The Adrenaline Rush of High Stakes Defense, Poring Through Modern Discovery

Episode Notes

Transcript

Tony Sipp:

And welcome back to the Paralegal Voice. My name is Tony Sipp. We have a special guest with us today. In fact, she’s one of my best friends that we met during our careers. Amy McGuigan is here today to discuss some really, really important topics in her life and her journey as a paralegal professional. So Amy is an ACP, SEDS and CAS, and she’s a senior paralegal at Swanson and McNamara LLP, which is a trial and appellate law firm specializing in high stakes criminal, civil, and regulatory defense and internal investigations. Prior to joining Swanson and McNamara, she worked for the Federal Public Defenders in Northern District of California for 15 years, where she assisted in several trials, including four complex death penalty cases, one which resulted in an acquittal. Ms. McGuigan is the past president of the San Francisco Paralegal Association, Chair of the Bar Association of San Francisco Paralegal Section, and Assistant Director of Women in EDiscovery San Francisco chapter.

She’s a certified eDiscovery specialist holding multiple ACEDs, eDiscovery certifications, and certifications in Celebrate Mobile Forensics Fundamentals and Digital Forensics, which is fascinating, by the way, if you’ve ever seen her knowledge speech or her presentation. She has over 30 hours of digital forensic training in FTK. She enjoys crafting, watching true crime documentaries and hanging out with her four dogs. Folks, please help me welcome Amy McGuigan. Welcome, Amy.

Amy McGuigan:

Thanks.

Tony Sipp:

Nice to have you. Did I miss any? I did miss something. You’re teaching. Can you tell us about that?

Amy McGuigan:

I was just going to say, I always sound so much cooler when somebody interviews. Yeah. I just started teaching. I teach the legal technology practicum for UZ Irvine for the program.

Tony Sipp:

Absolutely. Love it. Amazing. Yeah, I love that you love it and your students love it. I was in one of your classes and they sang praises about you. So I think it is fantastic that what you’re doing and the impact that you’re having on not only the legal community, but your community as a whole. So now you’ve worked on some very high stake cases from federal defense to death penalty cases. In your earlier career, did you think this is something that you’re going

Amy McGuigan:

To be doing? I didn’t. So I accidentally ended up being a paralegal. I started off as a 911 dispatcher, totally low stress job. And I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was early 20s. And while I must have been younger than that, because I’ve been doing this for 26 years, so let’s say I was two. I loved it, but I didn’t want to do the day shift. And so I only wanted to work nights because that’s when all the action was happening. Give me a foot pursuit, give me a car chase. I didn’t want to deal with the people calling that somebody’s blocking in their driveway or something I wanted to do forever. And I was always busy. So then your friends just get used to not calling and inviting you to things because I’m always working at night. And so I decided I needed a grown-up daytime job.

And it was in the newspaper. I applied for a legal secretary position at the Federal Public Defender, and I was just going to do it for maybe a couple months just so I could pay my mortgage until I found something that I really wanted to do. I’ve been in legal ever since.

Tony Sipp:

Wow. It’s funny. I mean, my start happened similar. I was a criminal justice major, and one of the people at the stores I was working with came in and turns out she was an intern for the public defender’s office up in upstate New York, and she was leaving to go to college or go back home. And I was looking for an internship and there we go. So it was really cool working for the PD’s office for a while until the chaos. There’s pros and cons, pros and cons with all of that. In fact, when I went to go get my haircut, I would get called pretrial. So because I used to work for pretrial services, which as you know, lets people out on their own recognants or electronic monitoring, but the criminal justice life is quite the experience. So what drives you?

Amy McGuigan:

I like the puzzle. I look at the criminal cases. It’s like a logic puzzle. You have all the information and I really like being on the defense side because I feel like the prosecutor side, they have the case, they know what the charges are. They’ve got the police report. That’s really what they work on. Whereas on the defense side, we can use other things to sort of figure things out. And I just love to go through the discovery and find that one thing that helps.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah. I think a lot of paralegals … I mean, that’s one thing that some people hate that. I don’t get it. I don’t see how you would not like doing discovery because you could win or lose a case right there. So I love digging through and sifting through all that stuff to find that one thing that really could change the status of the case or the direction of the case. So you got immersed into trials and criminal defense, and I don’t know anyone that has had that many cases that were felony, or I mean somebody’s life is on the line. How does that change your attitude about how you approach your work?

