Karls crafts a steady career

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Jean Karls’ career can be defined with one word: consistent.

Karls never left her hometown of Waunakee, and when she landed a legal assistant job at Axley Brynelson, she stuck it out for just short of 50 years.

“I guess they tell me I’m committed,” she said. “Either that or I should be committed.”

Karls will retire at the end of 2014, closing out a 46-year career at Axley. She spent much of that time working with firm partners Mike Westcott and Leslie Sammon.

Even though she stuck with the same firm, Karls’ career has covered a lot of ground.

She has been involved in every practice group. She went through the switch from typewriters to computers. And she has taken on various roles for the firm over the years.

But everything will change in 2015. After she retires, Karls said, she will volunteer, possibly at a hospital near her home, and spend more time with her three grown children and their families. And when it’s time to break from the norm, Karls and her husband of 44 years will sneak off to Florida or maybe drive to the western U.S.

In preparation for leaving, Karls has spent the past seven months mentoring a graduate from Madison Area Technical College, which is Karls’ alma mater from the late 1960s. Karls said the most significant advice she can offer is to “stay a few steps ahead of the attorneys.”

And, she said, it is important to remember the little things, such as which attorneys are on top of email and which play fast and loose with calendars, because that knowledge helps when work gets brisk.

“You have to know what they might want next because the nature of the work is, shall we say, last minute,” Karls said. “You just have to anticipate these things. To be truthful, that’s not anything you can know ahead of time.”