Back in 2015, Alisen Kotyk enrolled in the legal assistant program at Herzing College as a way to build a more secure and fulfilling future. She thrived in Herzing’s close-knit, supportive environment, and landed a legal assistant job at a boutique criminal firm shortly after graduating.
She loved the work and found meaning in it. But after a while, she felt driven to do more. So she went on to complete her BA and finish law school. Today, she’s a civil litigator at Myers LLP, a mid-size Winnipeg firm.
We spoke with Alisen recently to learn more about her inspiring journey and how Herzing set her up for success. Here are the highlights of that conversation.
Q. What made you choose the legal assistant program?
Alisen: I actually wanted to get into Creative Communications at Red River. But I didn’t have the knowledge that you would need to succeed in that program or even be admitted into that program. So when I got rejected from that, I thought, OK, I could take another kick at the can next year, but I needed to get my life going as soon as possible. When I looked at my options again, the legal assistant program at Herzing sounded cool.
Q. How did you find the training at Herzing?
Alisen: I liked it so much. I felt really good going there. It was a very collegial environment cause it was so small and you’re pretty tight knit with everyone there. The environment was very conducive to learning because it felt so comfortable and friendly.
I didn’t have any struggles. I was off and running as soon as I got there. I really enjoyed it.
Q. Tell us about your first job as a legal assistant.
Alisen: I worked for a boutique criminal firm called Martin White Manning Newman that doesn’t exist anymore.
I really liked it. You end your job at 5:00, and that’s a very attractive part about being a legal assistant. Depending where you are, sometimes you get some of the cushier aspects like all the lunches and dinners or the fun events or the free parking, and that’s great.
It was work that you could feel good about doing, and that you didn’t have to really take home or worry about too much.
Q. What made you go back to university?
Alisen: I have this distinct memory of being there as a legal assistant and all the associates were about my same age, but they were making several times more money than I was. They also had so much autonomy and ownership over their lives. And I thought, what is going on here? What is the difference between me and these guys? Oh, university.
So one day at lunch, I walked over to the University of Winnipeg. I’d been there when I was 19, but I couldn’t finish and had a whole bunch of Fs on my transcript cause my head wasn’t in it at the time. I asked for a second chance, and they put me on academic probation.
I started going there for very early classes, some evening classes, and some online classes, all while I was still working as a legal assistant. Eventually I quit my job so I could go on a full-time basis.
Q. Why become a full-fledged lawyer?
Alisen: My motivation for becoming a lawyer was mostly that I wanted a thinking job. The legal assistant work was good, and I liked it. There are certain advantages to it. But I remember a lawyer saying to me once, “Alisen, just do, don’t think.” And I thought, nope!
I really like the creative aspect of lawyering. I like the writing, the formulating arguments, presenting them, having to come up with creative solutions. There’s just more thinking work involved.
Q. Did you do anything to make yourself stand out as a law student?
Alisen: I went to a firm in the summertime. I would go do my coursework in fall and winter, work at the law firm in the summer, then go back to school, and then do my articling.
A lot of students go into law school and don’t work in the summer at a law firm. And I feel like that might be tougher, especially for students who don’t have an idea of how a law firm runs. People do not seem to appreciate that it is a business and law school does not teach that.
Q. How did you manage to get on with a law firm in the summers?
Alisen: In law school, they have what they call recruit. In the fall you go to a bunch of wine and cheeses and you talk people’s faces off and then you spam out your resumes. And people will approach you for lunch or whatever if they’re interested in you. It’s kind of like speed dating.
I found a firm in Calgary and did my interview with them and they brought me on board.
Q. You’re now a civil litigator in Winnipeg. What skills from the legal assistant program are you still using today?
Alisen: It’s helpful to know things like what filing requirements are or how you format a document. As much as we have legal assistants now ourselves, there are certainly still times where I need to figure out how to do that for myself. Or being able to look at the King’s Bench rules and say, oh, I have to do XYZ to have this document accepted. We learned things like that in the program.
Even now, there are absolutely times where I’m binding my own briefs cause I have a new assistant who’s still getting used to the pace of litigation and I’m able to blow through binding because that was so much a part of my job as a criminal legal assistant.
Q. Do you have any advice for aspiring legal assistants?
Alisen: Don’t ever have the attitude of “this is not my problem.” The other day I approached an assistant about something they have a lot of experience with and asked if I could meet with them after the staff lunch. And their response was, “I’m working from home today.” Period. Not, “But I’ll be in tomorrow and are you free at 2:00?” or something like that.
So then I thought OK, I’ll do it myself. Goodbye.
Don’t just end the conversation. Maybe there’s no immediate payoff, but by being that person who gives the “yes, however” answers instead of the “no” answers, you’re going to succeed over your peers that are not doing that. A “yes, however” legal assistant is going to build a great reputation for themselves as being invaluable to their lawyer or firm. That attitude stands out.
If you know something is coming up on a file, and you think your lawyer has forgotten about it or is running up against a deadline, remind them about it. The reminders are appreciated.
Q. Will legal assistants continue to be in demand, or are lawyers and AI doing more of their own thing?
Alisen: I don’t think that legal assistants are going to go away. I know there’s a lot of concern that AI is replacing so many jobs, but I don’t see that being an issue in the near future.
I don’t want to be too reliant on my legal assistant because I want to know how to be able to do all the things that they’re doing. But I’m still very much using them all the time. It’s very helpful to work in conjunction with your person. Say we have a limitation date: I’m going to diarize it, you diarize it, and let me know if something’s coming up that we need to pay attention to.
I think having a human on the end of that is invaluable too, because at the end of the day people just want to have relationships—we are built for relationships. There’s value in having a real person doing that with you rather than AI.
I also think legal assistants are so helpful when you need to do something that requires a human touch that AI cannot do. Like for example, when our process server needs more following up on or they’ve served the defendant but we don’t have their affidavit of service back yet. My legal assistant could say, hey, give me the story so I know what happened. Things like that are just so much better left to a human.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE LEGAL ASSISTANT PROGRAM AT HERZING
The legal assistant program is delivered online and takes just nine months to complete. A four-week internship is included.
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