Amy McGuigan:

The death penalty cases are hard because it’s not just a case. It’s not like he’s going to do any kind of time of custody or … I mean, those are rough. When you’re working on a case, they’re going to go away for 30 some odd years. The ones to where when death is on the line, it makes it harder. You want to fight harder, even though you’re already giving it your all you want to give 300% because it’s the end all be all at the end of the case. And so it just makes it really difficult when you’re going through the case. The death penalty cases that I worked on, we at least got them to a point to where they took death off the table. One got life in prison without parole. One got acquitted, which is one of the only acquittals of a capital case that the Northern District of California has seen in decades.

So that was a lot of fun to work on that one. And I mean, it’s rough when somebody’s going to go away for a considerable amount of time or if you know that they’re probably going to get a death sentence, it just makes it a little more real. The other hard part about working a criminal law is when you tell people you do criminal law, they always are like, “Oh, how can you defend those people? ” And when it’s a death penalty case, it’s especially worse because they did something that pushed them into the category to have to-

Tony Sipp:

Allegedly. …

Amy McGuigan:

A death qualified case. And so you get a lot of backlash that way too.

Tony Sipp:

So Amy, it sounds like you’ve worked with a bunch of powerhouse litigators and especially with tense moments and it’s really high stakes. How do you advocate for yourself and keep yourself grounded?

Amy McGuigan:

The nice thing for me is I work for a really small firm, so it’s just eight attorneys, the office manager, myself. I don’t get to delegate work, but I also don’t have to give up things that I want to work on. So if there was a bunch of, if there were more of me in this office, then I wouldn’t get … When I had to share a criminal case or if I picked up a insider trading SEC violation and somebody gets this pretty homicide, then that’s going to make me upset. So I don’t have a problem.

Tony Sipp:

I know what you mean.

Amy McGuigan:

I don’t have that, but I think working for 911 for a while sort of helped me. I need to sort of compartmentalize the case and I turn it more into, like I said before, a logic puzzle, but I’m not super focusing on the victims. I understand that they’re there and I know that there was something that happened to where there are victims, but if I remove myself just enough so that I don’t internally personalize what happened to the victim, then I’m able to actually work on the case. It’s

Tony Sipp:

Going to be hard. Just thinking about that. I think that one of my challenges when I was doing criminal law, I’d much prefer criminal law over family law. So that’s just my little take,

Amy McGuigan:

But- I can do family law. I don’t think I could do it.

Tony Sipp:

I can’t do it. I know too many people that have gone through that. And just for me, it brings out the ugliness and people. And I don’t like that part of humanity.

Amy McGuigan:

Yeah. We worked tangentially on one case. It was a woman who was in her late 80s. She had a son and the son was taking care of her. And so the woman was going to leave this house to the son because the son was doing all of this work. Her daughter found out about it and then said that the son was, because he was living there and helping her out, that there was an undue influence and that he wasn’t going to take care of her unless the mom left the house to him or something. And we had to fight it in court. Yeah, a gross case any day over family law.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah, it’s a tough one, but it’s important. It’s absolutely important. It’s one of the things that we do. I don’t think I got into defense until much later in life. I was always that guy that wanted to do the criminal law. I thought this was Law and Order. I love those shows. Speaking of shows, did you gravitate towards the one or was there one that, other than picking out public defenders in the papers, did you find something that, a show that you liked that you were like, wow, this is kind of my life? Other than 911 or cops?

Amy McGuigan:

See, I could never watch those. I did.

Tony Sipp:

Really?

Amy McGuigan:

When I started college, I was going to do English and then I sort of pivoted into forensic identification. So it took all the CSI type classes. I did it at San Jose State University and just all the criminology classes and stuff, I loved it. And so if I wanted to, I could go be a fingerprint examiner because that sort of was where my focus was lying. And so that was a lot of fun. But now when I’m watching these true crime stories, I can kind of get it from the three different angles and it annoys me because I know that that’s not how they do fingerprint examination. I know that on some of these things, the 911 dispatcher gets super involved and shows up on scene and I’m like-

Tony Sipp:

That doesn’t happen.

Amy McGuigan:

From the defense side, if the thing actually goes to court and you know it’s all dramatic and stuff, that doesn’t happen either. I like watching them, but I have to watch them by myself because it drags my husband crazy because I’m just yelling at the TV all the time.

Tony Sipp:

But that doesn’t happen. Have you ever been called as a witness? Has that ever had to happen?

Amy McGuigan:

I’ve been called twice as a witness only because as a paralegal … Well, as a paralegal, not as a normal dispatcher. Because if you create something that’s not in discovery, it has to be authenticated some way. And so either I have to go up there and be a witness in the case, but anytime you create anything, if you create a demonstrative, you’re supposed to go. I hate it because I hate public speaking. No.

