Benrud is the go-to paralegal for litigation support.

Byline: Erika Strebel, erika.strebel@wislawjournal.com

One of the most significant experiences that has shaped Joslyn Benrud's decade-long paralegal career so far has been working on a two-week trial in Chicago. At stake was a family's business.

"Going through those two weeks with them side by side in the trenches, I felt like that really gave me a lot of perspective on how every case is important no matter how big, how small or what the subject matter is," said the paralegal at Husch Blackwell. "They have something on the line."

One of the lawyers who worked on the case with Benrud, Jeff McIntyre, noted that the firm had inherited that case only months before trial and credited Benrud with helping him and his colleagues quickly get up to speed in a short amount of time.

Benrud is the only litigation paralegal at Husch Blackwell's Madison office, meaning that she works on a variety of matters for between five and 15 attorneys at a time. She also works on matters for lawyers in Milwaukee.

Benrud's favorite cases include complex contract cases.

"When you get into it there's so many different ways a case can pull you," she said. "I find those really intriguing, and those really have a lot of documents, so there's a lot of document review and...