The Empowered Paralegal

One of my areas of research is the development of the paralegal profession in other countries. In many paralegals serve a different function than that served here in the U.S. This article from the Punjab Newsline has an almost military tone when describing people volunteering to serve as paralegals:

4th batch Paralegal Volunteers given training in Ferozepur

Thursday, March 29, 2012 – 14:15
By Harish K Monga
FEROZPEUR : In the judicial complex of Ferozepur, the 6th session training of 4th paralegal volunteers was given to different category of people under the leadership of Rekha Mittal, District and Session Judge, Ferozepur, with the motive of training them as Paralegal Volunteers.

Karnail Singh, Civil Judge Senior Divison cum-Secretary District Legal Services Authority, Ferozepur gave the knowledge to the volunteers on cases relating to civil laws, cheque dishonour and the schemes being run under the District Legal Service Authority.

On this occasion, Harish Umar, Civil Judge, Junior Division, Surinder Sachdeva, ADA Legal, K.D.Syal, President Bar Association, Ferozepur were also present. Karnail Singh hailed the volunteers to work for the betterment of the society and motivated them to make people aware about the legal rights and duties. He said that these trained paralegal volunteers will be put on duty at legal aid clinics being opened at the village level and thirty volunteers were also issued the identity cards on this occasion.

There are some common threads in all countries though. For example, just as in Punjab, American paralegals are “hailed…to work for the betterment of the society and motivated them to make people aware about the legal rights and duties.” I and other bloggers such as The Paralegal Mentor and Chere Estrin of “The Estrin Report” do some of the hailing, but more so the various paralegal professional associations such as NFPA, NALA, and NALS, all of which feature these as parts of their ethical codes and mission statements. But I think the drive to work for the betterment of society and motivation to make people aware of their legal rights and duties is so common to those who chose paralegalism as a career (as opposed to as just a job) that it must be an inherent trait.

Share on Facebook

Because paralegals are licensed in Ontario and can engage in limited practice of law without attorney supervision, they are subject to the “Paralegal Rules of Conduct” which can be enforced by the Law Society through the same process as is used to discipline lawyers. When the reports of discipline come out it seems there are far fewer for paralegal than attorneys, but I have no data to confirm that (and, of course, even if it is true there may be as many paralegal disciplinary proceedings portionate to the numbers practicing under each type of license, but those that do come through are generally fairly similar to those for lawyers. Here’s one that is a bit more interesting though:

KIMBERLY LYNN POLLOCK
From: City of Mississauga, Ontario
First hearing: November 21, 2011
LSUC Counsel: Jan Parnega-Welch
Paralegal not represented
Particulars of alleged professional misconduct from the Law Society’s Notice of Application filed June 7, 2011:
1. Contrary to Rule 2.01(2) of the Paralegal Rules of Conduct, you communicated with your former colleague, M.S., in a manner that was abusive, offensive or otherwise inconsistent with the proper tone of a professional communication from a paralegal, including three separate electronic communications on November 3, 2009.
2. Contrary to Rule 2.01(1) of the Paralegal Rules of Conduct, in your communication dated December 7, 2009, you attempted to mislead the Law Society when you unequivocally denied that you posted information about your former employer, C.R.S., on-line, when this representation was not true.

The result of the hearing:        Decision: The Paralegal was reprimanded.

More specifically the Law Society of Upper Canada website reports:

By Decision and Order dated November 21, 2011 the hearing panel ordered as follows:

The Paralegal is to be reprimanded.
The reprimand is to be administered to the Paralegal in person at the offices of the Law Society on December 19, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.
Costs of $1,000 to be paid by the Paralegal within one year of the Paralegal curing her administrative suspension.
Should the Paralegal fail to pay the costs within the one year period, the Panel orders that the Paralegal be suspended until such time as the costs are paid.
Should the Paralegal fail to attend to receive the reprimand on December 19, 2011 at 1:00 p.m., the Law Society shall be entitled to make further submissions as to penalty.

 Further information regarding the details of this matter do not appear to be available and is probably not real helpful anyway. However, I suspect that this rule, if applicable in the U.S., would get quite a workout!

Share on Facebook

One aspect of the Ontario experiement in licensing paralegals that I posted about favorably here is the “good character assessment.” Commenting on an unusual case before a Law Society Appeal Panel, I noted,

The scary part is that there is nothing to prevent our own Nics from calling themselves paralegals here in the United States. We are hopeful that UPL laws will prevent them from operating independently, but depend on law firms to do the character assessment and background checks to keep Nic and his ilk out of the legal system. Unfortunately, this procedure all too often fails. Indeed, some paralegals are so un-reviewed and unsupervised that they are able to embezzle huge sums from the law firms themselves. One managed to grab $1.7 million before being caught!

