Marilyn Morris was born in Northern California, raised in Hawaii for fifteen years and later moved to New York in 1979, where she lived for the next twenty-four years. Marilyn has been a paralegal since 1991; she obtained her Paralegal Certificate from Adelphi University in Long Island, New York.
Marilyn began her paralegal career in a firm that handled personal injury, product liability and business litigation for both plaintiffs and defendants. The last six years in New York, Marilyn worked as a paralegal for in-house counsel, representing Chubb Insurance Company, practicing business litigation and discrimination law in the Directors & Officers (D&O) department. Marilyn was working only blocks away from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and that day, and the weeks and months following, will be a memory she will never forget.
Marilyn moved to the Central Coast in November of 2003 and has been at Duggan Smith & Heath LLP since January, 2004, working primarily as a litigation paralegal. Marilyn is a Notary Public for the State of California and has been on the Board of Directors of the Central Coast Paralegal Association since 2010.
Stacey Hunt, CLA, CAS has been a paralegal since 1985. She graduated with honors from the Fresno City College Paralegal Studies Program in 1992, earned her Certified Legal Assistant designation in 1995 and her California Advanced Specialist Certification in litigation in 1999. She is the co-author of three books, Hot Docs and Smoking Guns: Managing Document Production and Document Organization (Clark, Boardman, Callaghan.1994), The Successful Paralegal Job Search Guide (West, 2000), and Evidence Management for the Paralegal (Cengage, 2007. She currently co-authors Paralegal Today’s Ethics Roundtable. Her articles and columns have also appeared in appeared in Facts & Findings, The Bottom Line, the Public Law Journal and the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
Ms. Hunt was an adjunct instructor for the Paralegal Studies Program at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo from 2000-2004, where she taught legal writing, legal ethics and the paralegal introductory course. She is a past-president of the Central Coast Paralegal Association and a past-president of the California Alliance of Paralegal Associations. She was one of the original authors of proposed paralegal legislation which eventually became codified as Business & Professions Code §6450.
Ms. Hunt currently sits on the Boards of Directors of the Foundation for San Luis Obispo County Libraries and of Ecologistics, Inc., which produces the Central Coast Bioneers Conference. She is a past president of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival.
Ryan Heath was raised in San Luis Obispo, and played football, trombone and worked as Sports Editor at San Luis Obispo High School. Heath went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from the University of Oregon, Eugene.
After unfulfilling jobs in print and television, Heath moved to San Francisco and stumbled into a management position at the House of Prime Rib. The restaurant industry and his passion for snowboarding carried Heath to South Lake Tahoe for two years before touring with his friends’ band across the U.S. and Europe, as well as assisting with a house construction in Hawaii. All of his travels have led him back to SLO where he enjoys disc golf, skimboarding, soccer, basketball and softball, in addition to cooking, attending concerts and watching movies with his wife, Natasha, and their puppy, Ranger.
Heath completed a Paralegal course at the University of California Extension, Santa Cruz in April, 2011, and looks forward to assisting the firm while continuing his legal education and helping clients.
Michele L. Henrey graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in history in 2007. She obtained her Masters degree in modern European history from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2010.
Michele joined the Duggan Smith & Heath LLP in 2010, becoming both a Paralegal and a Notary Public of the State of California in 2011. Michele completed her paralegal course work though the University of California, Santa Cruz extension program. She is a member of the Central Coast Paralegal Association, the Rotaract Club of San Luis Obispo, and a San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce Ambassador.
Michele assists Linda Somers Smith with business and real estate transactions, intellectual property and employment law; and Janet Wallace with estate and trust administration and probate matters.
