VPO is excited to be a co-sponsor of this year's Vermont Legal Community Fighting Hunger Food Drive! The drive will be held from September 3 through 17 and will benefit Vermont Foodbank and local food shelves. 

You can participate in the food drive in a few ways: 

1) Bring non-perishable food donations to the sign in table at the VPO Conference on Tuesday, September 14 at Delta Hotels by Marriott, 1117 Williston Road South Burlington, Vermont.

2) Bring your food donations to the office of Lynch and Foley weekdays between 8:30 and 5 at 7 Washington Street, Middlebury. You can leave your donations in the lobby. 

3) Through a financial donation at the Vermont Foodbank VPO page.

Please contact Lucia White at lucia@nancismithlaw.com if you would like more information. 

June the new VPO Board on June 16th at 5:30pm for their first Board meeting.  Open to VPO Member's only.  

Governor Scott signed a proclamation May 11th, 2021 proclaiming May 19, 2021 as Vermont Paralegal Day.  Take a moment to celebrate your accomplishments in the profession.  Happy Paralegal Day!

Paralegal Day Proclamation signed by Governor Scott.

Are you a credentialed member?

If so, you may have submitted your third-party CLE materials to NFPA for approval towards your biennial renewal in the past.  In the Spring of 2020, however, NFPA announced that it was no longer offering this service.  In its place, it decided that member organizations can now begin to self-approve its own members’ CLE credits.  The VPO is now offering this service at no cost to members!  If you’ve attended a 3^rd party CLE that needs approval before submitting your renewal package to NFPA, please read the following documents which describe the new process for approvals.  Also included is an Approval Application (Note:  applications must be submitted within three months of CLE completion.)  Once an Application is approved, the member will receive an Approval Certificate for use with their renewal package.

Please contact Krista Cadieux, VPO Certification Ambassador, at certification@vtparalegal.org with questions.”

VPO Certification Flowchart.pdf

Third Party CLE Application for Approval.pdf

Guidelines for Third Party CLE.pdf

Letter to Credentialed Members (CLE Process).pdf

Vermont Paralegal Organization, Inc. Celebrates 30 Years!

Thirty years ago, the role of a paralegal in Vermont law firms and corporations began to grow and expand. Trudy Seeley, a paralegal at that time, and a founding member of the Vermont Paralegal Organization (VPO), reached out to other legal professionals around the state and asked if they would be interested in forming a group to share information and support one another in their expanding roles. This effort lead to a small group of enterprising paralegals forming what would  become the VPO. In November of 1990, the group had their first meeting at the Vermont Law School.It was an informal 5 hour bring-your-own lunch event held on a Saturday. In 1992, the VPO became a member of the National Federation of Paralegal Associations (NFPA) in an effort to have a presence and voice on the national level. In 2016, paralegals from all over the country convened in Burlington for the NFPA Annual Convention, hosted by the VPO. A small but mighty group of VPO volunteers coordinated and managed the four-day event that included a day of seminars, and two full days of policy meetings. The VPO officially incorporated in 2019.

After Champlain College discontinued its Paralegal program, members of the VPO sought another higher education institution to take on the program. In January of this year, two VPO board members met with Marni Leikin at the ACE Academy at Burlington Tech Center to discuss how to bring a paralegal program back to Vermont. As of today, we are on a path to creating such a program with a partnership of the VPO, ACE Academy at Burlington Tech Center, and a state higher education institution. It is expected that the Paralegal Certificate Program will roll out in January of 2021. We owe a very special thank you to Marni Leikin for embracing our ideas for the program and making it happen in a short 8 months, and to James Knapp, Esq., of First American Title Insurance Company, who from the day Champlain College announced the discontinuance of the only paralegal program in Vermont, has been our biggest supporter and partner to finding another institution to carry on a Paralegal Program and who will be one of the instructors when the program rolls out. We are very excited to celebrate this undertaking as part of our 30-year celebration.