No, I hate it. I forced myself to start speaking in public about … When was Boston? Three years ago. But before then, if you put a microphone anywhere near me and there were people on the other end of it, I could not speak. Yeah. Sitting on the witness stand terrifies me. I hate it. And the last time I did it, I made a map. I went to Google Earth and I printed a map of what the location was for this case so that the jury could see what it was that the house and the fences and if you could see the yard from the street because of the type of case that it was. And that’s legit all I did. I typed in the address in Googler. I hit print and I put it on one of the big boards and the government wouldn’t stip that that’s what I did.

So they made me get on the witness stand and the prosecutor was like six foot five, huge dude. And he asked me if I had printed that and I said, yes. I went through the steps of what I did. And then he’s like, did you print any other maps? Were you looking at other things? I’m like. And I mean, luckily for me, my attorney would object to him, go away. But it was intimidating and it was weird. So I can’t imagine what it must be for anybody else to go on the stand because I would just probably clumble. But all I did was print a math and then I’d have to sit up there and be interrogated.

Tony Sipp:

I think this is a good time to cut to a commercial where the people aren’t afraid of speaking, so we’ll be right back. And welcome back to The Paralegal Voice. My name is Tony Sipp and I’m here with Amy McGuigan. Amy, you do a lot and I saw one of your presentations on the forensic side of your work, getting into metadata, i-discovery, and you hold multiple ASAP certifications and Cellebrite, which I had to use one time for some criminal cases I was working on. So I think both of us were talking earlier about doing some fingerprinting. I got into it. Believe it or not, I was a law enforcement explorer. I was that little guy like the Boy Scouts. I was out there at the grocery stores during the holiday season, fingerprinting kids, and that’s when they had the actual ink that you could actually hand to the parents and give to them.

So after making a few kids cry, I decided that I should switch careers and go in a different direction. So I went to civil litigation. So the forensic side, I did see you do, and I was working on some cases when I was at another firm doing insurance defense, and I saw your now a presentation. You were brilliant. Tell us a little bit more about how did you get into it? What caused you to dig layers? For example, you talked about Amazon and delete Alexa to delete different times. There’s a lot that’s coming out with AI and doing your forensics and the metadata. And now with your privacy being in jeopardy with Google Intelligence and all these other improvements, I feel like that’s going to make your job a little bit difficult, more difficult. How are you preparing for these challenges that are happening right now?

Amy McGuigan:

I started becoming really interested in eDiscovery because of my cases. So we would get a client’s cell phone or something like that in a cell, right? And then so I’m reviewing these reports and I’m like, I don’t really know all the stuff behind it, the science and everything. And so we would get experts to testify in cases and I would go through their CV and I would see what they had on some of the trainings that they would do. So I never got my bachelor’s, I just got it a couple weeks ago.

Tony Sipp:

Woohoo. You dn’t tell me that. Congratulations. Thank you. Fantastic.

Amy McGuigan:

But I never really needed it because I started, I’ve been a paralegal and I got my paralegal certificate from UC Santa Cruz. So I had that. And so I was able to do all the fun paralegally type stuff and I never really needed to go into debt to put myself to get a bachelor’s.

Tony Sipp:

Nobody should have to, ever.

Amy McGuigan:

Right. But I figured I’m going to do it before I hit 50, which is fortunately next year for me next year. So I just got a bachelor’s of science in computer investigations and digital forensics.

Tony Sipp:

Oh my God. If you’re going to get a degree, that’s the type of degree you get.

Amy McGuigan:

Yeah.

Tony Sipp:

So congrats on you. Mine’s just boring like political science.

Amy McGuigan:

But now I understand the dynamics behind when they collect a computer and when they collect a cell phone. I understand what are the things that the government can find on my client or the prosecutor or whoever the other side is, whatever type of case we’re working on. But then I also, I follow so many people on LinkedIn, like the DRM and ASADS. And every time they come out with a new class on the internet of things, I’m one of the first people to sign up for it because it’s fascinating the amount of things that are narcing on you on a daily basis. And so you just need to know. You need to know that Ms. Alexa’s in the background listening to everything that you say. And sometimes you forget and then you’ll hear something on TV and it sounds like it. And then she starts talking at you from the, “Oh.”

Tony Sipp:

Oh, true. It’s happened.

Amy McGuigan:

If you take nothing from any of this, just be sure to delete or Alexa. Yes.

Tony Sipp:

Say that one more time.

Amy McGuigan:

It’s fascinating when you’re working on a case. I never realized, because I don’t have one, but Teslas, there are eight cameras on that thing at all times and all of the different things that initiate it to start recording, like a car could be close to it or drove by it or it’s fascinating. Even if you don’t work on cases, you just have to know about all the things that are tattling on you at all times just to keep your privacy or to make sure that you’re working ethically. If you’re sitting at home and you’ve got Siri and the other thing that I won’t mention again, so yours will stop talking to you.

