I graduated from The Institute for Paralegal Training, sometimes known in legal circles as “The Philadelphia School” in 1976. I then became employed by Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, known today as Ballard Spahr. I worked in Litigation, in many areas - antitrust, construction contracts, securities fraud, products liability, and medical malpractice. Cases were mainly federal, and some were civil and others were criminal. On notable case was a grand jury investigation targeting SmithKline for killing 52 people within 4 months of putting a new blood pressure medication on the market. (They were indicted and plead nolo contendre. Thus, no trial and no secrets exposed.) In addition to medical research, I also reviewed patient medical records, minutes of hospital medical staff committee meetings, deposition and grand jury testimony transcripts, and document productions. At BSA&I, we sometimes acted as plaintiff for business clients with medical malpractice issues. A few years yonder, after I moved to Houston, I worked for Butler & Binion (now dissolved) doing primarily medical malpractice and products liability. We defended hospitals on behalf of their malpractice insurance companies.
At BS&I, I was sometimes charged with spending days in the medical library at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School to research expert witnesses and various medical topics prior to our firm deposing or cross examining an expert. I did this study on our experts as well as those of the opposing party. This was before the days of online searches. I returned to the office with stacks of photocopies of relevant medical literature.
I learned about online searching at BSA&I in the context of a new mode of legal research: Lexis. I was trained in using Boolean logic as well as “x within y words of z”, and other search strategies designed to narrow down the exact material sought. There were no personal computers or internet connections at this time. Lexis used a “dumb terminal” wired directly to the mainframe computer repository of all the books in the largest law library imaginable. So when personal computers and modems became a thing in the 80’s, I was well equipped to do research using AskJeeves or AltaVista. But I was frustrated by these search engines’ search capabilities relative to Lexis’s precision targeting tools.
As I spent hours and hours reviewing medical literature, patient medical records and various documents, I collected a personal library of medical books. These included Merck’s Manual (the ‘for physicians’ version), a current and several old editions of the Physician’s Desk Reference (PDR), Grey’s Anatomy, a medical dictionary (don’t recall the name), a book, Law Every Nurse Should Know…. Those are the ones I remember, but there were more…. When I encountered a word, a procedure, a medication, or any medical term I did not understand, I looked it up and took notes. Writing findings on paper helps me retain new information.
The firms subscribed to a handful of medical legal newsletters and journals, which I reviewed upon receipt. Each publication had a circulation list of people to receive the publication, and I was on the “medical circulation lists”, and I reviewed each and every one. They reported jury awards in high profile cases, as well as new filings for various malpractice and products liability issues. This is where I learned about the dangers of vaccines in both children and adults. (The vaccine liability shield wasn’t erected until passage of the 1986 Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, so I saw a lot of high dollar awards for injury and death.)
While this work was fascinating, I hit the salary paywall as a litigation paralegal and knew I needed to increase my earnings. I was the sole support of my family. (The husband was NOT a provider.) And in about 1983, I launched myself into the world of Information Technology, specializing in applications supporting the practice of law. More on that later….
