Legal Supplier Spotlight: Paralegal To Product Manager

Legal Supplier Spotlight: Paralegal To Product Manager

The legal sector is reliant on legal suppliers to ensure a smooth and efficient service for their clients.

Often, the technology and services suppliers provide will improve, secure and safeguard the home buying and selling process.

Noticing a gap in the sector, many entrepreneurial legal professionals have stepped aside, determined to provide a solution for issues that have plagued them whilst completing legal services.

Kai Helstrom, Product Manager at GlobalX, has made such a transition, leaving his role as a successful paralegal behind and accepting a new position of product manager.

Kai discusses his previous role as a paralegal, his reason for leaving the profession and the experience he has garnered which allow him to expertly service the legal sector’s adapting needs.

What responsibilities do you now have in your role as a product manager?

I’m responsible for the entire development lifecycle of our property products which includes both software but also the searches / services we provide to our customer.  Right now, my focus is on Matter Centre, which is our workflow software for conveyancers, and integrations.

Day-to-day I’m working with our engineers to ensure what they are working on meets the needs of users. That could be adding new features to Matter Centre, sourcing new search partners or coming with completely new ideas.

We’ve adopted an agile development culture at GlobalX, so a lot of time goes into creating the user stories for the different sprints and putting the information into a context our developers can understand. I work closely with our CEO to ensure our developments timelines meet the overall objectives of business providing detailed reports of burndown rates and velocity trends.

How does your role help the conveyancing sector?

Through Matter Centre we’re helping conveyancing firms save time and money by eliminating a lot of repetitive administration work they need to do. This allows conveyancers to focus on more important tasks and frees up time to have more meaningful conversations with their clients. Using my experience and feedback from our clients, we’re trying to solve problems either through software solutions or a new service.

How did you become a paralegal?

I obtained my Law Degree in 2012, and at the time I was a self-employed music tutor. Whilst I loved this, I was looking for a more stable income. Being fresh out of university, and with very little experience, there weren’t many options for this outside of the legal industry, and so like many new Law graduates, I ended up with a junior paralegal role.

What legal services did you routinely undertake through the paralegal role?

It was mostly private client work. I started as a Wills and Probate paralegal and moved over to conveyancing thereafter. I also spent some time working on bulk portfolio sales, and I was surprised about just what a manually administrative process that is.

What prompted you to leave the profession?

I knew before I had even completed my degree that I did not want to be a legal practitioner. I loved studying law, and I loved working in the industry, but I was always more attracted to the skills that studying Law provided than a career practicing. Now, I have the best of both worlds. And I didn’t really leave the profession. I’m work in the legal industry and I still keep myself  up to date with any new developments.

What experience did you accumulate and how has this helped in the transition into a more commercial facing role?

Dealing with high volume portfolio sales meant I had to be extremely organised to get everything done on time. As a product manager you also have very tight deadlines to deliver improvements, new features and fix bugs while prioritising what needs done first.

During my education and my time in the law industry the concept of personal development and independent learning was ingrained into me. Law firms are great at supporting, encouraging and rewarding personal development which has transferred over really well.

There’s so much to learn as a product manager and you only get out what you put into it. That discipline and drive to always be improving myself has helped me learn new skills quicker and progress in the role faster.

What do you find rewarding about your new role?

There were so many times when I worked as a paralegal that I thought ‘surely there’s an easier or quicker way to so this’. With the development of Matter Centre, I’m actually solving some of these problems. It’s great when you receive feedback from a client saying how much easier their job has become. Knowing I’ve made that person life a little easier is very rewarding.

Martin Parrin

Martin is a Senior Content Writer for Today’s Conveyancer, Today’s Wills and Probate, Today’s Legal Cyber Risk and Today's Family Lawyer Having qualified as a teacher, Martin previously worked as a Secondary English Teacher that responsible for Head of Communications. After recently returning to the North West from Guernsey in the Channel Islands, Martin has left teaching to start a career in writing and pursue his lifelong passion with the written word.

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