Senior Paralegal Litigation

Deborah Baker

New York, NY ***** 917-***-**** adxvez@r.postjobfree.com

SENIOR PARALEGAL

Successful Sr. legal professional with a background in paralegal initiatives, experienced in data-driven expertise and investigative reviews in areas of Financial Service and Wealth Management. Skills include: Legal Data Collection

Discovery Requests

MS Office Suite

Vendor Management

Document Review

Arbitration

Management

Regulatory

EXPERIENCE

MORGAN STANLEY, New York, New York 10/2017-3/2023

Legal & Compliance/Global Wealth Management Litigation Director

Senior Paralegal

• Directed 60+ initial and 30+ follow-up discovery requests, including regulatory inquiries from SEC, State, and FINRA, produced 99-90 FINRA Discovery Guide 25+ (Notice 11.17) documents, and managed 25+ ad- hoc requests monthly for litigations, arbitrations, and regulatory investigations across multiple divisions within the firm.

• Independently reviewed intake of 20+ civil matters to prepare for arbitration, and additionally, collected variety of discovery materials for the Global Wealth Management division of the Firm.

• Provided coverage and support to 5 attorneys on a wide array of matters, including subpoenas (civil and regulatory), civil litigations, regulatory actions, and research (factual and procedural).

• Conducted investigations, and gathered pertinent documents for 10+ customer complaints weekly.

• Drafted written discovery, crafted, and amended U4/U5 and 4530 filings for more than 5 financial advisors with FINRA on a monthly basis.

• Collaborated with 6 or more members of the Firm's IT Department to source documents and data stored in electronic formats, including shared drives, electronic communications, phone logs, phone recordings, and trading data.

• Worked extensively with and guided more than 10 external vendors assisting with discovery.

• Developed and established a comprehensive vetting process of over 100 firm wide employees to ensure compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, and escalated review and final determination.

• Initiated and collected feedback on all FINRA arbitrators monthly and devised efficient strategies for pretrial hearings that reduced the time spent on administrative tasks by 20%; Generated arbitration notebooks and organized exhibits, ensuring proper formatting of all documents.

• Planned the Firm’s arbitration and regulatory matters by collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure timely and accurate updates in the matter management system; closed 30+ cases per quarter. OPPENHEIMER & CO. INC., New York, NY 03/2002-09/2017 Legal Department

Associates Vice President

Senior Paralegal

• Onboarded, trained and led an 11- person team consisting of 5 Paralegals, 2 Admin. Assistants and 4 Legal Interns.

Deborah Baker

New York, NY 10065 917-***-**** adxvez@r.postjobfree.com

• Managed litigation review databases, analyzing and reorganizing databases to save 5+ hours per week.

• Collaborated with Counsel on budget and accounting procedures monthly on Legal reserve revenue growth.

• Spearheaded and prepared 26 Litigation/Summary Books for quarterly meetings of the Board of Directors, including a summary of all pending litigations and arbitration matters, settlements, awards, and reserve amounts.

• Created the monthly Reserve Litigation Reports for pending litigations, customer complaints, awards, and settlements for monthly Legal meetings.

• Preserved and updated the Legal Department Regulatory Oversight and U4/U5 Disclosure Logs.

• Contributed to 10 in-house and numerous outside counsels with discovery matters, including preparing and reviewing document requests and gathering and organizing responsive documents.

• Headed intake, distribution, and assignment of over 525+ subpoenas, levies, regulatory inquiries, and court orders on a daily basis.

• Analyzed workflow and collaborated internally to improve team efficiency, reducing average turnaround time of 10 days to 2 days.

• Successfully reviewed and authorized the payroll for support staff of 7 and 4 legal interns of the Legal Department.

• Served as liaison between HR, IT, and Provisioning Departments for 19 staff members and new hires. ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE

GRUNTAL & CO., L.L.C., New York, New York

Compliance Research Specialist/Paralegal

• Responded to 300+ third-party subpoenas served upon company firm-wide.

• Responded to 50% of inquiries from SEC, NYSE, NASD and other regulatory agencies.

• Ensured records produced in connection with 100+ arbitrations, regulatory inquiries, and other legal proceedings, maintained all applicable privileges.

• Assisted with litigation in document productions.

• Processed 100+ garnishments, levies, restraining notices, attachments, and other court orders against the firm, its employees, or its clients monthly, and handled related distribution.

• Handled the restricting and releasing of 40+ customers' brokerage accounts per week.

• Communicated with over 13+ company managers, account executives, and compliance officers to ensure compliance with subpoenas, document productions, levies, and other court orders. EDUCATION

Hunter College, C.U.N.Y., New York, New York

B.A. in Political Science and Sociology

Paralegal Institute, New York, New York

Certificate in Paralegal Studies

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