Indeed, there is a concern that persons found unfit to be an attorney could become paralegals under our system, a concern I addressed in “If he smells bad there, he’ll smell bad here.” As noted in that post, it seemed that a paralegal licensing program that included a good character assessment would prevent corrupt attorneys from becoming paralegals after disbarment.

A recent article in the Law Times though makes it clear that not just any licensing regulations will do:

The Paralegal Society of Ontario says it’s “seriously concerned” about Law Society of Upper Canada regulations allowing disbarred and suspended lawyers to apply for paralegal licences, an issue that culminated in Mississauga, Ont., lawyer David Robert Conway’s successful appeal of his disbarment this month.

“As an organization, we’ve made it perfectly clear to the law society that we highly object to a lawyer applying to serve as a paralegal when they’ve been suspended or disbarred,” says Janet Wigle-Vence, treasurer of the paralegal society.

According to Wigle-Vence, while paralegals serve clients in a limited scope compared to lawyers, the regulator should hold both types of practitioners to a similar standard of character.

“If they can’t pass the test to serve as a lawyer, it doesn’t make sense that they would be allowed to serve as a paralegal,” she adds.

The problem lies in the particular way the regulations are written. They include “grandfather” and hearing provisions that do allow disbarred attorneys to have a hearing on a paralegal license application which could, in theory, find that they do not have the “good character” to be an attorney, but do have the “good character” necessary to be a paralegal!

The article implies, however, that this is more of a theorectical problem than a practical problem, noting through a statement by Harry Kopyto, himself a disbarred attorney, a subject of posts on this blog, and occasional communicator with this blog, few attorneys have been successful in taking this route back into legal practice precisely because of the good character requirement. Nonetheless, it seems odd that this would even be an option. The regulations should make it clear that disbarment or suspension as an attorney is itself sufficient indication that the applicant lacks the good character required to be a licensed paralegal.

Share on Facebook

It ought to be a matter of simple math. Paralegals lower the cost of services for clients and increase law firm productivity, so it makes sense to use paralegals. This does not cost attorney jobs, but grows the legal profession. One major British firm has done the math, according to legalweek.com:

Addleshaw Goddard has grown the number of paralegals in its recently-formed transaction services team (TST) in Manchester to more than 40 as the national law firm prepares to send more chargeable work to the centre in a bid to keep costs down for clients.

The firm has increased staff in the team from five at the time it was piloted in November last year to 42, with the intention of boosting numbers to more than 60 as it is used by more practice areas.

The initiative was established to free up associates to work on client-facing matters by sending some administrative and process support work to the paralegal centre in Manchester.

Most of the work is due diligence and document management for the litigation and corporate practices, but Addleshaws is also looking to extend its remit to include more transactional support for the firm’s commercial and banking practices…

Addleshaws employment head Andrew Chamberlain, who oversees the project, commented: “Clients are telling us they don’t want to pay a lawyer hundreds of pounds an hour to do this type of work, but they also don’t necessarily want it to be sent overseas, either.

“This is the happy medium – we’re able to keep costs down and our associates are able to develop their skills in 
other areas.”…

Share on Facebook

You may have heard that the ABA is holding its annual convention in Canada this year. ABAJournal.com announced today that “The ABA and Canadian Bar Put Their Special Relationship into Writing:”

The U.S. and Canada share perhaps the longest unguarded border of any two countries in the world, running from the Atlantic Ocean across the North American continent. There is an arch spanning one of the many border crossings in sight of the Pacific Ocean south of Vancouver. A message is printed on that arch: “Children of a common mother.”

If that message characterizes the relationship between the U.S. and Canada, it also describes the relationship between the legal communities of the two countries, said leaders of the ABA and the Canadian Bar Association at a special ceremony held today to commemorate that bond.

The ABA is also, according to the story, finalizing a cooperation agreement with the Korean Bar Association.

One thing the two legal systems does not have entirely in common is the utilization of paralegal as in many areas of Canada the term “independent paralegal” has real meaning whereas the ABA recognizes only paralegals working under the supervision of any attorney. Indeed, as many of the posts in the “Canada” category discuss, one Canadian province has started licensing paralegals for some services. Most United States bar associations treat any paralegal activity other than that supervised by an attorney as UPL.