Tony Sipp:

Thanks.

Amy McGuigan:

They’re in the background recording you. And so your client probably doesn’t want that. And so you have to know about all of these things that are happening and going on around you. And sometimes it’s useful for cases. Sometimes it’s just useful for you.

Tony Sipp:

I just purchased a new computer not that long ago, and I’m doing some updates adding some new software, and they give you the program without you having … You have to turn it off if you don’t want your privacy exposed, which I find just interesting. But it’s something that we have to do. That’s why it’s going to be interesting. So I need to dive a little bit deeper into some of this eDiscovery so that we know what’s going on because it’s moving at such a fast, fast pace that we really, as paralegals, have to keep up and have to adapt, adjust, and overcome to what’s going on with eDiscovery. And clients are highly aware of what’s going on as well. So it’s important that we stay on top of, well, the new developments that are happening. Speaking of which, you do a lot of work with women in eDiscovery, and I think you’re in the board or you’re the president, and knowing you, you rise through the rings.

So what are you over there?

Amy McGuigan:

I was the director, so it’s like the president. I did that for two years. During COVID, it seemed like all of my presidential type stuff was during COVID, which was fun because we had to pivot. We had to figure out how to take all of these meetings that used to be in person and pivot to Zoom. And some people knew how to use Zoom, but none of us were as proficient in Zoom or any of these things beforehand. I was the director, and then now I’m the assistant director, and then next year I’ll step off.

Tony Sipp:

Where do you see the next generation of women in tech Law thriving? Where do you see them going? And what are some of the pain points? And not specifically women that need discovery, but women in Tech, I guess.

Amy McGuigan:

It’s a lot more accessible than it has been in the future. And I see women in tech and women in cybersecurity, they’re sort of running head-to-head, and I think it’s great. I wish there were a little bit more … Because in its essence, they’re not the same thing. I know cybersecurity is different than E-Discovery, but still we should be uplifting all women in these sort of careers. Here’s the thing that I think that the big hurdle right now with women in UDiscovery isn’t anything that really has to do with e-discovery. It is the things that are happening to women in the workforce and in conferences and stuff that … I mean, it’s still the sexual harassment and the fault and all of that stuff. And so I think that … And I know women in EDiscovery, they had to take a step back and focus on protecting women and protecting women in conferences and not advancing their platform, which is let’s get more women in EDiscovery, let’s get more training to women, let’s do this.

And so I think that there were a bunch of things that happened that sort of kind of sidetracked it so that they had to focus on protecting women from the things that were happening at these conferences and the sexual harassment that women still go through because a lot of people think law is still this old boics network. And we are breaking the ceiling there, but it wasn’t great that we had to take a detour of what the plan of women need discovery was. And I totally understand it and I’m totally behind all of the stuff that it’s happening. But I get that’s all of that to say, I don’t know where it’s going, but I hope that it goes back to its original platform of promoting women and promoting training and getting women in front of all of these things. And it lasts about the sexual assault and other things like that that happened because I want it to not be an issue anymore.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah, it’s an unfortunate issue and it’s something that we have to tackle. And moving towards that equality, I mean, that’s a part of the access to justice. It’s part of the … We should have conversations that are more advanced than talking about that. We should be talking about AI and generative AI and what we can do to advance our clients, make the firm better, business needs. Instead, I understand. It feels like we took a step back, major step backs. And well, this whole country feels like we’re taking a whole step back. So welcome to 2025, going into 2026. So I understand your point. So we need to be a better advocate, especially people like me that have a voice and have a platform to make sure that we get people like you on to discuss these issues and make sure that we’re advocating, we’re bringing awareness to it so we can do something about it.

So thanks for bringing that up. Thanks for letting us know. And yeah, this is definitely something that we need to discuss. And I want to take a quick break because I want to talk about your dogs when we’ve come back on the other side of the break. I haven’t met anybody with gnarly dogs like yours. I love them. If anybody follows her on LinkedIn, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Let’s take a quick commercial break and we’ll be right back. And welcome back to The Paralegal Voice. My name is Tony Sipp and I’m here with Amy Nickigan. You have some really precious dogs. How many dogs do you have and what are they? What kind?

Amy McGuigan:

We have four. So we have two Irish Wolfhounds and two miniature doxins. So we have the largest dog and one of the smallest ones. They’re my baby. My husband and I didn’t have kids instead of those are my kids.

Tony Sipp:

Truly your babies. I love it. So tell me, what did they teach you? And I know this is something, it might sound weird, but what did those dogs teach you about patience and just dealing with other people? Because I have a dog too, and man, I get tested daily for my patients, my resilience working as a team with my partner, what have four dogs taught you? And it’s four enough.

