been an actual pleasure.

Tara.edwards 25:25

This is where I wanna pause and reframe the question we often hear or ask ourselves instead of asking, why am I leaving the legal field? Why are there no other options for me in this profession? Ask yourself, how can I utilize my skills to expand beyond traditional legal roles? And are there existing roles that my skills and abilities already fit, even if the title isn't paralegal? So let's go back to the questions I asked you to reflect on as you listen to this episode. Do I see my legal career as a job title or as a set of transferable skills that could be used in non-traditional roles and what roles already exist that rely on paralegal skills, even if they don't carry the paralegal title? Remember that the paralegal path forward doesn't always look traditional, but it can still be intentional. If this episode resonated with you, I invite you to follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify and connect with me on LinkedIn. Let me know where you're at with your journey. This is Sister-in-law, the paralegal journey. Welcome to the conversation.