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by Camille Stell, CLAS
These days it would be unusual to walk into a large law firm and not
find a host of paralegals summarizing depositions, drafting discovery,
preparing for commercial real estate transactions, or breathing life
into corporations. Are these same scenes repeated in solo or small
firm practice?
According to the ABA Paralegal Utilization Survey, 99 percent
of large law firms use legal assistants, versus 34.8 percent of
small firms or solos. The surprising news is that two-thirds of
small firms have expanded the role of their legal assistants in
the past three years to include such duties as drafting legal documents
and client liaison while less than half of the large firms offered
similar responsibilities.
That's exciting news for practitioners, as well as, paralegals.
Can expanding the duties of the legal assistants in your office
make your practice more efficient and profitable?
Expanding the Role of the Legal Assistant
- Lawyers who want to remain competitive must meet their clients'
demands to provide quality service at a reasonable cost. Expanded
use of legal assistants will allow lawyers to remain profitable
as well as meet client demands of reasonable fees.
- Attorney malpractice and ethics grievances are on the rise.
Lawyers who learn to delegate work to the lowest level (where
it can be competently handled) have more time to review and supervise
the final work product thereby lessening the margin for error.
- Attorneys who have expanded their legal assistant's role have
also expanded their own role by moving their work to a higher
level. They are able to spend a larger portion of their time counseling
clients, analyzing complex legal matters and participating in
court. Typically, these attorneys find greater job satisfaction
as do their paralegals.
Advantages of Expanding the Role of the Legal Assistant
- Better Client Services - Legal assistants become specialized
in areas of practice. Legal assistants can assist with keeping
the client informed about their case eliminating unnecessary calls
to attorneys for status reports. Legal assistants can assist with
cases such that even though the number of hours worked for a client
actually increases, the lower billing rate results in more economic
billings to the client.
- Lawyer Profits - Properly priced legal assistant services should
provide a profit to law firms. Delegating work to legal assistants
frees attorneys to do work that only attorneys are ethically allowed
to do, as well as spend more time in marketing efforts which will
reward the firm financially.
- Managing Firm Growth - Effective utilization of legal assistants
allows firms to manage firm growth at partnership levels at an optimum
rate.
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