Paralegal: The Civil Litigator's Best Friend
If you should be starting your own firm, you may realize that you've more work than you expected. It's the task that mysterious figures at your larger firm always did, work that uses up far more time than you are willing to invest at the office. If you intend to reduce your workload and raise your billable hours, you should consider hiring a paralegal.
If you should be just getting started in your practice, you may wonder exactly what a paralegal does. When you have spent any time in a more substantial firm, you've likely seen armies of those individuals going about their daily business. A paralegal is, in short, an individual that performs the legal work for which an attorney may not have time. He or she may draft documents, perform interviews, prepare for litigation, litigation advice or perform legal research. When it comes to civil litigation and paralegals, the only actions that the paralegal cannot take are presenting the case in court, offering advice, or performing an amazing legal analysis.
You could find yourself thinking that all of the work which can be handled by a paralegal can be done for even less by an unpaid law school intern. You surely remember the method, having once been a bright young student prepared to work for "experience ".Realistically, though, the services provided by a paralegal simply cannot be matched by any other professional. Even the very best law school intern will ultimately have to go back to his or her studies (or worse, graduate and want a paying job), while a paralegal will continue to accomplish his or her work for years. A paralegal gets the added bonus of experiencing recently been trained in the relevant processes with law cost drafting that you need, whereas a law student likely only has a little theoretical knowledge and very little practical experience. In the long term, it is better to save money in other areas of your practice and spend the cash on a paralegal's salary.
You know what a paralegal may do for a civil litigator, and you understand why it is essential to hire a paralegal rather than seeking out cheap labor. You may not realize, though, that hiring a paralegal is really a smart way to truly raise your profits. Consider the total amount of time that you spend taking care of mundane tasks that do not actually require your degree; if you're a solo practitioner, you likely have wasted hours driving to and from court houses, standing in line to talk with clerks, or filing away documents. While you can still charge billable hours for these tasks, it is better to hand them off to a paralegal on staff. This enables you to continue billing worked hours when you focus on tasks that are more important, a win-win situation for almost any attorney.