Hidden Paralegals

USING YOUR LAW

Hidden Paralegals

Aparalegal may be a law graduate waiting for a training contract or for an opportunity to complete the solicitors’ qualifying experience. But someone does not have to be a law graduate or training to be a solicitor or barrister to be a paralegal. A paralegal is an individual who has been trained and educated to perform legal tasks.

There are plenty of paralegals who may well be qualified barristers or intend to become so, but for whatever reason, they are not practising. Maybe they have been unable to gain a pupillage or a training contract to be a solicitor. Instead, they may take on job roles as ‘paralegals’, or alternatively, set up in practice as a Paralegal Practitioner running their own firm.

There are many employees who do not realise that they are paralegals. An estimated 200,000 plus paralegals work in a variety of fields and for diverse employers, who are unaware that they are paralegals and can apply for membership of a professional body, giving them status.

How to identify if someone is a paralegal

This is simple: does the work they do involve any sort of legality? For example, are they involved in drafting or reviewing commercial contracts or employment contracts? Do they do any legal research to assist someone in their department? Are they involved in compliance or regulation involving ensuring that statutory criteria are met and adhered to? Are they involved in reviewing documents in relation to childcare proceedings?

If the answer to any of these questions is affirmative, then they could be a paralegal (the list of examples is not exhaustive).

Generally, there are plenty of people beavering away in-house, in all sorts of organisations in both public and private sectors who are performing legal tasks and who have knowledge of practice and procedure but who are not given the recognition they deserve.

Even paralegals can get it wrong

It is clear that many employers do not actually know what a paralegal is, and what they do. And many employees are also not aware that they are actually carrying out skilled paralegal duties.

I recently had to examine a CV of an applicant who was applying for a high-status professional membership category. This level of membership required the applicant to have a minimum of five years’ relevant legal experience.

On his CV he categorised four of those years as being employed as a ‘paralegal’. It wasn’t until I looked closely at the work, he had done prior to this, that I realised he had another year of working as a paralegal even though his job description had been ‘Secretary’. This was evident from the description he had provided about his daily duties – these duties were more descriptive of a paralegal role than that of a secretary.

What’s the difference?

Well, if duties included such work as, answering phone calls and emails, opening files and filing documents then it is more likely than not to be a role of a secretary. However, as soon as we get into the realms of ‘legal research’, ‘legal drafting’ and ‘interviewing clients’ then clearly it holds more responsibility and as such can be construed to be more of a paralegal job role than anything else, as it requires legal know-how and knowledge of legal research and skills as well as legal procedure.

Why care?

There are numerous reasons why this should be important. Firstly, it gives the employee status and the clients that they may work with will be impressed and hopefully have more confidence in them and their employer. It also gives the employee an opportunity to join a professional membership body such as NALP which is the foremost paralegal membership body in the UK, and that looks good on any CV. Furthermore, from an employer’s perspective, to have NALP recognised ‘paralegals’ working inhouse presents a more professional image to customers.

In short, being recognised as a paralegal gives an individual selfrespect in the work they do. ■

Amanda Hamilton

Patron

National Association of Licensed Paralegals

Amanda Hamilton is Patron of the National Association of Licensed Paralegals (NALP), a non-profit membership body and the only paralegal body recognised as an awarding organisation by Ofqual (the regulator of qualifications in England). Through its Centres around the country, accredited and recognised professional paralegal qualifications are offered for those looking for a career as a paralegal professional.

For more information check www.nationalparalegals.co.uk