If you read the post, “The Paralegal Profession: [Almost] everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask,” you may already be familiar with the American Bar Association’s definition of a paralegal: A legal assistant or paralegal is a person, qualified by education, training or work experience who is… Continue reading
Pattern interviews So far you’re off to a great start in finding an A-player paralegal. You’ve identified needs, tasks, qualities, and traits that will fit with your practice, and have started narrowing down higher-level paralegal support by painting a brutally honest picture of the job at hand. If you’re hiring an employee, the… Continue reading
The job description The articles in this series build on each other, and the last article was no exception. If you missed Part III, take a minute to read it now before reading this fourth article. Don’t worry, we’ll still be here when you get done. At this point in the series, you… Continue reading
Making a decision and getting started The last step in finding an A-Player paralegal is to start small. If you’re a long-time reader, you know we’ve said this many times. This just proves that it’s true! Once you think you’ve found the perfect support, whether a paralegal support service or traditional employee, start… Continue reading
It’s so easy to get caught up in life, in work, in everything we think we “have” to do or get done. We live in the fast lane nowadays and every year seems to go by a little (okay, a lot) faster. (Has anyone else noticed it’s May already?) How… Continue reading
Identifying needs and goals Last time, we found out how costly it is to pay for less than the best. Now that we know, we need to work on improving our methods for finding the best paralegal support possible. With Mike’s technique, finding good paralegal support begins before we start… Continue reading
It’s hard to believe almost three months have passed since starting this blog. While I have lots of information to share, I really wanted to start by explaining the role of paralegals in the legal profession and defining freelance paralegals and paralegal services since both topics serve as the basis… Continue reading
The true cost of lower-level support The introduction to this series identified the challenge in finding good support, and briefly considered how we’ve traditionally looked for support. Those traditional methods can be costly when they don’t work. During the business seminar I attended, Mike shared a wealth of statistics and information… Continue reading
Greetings and Happy New Year! During the past month I’ve spent a lot of time both reflecting on 2010 and looking toward 2011. This past year has been a year of tremendous growth and unexpected surprise for me, both professionally and personally. It was also a year of challenge. I… Continue reading
Like law firms, corporate legal departments generally have plenty of office space, attorneys, paralegals, support staff, and benefits. And, many of the challenges they face are the same challenges law firms face. But as corporate legal departments, they also have some of their very own challenges. Just as they do solos and… Continue reading