Amy McGuigan:

No, they’re never enough.

Tony Sipp:

It’s never enough. Okay.

Amy McGuigan:

People do look like you at me like I’m insane for having four, but they need friends to hang out with. And we always have at least one rescue. Our biggest siren pool found, she’s about 180 pounds. She’s just the sweetest thing and she had a really rough life. And the fact that she’s able to sort of pivot and deal with life now is great. Our other wolf pound, she has special needs. Her back legs don’t work all that often, but she’s the happiest dog I’ve ever met, so it doesn’t bother her. She figured out a way to pivot,

Take advantage of hopping is more fun than running, and that’s just how she sees it. And just to have something really bad happen to you and then to be able to go through the other side, like our one dog, or to have something bad happen to you and you just learn to live with it and you embrace your uniqueness and move on. And I think that is great. The other fun thing with dogs is sometimes it’s like hurting cats when you’re dealing with four dogs. And I do think that there are times where you’re in trial. My last trial, I was the only paralegal for three defense firms on our side. And so when you’re working with eight attorneys and you’re juggling them all over the place, it is kind of like getting four dogs ready for lunch. Everybody’s got to be in their own spot.

Tony Sipp:

Everybody

Amy McGuigan:

Has to have their own bull.

Tony Sipp:

Okay, your own special Starbucks order. We get the … I got it. I got it. I love that. That’s a great comparison. So you’re actively involved and then you decided … So folks, I know you don’t know this about Amy. So Amy and I kind of really met back in 2020 when we both became president … Well, before that. 19.

Amy McGuigan:

19,

Tony Sipp:

2019 before we became presidents of our associations, the paralegal associations. Since then, I mean, I don’t want to say we’ve been inseparable, but we’ve been this highly competitive, pushed each other to succeed, almost brother and sister-like just nagging at each other and making fun of each other, but truly just lifting each other up. So I really love what you’re doing. As much as I poke fun at you, I’m so proud of you. So proud that you got your degree now, your bachelor’s. You can just check that off. Amy and I have been trying to put some letters at the end of our name for a while, and man, is she beating me? She is really beating me right now. So I am working on that, Amy, to try to get to that next level. I’m also trying to get to this next level that you’re at now.

You mentioned that you’re teaching. That’s something I always wanted to do and I’m getting ready for 2026 to really kick in the gear and start doing. How do you like that? What made you get more involved with the community? Because you could have just stayed at your job, you could have stayed at the other job that you were doing for 15 years, did that, clock your ticket, hit your pension, retire, move on. But no, you switched, you pivoted and you tried something new and people love you for it. I know I do. I wouldn’t have met you if it wasn’t for you taking that pivot. What makes you want to help others so much? Why do you get so involved with the community? Why are you teaching students? What is it about this career, your career that makes you want to help others?

Amy McGuigan:

Like I said, I started off as a legal secretary at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, and I would work on everything that they threw at me because I knew I wanted to be a paralegal. And so I fought really hard to transition into that position and they wouldn’t give it to me. But because I’ve already proven myself as a legal secretary and I was doing the work as a paralegal, so why promote me to be a paralegal? Because they could just keep me where I was doing the same thing. And so I had to figure out what I wanted to do and what classes and stuff that I wanted to take in order to get my paralegal certificate. And I didn’t know that the San Francisco Paralegal Association was out there to help me or that the Bar Association of San Francisco had a paralegal section.

I didn’t know these things existed. And I think that if I would’ve known that I would’ve had an easier path into becoming a paralegal. And so when I could, I joined CFA and then I joined the board because I just wanted to make sure that nobody else was in my position to where they were kind of struggling to figure out, okay, how do I get a paralegal job? What do I need to do? What are the steps that I should take in my area? Because different areas, different things are happening, and so there’s probably maybe a different step that you have to take. And so I became the secretary of CFPA, and then I became the VP, and then I moved up to president, and being able to help people, I loved it. And then I got over my fair public speaking, and then I started going to the conferences, and I really loved talking at the conferences and getting up there and engaging with people.

And just to see the bell or the light go on for somebody that are like, oh, I get what you’re saying and I want to learn more about this, or I want to go into criminal law because you seem to really like what you do. And becoming a teacher, it puts it in front of me more often because I’ve got 40 kids in my class and I get to do 10 weeks of this instead of two hours, standing in front of people. And I just love it. And I love their questions and how excited they are to become paralegals and how excited they are to just learn everything that they can. It’s great.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah. I think it’s fantastic that Amy and I got to share a stage at NALA two years ago, approximately, which was really great talking about the affiliates and working together. I mean, that’s something that we did very well, especially during the pandemic and during that whole COVID time, it’s just worked together And try to provide that unity and that support that all paralegals needed. And now you’re doing that for your students as well, providing that support and the guidance to help them become the best paralegals that they can possibly be. So kudos to you. I’m hoping to follow in your footsteps. We have 21 questions, Amy, that we want to go through. They’re yes or no. I’m going to go through those very quickly. Are you ready?

