Michela Resta

In our 10 years of business, Pinsent Masons Vario has built up an international bench of over 2000 highly trained legal professionals. Although a majority of this bench is made up of fully qualified lawyers, we have a large number of highly skilled paralegals available to be placed on assignment with clients. One such person is Michela Resta who is now completing her training contract after a successful stint as a Vario paralegal.

Michela discovered Vario after she applied for a legal secretary role with Pinsent Masons. During her interview, she was told that she would be better suited to working as a paralegal because of her prior legal experience. Within a week of being put in touch with Vario, she’d been onboarded and was about to start an assignment with a major client in the financial sector. This client was so happy with the work that Michela did on her assignment that they extended her term not once but twice, meaning that she spent a year and a half working with them.

Not only was the client happy with Michela’s work, she was happy with what she was asked to do. Over the course of her assignment, she was the main point of contact for any work relating to Schrems II remediation. This gave her to opportunity to work with stakeholders on all levels and areas of the client’s business and it sparked a real interest in data privacy law. So much so that Michela would like to qualify into this area of law. She hasn’t decided what aspect of data privacy law to move into yet, but she won’t be short of choices whether it be litigation, cybersecurity or technology.

Her work saw her take on a large amount of responsibility within a challenging and evolving area of law, but this was something that Michela relished. This made the support provided to her particularly important. As well as the support offered by Vario, she was lucky enough to work alongside a Pinsent Masons lawyer who was always on hand to answer her specific legal questions.

Working alongside Pinsent Masons lawyers was more than just a happy coincidence though. Throughout the whole of her assignment, Michela met with Pinsent Masons data privacy team in person every week to network and upskill. This gave her the opportunity to learn from solicitors at the top of their field and then take the skills and knowledge learnt here back to her work with the client.

Michela is confident that her experience as a Vario paralegal has helped set her up well for her future legal career and she maintains that it played a key role in getting her training contract. Aside from showing her obvious passion for law, her assignment gave her the opportunity to develop and practice her actual legal skills. Working alongside such a high-profile client was certainly good for her CV, but the environment she was working in was perhaps more important because it helped her to build confidence in her own abilities.

It would be wrong to only talk about Michela as a lawyer, because at Vario we recognise that really our legal professionals are people first and lawyers a close second. Michela comes from Italian heritage, something which she tries to embrace whether by brushing up on her language skills on Duolingo or cooking up traditional dishes and cakes. As well as this, she actually runs her own business selling ice creams at events. This is a far cry from her day-to-day dealings with data privacy, but it has been a passion project for her since she was 16 and something that she has loved being able to grow and build since.

Although she is not currently part of our hub, Michela is a fantastic example of how you can benefit from being a paralegal with us. At Pinsent Masons Vario, we offer both employment and contract paralegal positions depending on whether you want to work on assignment with a client or within our internal Paralegal Centre of Excellence. If either option appeals to you, please get in touch with out Flexible Services team or our Managed Legal Services team and see how we can help you take the next step in your career.