The ABAJournal.com article reminded me that I also wanted to post about international cooperation among paralegals and paralegal associations. I’ve mentioned before the relationship between the New York City Paralegal Association and the Institute of Paralegal in England.  A recent (although not the current) issues of NYCPA’s Paralegal Buzz includes this news:

New York City Paralegal Association Board Members met with representatives from Japan Federation of Bar Association

WHAT’S NEW?
On June 28, 2011, a group of NYCPA Board Members met with the Japanese visiting scholar and representatives from Japan Federation of Bar Association (“JFBA”) on their study mission to the United States. In November 2011, JFBA will hold the 17th Symposium on Legal Practice Reform. At the Symposium, one of the topics of discussion will be “The Cultivation of Administrative Staff and Revitalization of Attorneys’ Services: Perspectives on How to Utilize the JFBA’s Training and Competence Accreditation System” on the reform of legal practice.

The mission of the visiting group is to gain a better understanding of the role of paralegals in the United States. During the two-hours meeting, we discussed the role of NYCPA in the community; why and how NYCPA was created; educational, networking and pro bono opportunities provided by NYCPA to its members and community; educational background and training opportunities for paralegals in NYC; accreditation system, work environment and job-based relationships between broad categories of administrative staff and paralegals and attorneys.

The efforts made by NYCPA to connect with their counterparts internationally is quite impressive. I suppose I should be more thrilled than I am with the ABA’s recent efforts. What would thrill me more though is a regular ABA Symposium on Reform of Legal Practice that focused on the utilization of paralegals to revitalize attorney services and help alleviate the access to justice problem.

 

Share on Facebook

As I’ve mentioned before, the New York City Paralegal Association, one of the premiere paralegal associations in the United States, has an on-going cooperative relationship with a paralegal association in England, the Institute of Paralegals. Thanks to that relationship the latest edition of the Institute’s Paralegal News is now available through this NYCPA link. I’ve had the good fortune to travel to London to do research on the paralegal profession and practice there and find the similarities and differences in the two systems to be quite fascinating. (Despite the fact that our law is based on English common law, our system of paralegal practice seems to have more in common with the system in France.)

H/T to James at the NYCPA LinkedIn Group.

Share on Facebook

Over a year ago I did a post entitled, Paralegal Outsourcing: Is India too far?” noting, “If an attorney in Boston can “supervise” a virtual paralegal located in San Francisco, could she not also do so with one located in India? Since licensing is not required in the United States, is the door open to this sort of outsourcing? Perhaps, it is happening already. If any of you know, I’d like to hear from you.”

The answer, it appears, is that it had been happening for several years, but many of the problems noted in the post do indeed arise and, as a result, at least one company is moving its outsourcing back home. According to Law.com, “About a decade after it helped pioneer the trend of outsourcing legal work to India, Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner, a patent prosecution boutique, is bringing the work back to U.S. soil.”

One of the primary, although not the initial, reasons for the outsourcing was cost savings, but some of those savings are phantom savings, especially when you factor in the cost of doing the kind of supervision discussed in the original post;

“There’s a very large volume of paralegal work required to support patent prosecution,” Lundberg said. “It was working well for us because we were getting substantially lower pricing.” Schwegman’s Indian outsourcing peaked at about 15 people doing document or paralegal work for the firm.

The arrangement worked well for several years, but the firm “finally figured out that our productivity in the U.S. was substantially higher,” Lundberg said. Meanwhile, costs in India had risen, and automation was more prevalent. “It started to look less and less attractive to be in India,” Lundberg said.

The firm originally saved about 50% in labor costs for the outsourced work, assuming that productivity was equal. But shipping work to India also involves many layers of management, supervision and training expenses, plus work culture differences that can affect cost, Lundberg said.

“A U.S. employee would feel a lot more freedom to take action in gray areas than an Indian employee,” Lundberg said. “They would ask permission for things a U.S. employee would do without blinking an eye.”

The extremely hierarchical nature of work in India is also a factor, he said. If a copier runs out of paper, for example, a paralegal in India would go and find an administrative person to load the paper instead of just doing it, Lundberg said.”You get a lot of that type of thing going on that ends up slowing things down if there’s any question about how things are going to work.”

The ability to take initiative, to exercise judgment, and work  independently, I have argued here and in The Empowered Paralegal: Effective, Efficient, and Professional is an essential element of professionalism.  This demonstrates that this kind of professionalism is an essential element of keeping United States paralegal work in the United States.