Amy McGuigan:

Yes.

Tony Sipp:

All right. So Amy, what’s the first legal task you do in the morning?

Amy McGuigan:

I check my calendar first. I want to see what meetings I have to see if anybody’s put them on. I look at my calendar and then I look at my

Tony Sipp:

Email. Got it. Favorite legal tech tool right now?

Amy McGuigan:

Ooh. Okay. So there’s this program called Total Commander and it’s free. And I use it all the time because I love it. But you can look at a file folder. So let’s say you get a case and it’s got 200,000 documents. So you have a folder of 100,000 documents. If you open up that folder in total commander, you can copy all the names of the PDFs and put it into a spreadsheet. So if you’re doing a discovery log, you don’t have to type it all over again.

Tony Sipp:

Every single. Wow.

Amy McGuigan:

Saves so much time.

Tony Sipp:

Loving that already. I haven’t had to use … Well, there’s a lot of reasons to use that. All right. You do a lot of trials and you do a lot of trial prep. So coffee or tea during trial prep?

Amy McGuigan:

Coffee. Most of the time it’s Diet Coke.

Tony Sipp:

Okay. Specific. Got it. But coffee or tea, but Coke. Okay.

Amy McGuigan:

Coffee comes cool too fast.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah, I have to agree. What is your favorite go- to stress snack during discovery?

Amy McGuigan:

PeterButter, M&Ms. There we go.

Tony Sipp:

I have my

Amy McGuigan:

Little them right here. Not that you’re stressing me out, but they’re just always back.

Tony Sipp:

Got it. Got it. Appreciate that. What’s the one thing attorneys underestimate about paralegals?

Amy McGuigan:

I really think that paralegals are underutilized. I think that a lot of attorneys don’t realize that we can do some of this stuff that we can do. And so we really do have to advocate for ourselves. And in every situation, I’ve been here for 10 years and I still have to be like, “Hey, I want to go to this meeting. Let me go to this client meeting. Let me get involved in this case. Let me do this. ” I just think that they don’t remember to utilize us as best as they can. And so we have to keep popping up and being like, “Hi, remember me?

Tony Sipp:

” Here’s what I can do. I can help. And I have to say that with new students when I go to classes, I have to tell them to do that themselves, advocate for themselves. If they’re not getting enough work, go ask for work, go into that office. It’s much easier to walk into somebody’s office and have that conversation or that water cooler talk and get some more work. And it’s a great, great reminder. Metadata, exciting or terrifying?

Amy McGuigan:

Both. It just depends on what part of it you’re on. It’s terrifying when you don’t know what the other side has against you. And it’s exciting when you have something and you’re like, “Woo.”

Tony Sipp:

True.

Amy McGuigan:

I can figure all of this out with somebody’s cell phone. I mean, it’s fascinating. And cell phones just aren’t about text messages anymore. All of the different things that your cell phone can narc on you about.

Tony Sipp:

What is the biggest red flag in eDiscovery?

Amy McGuigan:

I think the biggest red flag is technology keeps getting advanced and the tools that we’re using are kind of keeping up, but they’re not. And the people that are working on it, some of them are keeping up with it and some of them are not. And so I think that it’s as more things go into AI, it’s the whole AI is going to take over everybody’s job. But I think that the more everything is going into AI, the more we really have to realize you got to read the contracts, you got to read what it is that you’re signing off to. Because before you would get a cell phone and it would be like, “Where’s the agree? Where’s the agree?” You can’t do that anymore because now your phone calls can be recorded and they’re just like, “Oh, we’re not really using it for anything.

We’re using it just for machine learning or natural programming for things.” And so you don’t really realizing what parts of your life you’re giving up to these little stupid tools. You wouldn’t think that playing Candy Crush is recording you in the background, but CandyCrush knows your location and it’s using WiFi and it’s doing all this stuff. And so you just have to, what am I giving up to have this convenience? I mean, that’s the issue. You just have to know all of the things that are narking on you at all times. And if you’re comfortable with it, great. And if you’re not, if you have to pick a step back and maybe not use that AI tool.

Tony Sipp:

Number eight, what is your superpower and a deadline crunch?