The VPO is proud to be a statewide non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the paralegal profession by offering its members networking opportunities, continuing legal education (CLE), pro bono opportunities, leadership training, and a quarterly newsletter filled with information to keep paralegals up to date on legal issues. The VPO maintains a code of conduct, promotes high standards of integrity among paralegals, and fosters relationships with local and state bar associations. The VPO’s Annual Meeting and Conference includes seminars that provide CLE credits which are presented by generous and supportive members of the Vermont Bar Association and individuals who specialize in related fields. All VPO members are afforded membership in NFPA. Through affiliation with NFPA, VPO members stay current on paralegal issues on a national level as well as contribute to the development of NFPA policy. The VPO offers an annual scholarship and guidance in the process of earning certification through the NFPA Paralegal Advanced Competency Exam (PACE®) and/or the Paralegal CORE Competency Exam (PCCE), which involves educational or experiential prerequisites and passing a standardized exam.

The VPO owes much of its current success to the many past and present members, and the attorneys,

law firms and corporations who have supported its mission since 1990. The VPO is fortunate to have attorneys who present seminars on a regular basis and the list of supporting presenters continues  to grow every year. The VPO would also like to thank the following firms and attorneys with VPO members:

Atlas Legal Services, LLP; Barber & Waxman; Behrens Venman & Sussman, PLLC; Cleary Shahi & Aicher; Darby Thorndike Kolter & Nordle, LLP; Dinse P.C.; Downs Rachlin Martin PLLC; Dunkiel Saunders; Elliott Raubvogel & Hand, PLLC; Facey Goss & McPhee P.C.; Green Mountain Power; Hehir Law Office, PLLC; Heilmann, Ekman, Cooley & Gagnon, Inc.; Joseph Greenbaum; Lab Partners Associates, Inc.; Langrock Sperry & Wool, LLP; Law Office of David I. Schoen; Law Office of Ruth Kinney, Esq.; Law Offices of Fred V. Peet; Law Offices of Steven A. Bredice PLC; Law Offices of F.J. von Turkovich, P.C.; Liberty Mutual; Lisman Leckerling, P.C.; Little & Cicchetti, P.C.; Lynch & Foley, P.C.; Lynn, Lynn, Blackman & Manitsky, P.C.; Main Street Middle School; Maley and Maley, PLLC; Marathon Health; Martin, Harding and Mazzotti; McClintock Law Office, P.C.; McCormick, Fitzpatrick, Kasper & Burchard; Nanci A. Smith, Esq. PLLC;  Northern Vermont Paralegal Services, LLC; Numbers Matter; Oliver L. Twombly Law Office, P.C.; Paul Frank + Collins P.C.; Pease Mountain Law, PLLC; Pinto MacAskill PLLC; Primmer Piper Eggleston & Cramer PC; Ryan Smith & Carbine, Ltd.; Sheehey Furlong & Behm P.C.; Stackpole & French Law Offices; Stark Law, PLLC; State of Vermont; The Law Office of William J. Fisk, PLC; Unsworth LaPlante, PLC; Vermont Attorney General's Office; Vermont Attorneys Title Corporation; Vermont Department of Labor; Vermont Energy Investment Corporation; Vermont Land Trust, Inc.; Vermont Law School; VOSHA Review Board; VT Office of the State Judge Advocate; VT Army National Guard; and Zalinger Cameron & Lambek PC.

The all-volunteer Board of the VPO began planning a dinner event to celebrate its 30th anniversary. Unfortunately, as with so many similar events, due to the restrictions of COVID the event has been cancelled. The VPO hopes to hold its celebratory event in 2021.

If you are interested in more information about the VPO, becoming a member, membership benefits, or its history, please visit the VPO website at vtparalegal.org.

Several VPO members will be presenting at the VBA Tech Conference next week. Check out their program!

Document & Case Management Programs January 28, 2021 @ 10AM

Description and Speakers: There are a number of software platforms out there that profess to help you cull and organize unlimited amounts of documents and information that you encounter through discovery. Everybody wants the edge: something user friendly, fast, accurate, and inexpensive. What program is the best for your firm or specific project? Hear from the people “in the trenches” that use some of the more popular document and case management software.