Share on Facebook

Paralegalism takes on identities quite different than that exemplified here in the United States, as can be seen in the posts in the “International Paralegalism” category. However, the role of paralegals as persons who can assist in providing access to justice to those in need remains consistent. Here’s another example, this time from Dubai, published originally in The National

Paralegal ‘first aid’ builds a base for Filipinos to know rights
Ramona Ruiz

DUBAI // Filipinos facing legal and employment-related problems will soon be able to turn to a team of paralegal volunteers for help.

A series of paralegal training workshops starting on Friday in Dubai aims to educate Filipinos about their rights, the labour laws, the Filipino Migrant Workers Act and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

“Our main aim is to form the first paralegal team in the UAE, who will make our compatriots understand their cases better,” said Nhel Morona, the secretary general of migrant rights group Migrante-UAE. “This team will explain the local laws and ways to address their problems and concerns.”

The organisers, Migrante-UAE and the women’s rights group Gabriela-UAE, are targeting leaders and members of the Filipino community to be part of this pool of paralegal volunteers.

For the rest of the story click on the link for The National above.

Share on Facebook

The Law Society of Upper Canada continues to consider changes in its experiment of paralegal licensure and regulation to assist in remediating access to justice issues. At the moment there is controversy brewing because the LSUC is beginning its discussion of expanding the scope of permitted paralegal activity based on “a decade-old report that backed paralegal calls to practise in that area as the basis for a promised review of the scope of their practice.”

Here’s some of the back-and-forth as reported by Law Times:

Marshall Yarmus, the paralegal whose motion at the annual general meeting last year sparked the commitment to a review, says Cory’s report is a “good starting point.”

“In terms of family law, we’re looking for things beyond what he suggested because paralegals used to be allowed to make appearances in the family court for certain matters,” he says.

“But at least it also addresses other issues like wills, real estate, and other areas of law where paralegals are not currently allowed to practise and [that] he recommended.”

Chris Surowiak, president of the Paralegal Society of Ontario, welcomes the law society’s action on the scope of paralegal practice.

“The public needs assistance within many aspects involving family law and the public can only benefit in using the professional services of a paralegal in this area,” he says. “Expanding our scope of practice can be a win-win for lawyers, paralegals, and ultimately the public.”

But Cynthia Mancia, co-chairwoman of the Family Lawyers Association, isn’t so sure.
“The biggest underlying theme of justice Cory’s [report] was access to justice, and I think it’s a mistake to equate expanding the use of paralegals as an answer to the existing well-documented access-to-justice [issues] that exist,” she says.

“There is a perception out there that paralegals can provide the same services that lawyers provide but more cheaply. The fear family lawyers have is that that perception isn’t grounded in reality.”

I’m somewhat biased on this as I’ve been arguing for quite some time that paralegals should have an expanded role in plugging the access-to-justice gap.  So it may be no surprise that I take issue with Mancia’s characterization.  It seems to me that it is quite correct to equate expanded paralegal actions with an answer to access to justice issues.  The issue is not whether paralegals can provide the same service as attorneys. They cannot. However, there is no reason paralegals can’t provide some services now provided by attorneys at a lower cost thereby expanding access to justice for those who cannot currently afford any representation.

 The position of attorneys who oppose this type of role for properly educated, licensed, and regulated paralegals are contending that somehow people lacking any legal training at all who cannot afford an attorney are better off confronting the legal system on their own. This position is counterintuitive and I strongly suspect they cannot provide any data to back up the claim.

For more on these issues check out  the “Canada” and “Access to Justice” categories.

Share on Facebook

I’ve previously mentioned that one of the New York City Paralegal Association’s most interesting projects is an alliance with the United Kingdom’s Institute of Paralegals to create transatlantic paralegal competency standards. The February edition of KNOW Newshas a story with more details about this project. It notes, “The Standards will reflect the usual paralegal career structure, being set at introductory, intermediate and advanced levels. Modelled upon the IOP’s existing UK competency standards, the draft transatlantic paralegal competency standards will be circulated for comment to all UK and US transatlantic firms.” More important it provides the contact information for those organization that might wish to have input into the standards:

Contact Details

Any firm or other relevant organisation interested in either being on the Joint Standards Working Party or having a watching brief should contact either:

James O’Connell at james@theiop.org or Nikki Doughty at internationalliaison@nyc-pa.org

Read more here or check out the KNOW News for this and several other interesting articles.

Share on Facebook