Amy McGuigan:

I don’t get frazzled. I am the voice of calm when everybody’s like, “Ah.” And I’m like, “It’s all right, I’ve got this. Let’s go. ” And I think that’s why I love trial. And I love … When I grow up, I want to be a hotseat tech. I just want to do that all the time.

Tony Sipp:

Really?

Amy McGuigan:

Oh yeah. I joke with Ted Brooks and Chan Bale all the time.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah, yeah.

Amy McGuigan:

I grew up, I want to meet you. I just love to do that all the time.

Tony Sipp:

You guys are nerds. I love it. Pet peeve and case management.

Amy McGuigan:

When people don’t write down stuff that’s happening while it’s happening-

Tony Sipp:

Concurrently.

Amy McGuigan:

I’ll take notes about this later and then they never remember all the things that they did to drive some nuts.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah. Yeah. Same here. Even myself, I was doing it myself, so I start writing down immediately afterwards. I mean, I never go into an office without a pen and pad, so very, very important things. Good point. Most underrated paralegal skill.

Amy McGuigan:

Being able to pivot.

Tony Sipp:

I agree.

Amy McGuigan:

And just being able to … I think with paralegals, there are some jobs to where it’s like, okay, I do A, then B, then C next day, A, then B then C. But then there are other ones that you’re like, I’m working on F now. I got Q over here. Just being able to pivot.

Tony Sipp:

Yeah. I asked this one, but how many dogs is the right number of dogs?

Amy McGuigan:

However many I have room for and however many I can get away with without it being illegal in my house.

Tony Sipp:

I understand. Right now

Amy McGuigan:

It’s four.

Tony Sipp:

Okay. Would you get more? Yeah, you would absolutely get more. True crime documentaries, guilty pleasure or professional curiosity or both?

Amy McGuigan:

I think it’s both. There have been times to where I’ve watched a true crime doc and I’m not yelling at my TV and I’m like, oh, that’s a good point. I wonder if we can do that.

Tony Sipp:

That’s a good point. Have you ever gotten any ideas from watching a show and let me try that and it worked at work in real life?

Amy McGuigan:

Yes and no. There have been times to where the Murdoch case and how they were able to track him and his exact locations from cell phone towers. That’s fascinating. But the same thing happens with our cases. And there was one, I do like to watch Snap much to my husband’s chagrin, but there was one to where somebody threw something away and no, they were able to recreate all of these things because the trash can, when they put something in the trash can, it made note of when it happened so that when it got full, somebody could go clean out the trash can, but then that’s when they were able to find where things were in it.

Tony Sipp:

Oh, the technology involved. Yeah.

Amy McGuigan:

So it’s great to have that in the back of your head because then now I know that something like that exists if I ever need it for my case. And then all the stuff that came out with Alex Jones to where the paralegal said, “Hey, I looked at this thing. The cell phone that we’re giving you is only the things that we’ve called out and made afford of, ” but they didn’t. They just gave them the whole thing. And then that’s how the other side was able to get all of those text messages.

Tony Sipp:

I know.

Amy McGuigan:

Which is just hilarity.

Tony Sipp:

You guys got to look that up. It is hilarious.

Amy McGuigan:

That’s just a huge reminder that you have to go through … Sorry.

Tony Sipp:

No, it’s reality. That’s life. That’s exactly how it goes. Best advice you ever received as a junior paralegal?

Amy McGuigan:

I think it’s to not take things super personally. When you’re working on something, when it’s a high stress type thing, there are times to where the attorney could … They’re stressed out and they’re trying to deal with all these things. And sometimes they might snap and say something that … I’m not saying it’s okay for them to do that, but you just have to realize that everybody is in a highly stressful, highly busy, stressful job. And so sometimes people, they snap and they don’t mean to, and you can’t take it personally. You just have to help with punches and go. Got it.

Tony Sipp:

Go outside and meet them at their car? No. See how that works. Yeah, those are very good points. So be kind to everybody. You never know what anybody’s going through. And sometimes you do, which is all the more reason you have to be even more kind. Favorite part of working on appellate cases?

Amy McGuigan:

Ooh, appeals are hard. And even if it’s not like the point of appeal to where if it’s … You know what happened the first time, and so now you get a different try at it. It’s either it’s a good thing or a bad thing. So you’re either working the case up again and you know what didn’t work. And it’s great if you’ve got more things to say. It’s horrible if you don’t have anything else to say and you’re like, “Ugh.”

Tony Sipp:

What do I do? “What

Amy McGuigan:

Are we going to do here?” Yeah. And it’s all in the dance with the appeals because you get to re-argue something and it brings it down to a more finite level. And so that part of it gets to be really interesting to me.

