“Independent” Paralegals
The definition of “paralegal” agreed upon by the ABA and NALA, and accepted by many other organizations and courts, includes the concept that the paralegal works “under the supervision and direction of an attorney” and “performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible.” (Emphasis added.) The NFPA definition is slightly different and includes the statement, “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.”
There are instances in which paralegals form their own business and work “independently” for a variety of attorneys, i.e., they are independent contractors, but still work under the supervision and direction of an attorney. There are other individuals who work independent of any attorney. When they do they often risk being accused of UPL – unauthorized practice of law. (In a later post, I hope to discuss some of the more famous cases of this.) There are a number of issues here for the paralegal profession. One is whether such practitioners should truly be considered paralegals or something else, say “Legal Document Preparers,” a group that has it’s own national association. Another is whether this whole issue argues in favor of regulation and licensing as opposed to voluntary certification.
All of this is a rather long lead-in to a communication I recently received and am posting here ( with permission of the author) for your consideration and comment:
Tags: ABA, definition, independent, NALA, NFPA, UPL
I am fascinated by this letter about helping pro se litigants. I suppose as long as the non-licensed person is not advocating or advising or using any independant legal judgment, and merely doing as told, this is not technically UPL, but it is so close that it scares me. Still, while I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking that sort of line, I’m sure some of the pro se clients are grateful for the assistance with the process. I would like to find out what others think about this.
[...] her comment to a previous post on independent paralegals Melissa H. expressed a concern regarding UPL issues. This concern is well grounded. As noted by [...]
[...] to clients such as Martin Legal Services, who wrote regarding his practice as discussed in this post, and freelance paralegals who work for attorneys as independent contractors rather than employees [...]