What is Logikcull? (Melinda Siel) Logikcull.com is instant discovery for modern legal teams. Its secure, cloud-based solution helps law firms and organizations of all sizes solve the expensive, complex, and risky challenges associated with eDiscovery, internal investigations, and open records response. With Logikcull, you can start a discovery project in five seconds, from anywhere at any time on any device. Reviewing data is as easy as performing a Google search. And in Logikcull, your data is always secure. That’s why it’s trusted by the Fortune 500, Am Law 200, and governments of the biggest cities in the world. Founded in 2004 by CEO Andy Wilson and CTO Sheng Yang, Logikcull builds powerfully simple software that democratizes discovery.

Ipro Eclipse (Laura Bezio) Ipro Eclipse Desktop is a non-cloud based option. It is helpful for smaller law firms or for a low cost eDiscovery option. Ipro for Desktop lets you migrate from the most popular legacy flat-file review databases and has been purpose-built with the most cutting-edge features found in any in-house review platform. Effortlessly manage reviews, unitize documents, ingest native files, and produce documents with this true all-in-one litigation platform. The platform is best suited for smaller cases, but a great way to process Mbox or PST files in-house.

CaseMap (Heather Moreau) CaseMap, owned by LexisNexis, is a desktop relational database used to organize and evaluate facts, people, research and issues. In CaseMap, any aspect of a case can be sorted or searched while preserving the relationships between various sources of evidence (i.e., documents, depositions, and persons). Information in CaseMap that has been searched and sorted can be exported into Word, WordPerfect and Excel. CaseMap also allows for collaboration between concurrent users. CaseMap is most often used to create chronologies, witness lists, and document indexes (for exhibit lists or document productions).

You can sign up for this session here: https://www.vtbar.org/Calendar/Signup.aspx?EventNo=3994

Unfortunately, the VPO Board had to make the difficult decision to put off celebrating the VPO’s 30^th Anniversary until next year, and also decided not to hold the usual Annual Meeting of short seminars that had been rescheduled to September 10^th.  There remains a great deal of uncertainty, and we decided that holding an in-person event would be challenging for several reasons.  However, we will be brainstorming on whether we can still offer some CLE’s via Zoom or other virtual means, so stay tuned for updates while we further develop those ideas.

Thank you for your understanding and Stay Safe and Healthy!

Hello everyone, 

Our country is at a boiling point. The murder of George Floyd by a white police officer has unleashed the frustrations of a nation that has waited far too long to see racial justice. People have braved a pandemic to fight for change, for the most part trying to do so safely. That same pandemic shines a bright light on the ways systemic racism hurts people of color in this country. Black people are dying three to four times as much as whites from COVID 19. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/health/coronavirus-african-americans-study/index.html Blacks are disproportionately affected by unemployment during this crisis. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/01/coronavirus-impact-black-communities-protests/ And we have far too many narratives of unarmed black men, women and even children being killed by police.

As Vermonters, the majority of our VPO membership is white. Some of us might not see the violence or discrimination that others of us experience. The majority of our membership is female, so many of us understand sexism. A number of our members are in same sex relationships and understand discrimination. While some of us may not experience racism directly, we can understand our common humanity and we can identify inequality and bias when we see it.

All of us work in a profession that fights for justice. While we do it in different ways, justice is a core value we share. How do we work for justice in a world that seems so broken in so many ways? The answer to that is different for every one of us. Because racism is systemic, there are many points of entry to effect change. Protests, prison reform, food insecurity, discriminatory housing practices, discriminatory employment practices – there are many potential points of entry to effect change in our systems. Writing letters to editors or politicians, volunteering at legal clinics, boycotting businesses with unfair practices or intentionally seeking out minority owned business are other ways to make a difference. Whatever it is for you, I’d encourage you to find your path. Our country has been on this journey for far too long.

The VPO Board