Tony Sipp:

What’s the one thing you’ve always have in your trial bag?

Amy McGuigan:

Aspirin and peptopine.

Tony Sipp:

Really? I was going to say some type of tech equipment, but okay, that makes sense. If you could delete one legal buzzword forever, what would it be?

Amy McGuigan:

I don’t know if it’s a buzzword. I will say if one more person says metadata is the data about data, I

Tony Sipp:

Will- The data about data.

Amy McGuigan:

I will scream.

Tony Sipp:

I will bring that up in. Okay. Most unusual place you’ve received, or rather you’ve reviewed evidence.

Amy McGuigan:

I had to, on the case that I worked at at the Federal Public Defender, the one that was the acquittal, it was a gentleman got a toy dog mailed to him and the toy dog had a bomb inside of it and it cut off and they put the batteries in it. And so I had to go with the investigator to a bunch of different places in the area to go buy all of these little robot dogs so

Tony Sipp:

That we could get the

Amy McGuigan:

Expert to do stuff with them. So I mean, it was really weird, but it was definitely a strange day to have to go buy a bunch of toy dogs.

Tony Sipp:

Wow. I’m thinking there’s one day we had a case against, it was a copyright issue and Sammy’s camera, do you guys have Sammy’s cameras up there? It’s a major cameraster here in LA and I still am into cycling. I had to go for the … I guess they were authenticating the photos, so I had to go to Sammy’s camera and get some gloves. One of those little … Oh, the loops? The little loose. Yeah, the looms. And one other thing. So I’m on my bike going down Wilshire Boulevard with potholes everywhere on a road bike just getting rocked. But I made it to the authentication that they had with opposing counsel. So that was fun. It was fun. It was quite the adventure. Those little field trips are things that you definitely want to be able to do during your job. One thing you wish law schools taught?

Amy McGuigan:

That no matter where you are, no matter what position you’re in, if you’re working as a team, you’re not above everybody else. Just how to work as a team, how to do group work. If something needs to be done, and I do the same thing. If I got to make a binder or somebody’s got to make a thousand copies and staple it and collate and do all that stuff, it’s not above me to do it. And so I wish that they would teach more group work.

Tony Sipp:

What calms you faster? Crafting or dog cuddles?

Amy McGuigan:

Ooh, probably crafting.

Tony Sipp:

She’s really talented.

Amy McGuigan:

That’s my therapy,

Tony Sipp:

Right? It’s amazing what you can do, not just in law, just in general. One career lesson that took you too long to learn.

Amy McGuigan:

I don’t know. I haven’t learned it

Tony Sipp:

Yet. See, I haven’t learned it. It might be true. Who knows?

Amy McGuigan:

It could be. But that would be my motivation to stay at my job until I figure it out.

Tony Sipp:

All right. Well, we can have you back if we can’t figure it out today. So you know both of us could stay on here and talk forever. You’re one of my greatest friends that I had, especially in this industry. I don’t know what I would do without you being able to pick up a phone and text you or send you a strange picture of, figure this out, what is this? And just working together. I love working with you. I love doing things with you. I love succeeding with you. So kudos on the bachelor’s, kudos on your success with the teaching. I’m right behind you. I’m going to get some letters behind me.

Amy McGuigan:

Just don’t get more than me because then I’m going to have to keep getting

Tony Sipp:

Them. And then- I think it’s a bad-

Amy McGuigan:

Ambitious cycle of …

Tony Sipp:

Just education, lifetime learners. I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world.

Amy McGuigan:

I have like 45 after our

Tony Sipp:

Name. I love it. And Golden Globes.

Amy McGuigan:

When you move, I move.

Tony Sipp:

Yes, just like that. So with people wanting to get in contact with you, what is the best place for them to reach you? And can you tell us and spell your name out so that they can?

Amy McGuigan:

Yeah, LinkedIn. I love collecting people on LinkedIn. It doesn’t matter where you are in your career or what … I learn from what people post. I have some of my students when they post up. I love it. But yeah, my LinkedIn, I love answering questions from

Tony Sipp:

Just

Amy McGuigan:

People on LinkedIn.

Tony Sipp:

Reach out.

Amy McGuigan:

It’s Amy McGuigan, M-C-G-Y-G-A-N on LinkedIn.

Tony Sipp:

And if you’re not connected with her, you can find her on the website, on the Legal Talk Network, along with her bio and headshot and other links to get in contact with her. And as always, make sure you follow, like, and subscribe to The Paralegal Voice. Amy, thank you for being our guest today. We only have the best guest on the Legal Talk Network and on the Paralegal Voice. So thank you for being our guest and have a great year and I will talk to you soon. Folks, have a great day. We’ll see you next time.

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