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Paralegal_Education :: Paralegal_Services :: Paralegals
 

Competing Official Paralegal Definitions

It is interesting and instructive to compare the competing definitions promulgated by the various national organizations:

  • The American Bar Association defines a paralegal or legal assistant as "A legal assistant or paralegal is a person qualified by education, training or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible." Under this definition, the legal responsibility for a paralegal's work rests directly and solely upon the lawyer.

  • From the NFPA website, the National Federation of Paralegal Associations offers the following definition: "A Paralegal is a person, qualified through education, training or work experience to perform substantive legal work that requires knowledge of legal concepts and is customarily, but not exclusively, performed by a lawyer. This person may be retained or employed by a lawyer, law office, governmental agency or other entity or may be authorized by administrative, statutory or court authority to perform this work. Substantive shall mean work requiring recognition, evaluation, organization, analysis, and communication of relevant facts and legal concepts."

  • From the NALA website, the National Association of Legal Assistants offers the following definition: "Legal assistants, also known as paralegals, are a distinguishable group of persons who assist attorneys in the delivery of legal services. Through formal education, training and experience, legal assistants have knowledge and expertise regarding the legal system and substantive and procedural law which qualify them to do work of a legal nature under the supervision of an attorney." In 2001, NALA adopted the ABA's definition of a paralegal or legal assistant as an addition to its definition.

  • From the AAfPE website, the American Association for Paralegal Education offers the following definition: "Paralegals perform substantive and procedural legal work as authorized by law, which work, in the absence of the paralegal, would be performed by an attorney. Paralegals have knowledge of the law gained through education, or education and work experience, which qualifies them to perform legal work. Paralegals adhere to recognized ethical standards and rules of professional responsibility."

Educational Background

In the United States, paralegals have taken many different paths to their careers. These paths comprise an array of varying levels of education, different certifications, and on-the-job-training. They work in government, for law firms, for corporations, for real estate firms, and for nonprofit organizations. Where they work and what they do often depends on what mixture of experience, skills, education, and certification they possess.

There is no specific educational requirement in most U.S. states for legal assistants or paralegals. Some paralegals have only on-the-job experience. Many paralegals have completed a bachelor's degree in paralegal studies. Others have completed a bachelor's or even a master's degree in another field, and quite a few of these have also completed a regular or post-baccalaureate paralegal certificate. Many have completed a two-year course before working in the profession, and still others have certificates.

Paralegal or legal assistant courses of study have long been available in associate's degree or certificate programs at community colleges. However, similar programs exist at four-year universities and have expanded over the years. More and more prestigious universities offer bachelor's degrees and post-baccalaureate certificates in the subject. One guess to the increasing trend might be that as law responds to rapidly changing technology, social, and business environments, the workload of law firms and even their way of doing business changes as well.

Certification

In the United States, "paralegal" is not a licensed profession. Certification is voluntary, increases a paralegal's skill sets or prepares him or her to enter the profession, often increases the likelihood of a paralegal's hire or promotion, and serves to identify a person as capable of work that is on par with certain standards. Certification is accomplished by taking and passing one of several privately-administered tests from one of several paralegal associations. Graduation from a certificate program does not certify a paralegal; passing an exam administered by a recognized entity is the only benchmark generally considered to be a "certifying" event.

The Economics of Paralegalism

The heart of the Paralegal phenomonon is a legal-economics argument. According to the laws of the United States, there are five specific acts which only a licensed attorney can perform:

  • Establish the attorney-client relationship
  • Give legal advice
  • Sign legal papers and pleadings on behalf of a party
  • Appear in court on behalf of another (i.e. the client)
  • Set and collect fees for legal services

Outside of those five specific acts reserved for an attorney only, the Paralegal can perform any task, including legal research, legal writing, preparation of exhibits, as well as the mundane day to day tasks of case management. The key is that the attorney is entirely responsible for the actions of the Paralegal and by signing documents prepared by the Paralegal, the attorney makes them his own.

Law schools and state bar associations, through admissions and licensing, control the number of licensed attorneys and, as economic theory would predict, generally act to restrict that number in order to increase salaries over what a truly free market would produce (and, in the case of law schools, allow an increase in tuition by increasing the financial reward of obtaining a law education.) While the strenuous education and bar exams arguably increase the quality of attorneys at the same time as the cost of employing one, there remain many legal tasks for which a full legal education is unnecessary but some amount of legal training is helpful.

As the cost of litigation has risen, insurance companies and other clients have increasingly refused to pay for an attorney to perform these certain kinds of tasks, and this gap has been filled in many cases by Paralegals. Paralegal time is typically billed at only a fraction of what an attorney charges, and thus to the Paralegal has fallen those substantive and procedural tasks which are too complex for legal secretaries (whose time is not billed) but for which attorneys can no longer bill. This in turn makes attorneys more efficient by allowing them to concentrate solely on the substantive legal issues of the case, while Paralegals have become the "case managers."

The increased use of Paralegals nationwide has slowed the rising cost of legal services, and serves in some small measure (in combination with contingency fees and insurance) to keep the cost of legal services within the reach of the regular population. However, as John T. Brodrick, Jr. warns in his article "An Emerging Model: Legal Assistant as Colleague" (Chapter 7 of Leveraging with Legal Assistants), "However, our profession makes a serious error if it uses legal assistants only as economic tools."

Paralegals & Notary Publics

A large percentage of Paralegals and Legal Secretaries are also commissioned as a Notary Public. Very rarely are Lawyers also Notaries Public, because it's easy to find a Paralegal or Legal Secretary close at hand who can do the Notary work. There may also be a conflict of interest if an Attorney Notarizes a document he is signing or drafting.

Being a Notary is not required to become a Paralegal, and very rarely is it required for employment as a Paralegal. The only Paralegals that require a Notary Public commission are those who work for certain banks and financial institutions. For most other Paralegals, it's a bonus, a form of career enhancement, but not a regular part of their work. Besides banks and financial institutions, the next most common group of Paralegal-Notary Publics are those who work in wills & probate, and in real estate transactions.

Paralegals in Television and Literature

Unlike nurses and physician's assistants (the rough medical profession equivalent of the paralegal), paralegals have not caught the popular imagination and rarely are seen or mentioned in fictional or non-fiction legal television programs, or in legal fiction in print. When opposing counsel on the television program Law & Order dramatically produces a motion and brief from his or her coat pocket or briefcase at the proper moment, rest assured, some team of unnamed paralegals, law clerks, and/or junior associate attorneys had a lot to do with it. When an attorney in a trial movie produces a blow-up exhibit, or examines or cross-examines a witness on the stand, or brings documents to court to introduce as evidence, any and all of that would involve the work of one or more paralegals who prepared the exhibits, or interviewed and prepared the witness, or obtained the documents by subpoena or by locating and copying public records.

References

External links

Legal occupations

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Paralegal".

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