RESEARCH
When it comes to research on the client file, you are the "go-to person" for your attorney. He will count on your ability to find out what needs to be found out -- and then some. Your attorney's assumption will always be that you have been extremely thorough and have sniffed out every minute detail.
In your presentation to your attorney, you should exude confidence and know for certain that the source of your research has the latest, most up-to-date information available anywhere. While this may seem easily attained, it can get a bit tricky.
As you progress in your research experience, you will learn the various sources that may be available to you that are not necessarily the first to come to mind. For example, in most large cities, the local bar association or legal directory publishers make visits through the larger area firms at least once a year to pass out their paralegal's resource for free. In this source, known as The Blue Book, you will find listings of all judicial offices, courts, assistants of every stripe, and many other resources.
ATTORNEY SUPPORT
Effective attorney support is your primary job responsibility as a paralegal. To be effective, you will need to constantly develop your communication skills, writing skills, public relations skills, technical skills, research skills, and update your paralegal education continually.
Communications skills – Required for every aspect of the paralegal's work, you will need to hone your communication skills daily. One of the best things you can do to improve your communications skills is to learn how to keep things precise and accurate in your speech and in your writing. Another effective move is to work on your own attitude and dump any old habits of "reading people." Many of us grew up learning to read the non-verbal communications of people around us. This is good common sense. However, when your life is filled with a history of not simply reading the non-verbal signals of others, but of reading into the words of others' meanings, other than those carried by the words, then you are into a destructive communication habit. You must change by practice, habit and education to work yourself out of this habit because it will destroy your paralegal career.
Writing skills – Regardless of your level of post-secondary education, you will need to continually work to improve your writing skills. At the most basic level, you can, and should, have in your desk a thesaurus, a dictionary, a basic grammar book, and a book on writing styles. [See Resources at the end of this lesson for a list of books]. The spell check and grammar check in your word processing program is usually a very Neanderthal program asset which is not sensitive to context, definitions, balance, and other elements that make for good writing. These tools, though helpful, cannot be your only source of help for polishing your work. For example, the spell check cannot tell you that you have misspelled words such as "there," when in the context of the writing it should have been spelled "their," or "bear," when it should have been "bare," etc. A paralegal with top writing skills is valuable and appreciated by an attorney. Warning: However refined your writing skills become, never forget to give your drafts to your attorney for a check. Never assume you have done everything exactly as he wants it, because you can write with excellence and still have it changed by an attorney due to some content technicality that has to do with case law, rather than the laws of grammar. And legally, you cannot mail out any document that you draft without your attorney giving the approval; that's called "practicing law without a license" and it will land you in jail.
Public relations skills – Impeccable good manners, maintaining a good attitude in the face of adversity, a friendly demeanor, and the ability to smooth over tough situations are invaluable skills. You will want to always polish your public relations skills in order to perform your best and maintain the favor of your attorney and managing staff. If you have never taken a course study on different personality types, doing so will help you tremendously. If you have never read a book on public relations, do so immediately; and don't enter into your first firm without practicing the principles of good public relations. [see Resources at the bottom of this lesson]
Technical skills – The technical skills needed to perform your job well are skills that should be covered extensively in your paralegal course work as you earn your degree or certification. A few things to make sure you get in those courses include: form and format standards; proper legal notation for legal documents; protocol for disbursement of documents; electronic notarization process and procedures; scanning and file preservation of documents; Bates numbering system for legal documents; case studies research sources; proper document notation of cases; form and format for depositions
[1] and interrogatories
[2]; and basic firm to firm document communications protocol.
Research skills – This is another area that should be extensively covered in your paralegal degree or certification course work. If you have yet to enter into that course work, then the resources linked into this Paralegal Studies course will serve as a good starting point for research sources. You will need to go to each of the sites and spend a fair amount of time getting to know how each site works, what it provides and what the limits are of each site. Continuing education – Every two years, you are required to take a certain number of continuing education hours, depending upon your state laws. In general, it is good to seek to take a minimum of one to two courses every year, particularly in the first five years of your career. The one certain thing about the legal profession is that it is impossible to get bored, because everything is in a constant state of change. To be an excellent paralegal, you will need to stay on top of the system's changes and up-to-date on new laws that apply to the area of law that your attorney practices.
LEXIS NEXIS
Lexis Nexis®, is easily called the "mother source" of all legal research in the United States. This service is the largest compilation of public and private information on individuals available anywhere in the nation. You will be able to find out what types of property, education, businesses, friends, associates, vehicle tag numbers, driver's licenses, and much more, that an individual owns or has owned. If they are in the midst of litigation, bankruptcy, or a property sale, then you will be able to find it here. If they are in the midst of a divorce, or are recently married, you will find it here.
A medium-to-large-sized firm will always have a subscription to this service. However, be aware that it is a very expensive service, and therefore you should not necessarily expect the firm to give you an unbridled access to it unless it is directly needed by you on a daily basis to perform your job. Most paralegals only need to use it intermittently, because there are so many other effective sources available at a much lower, or no cost.
When I say it is expensive, here is an example from my own history. When I worked in the intellectual property [IP] group of the legal department for Texas Instruments a number of years ago, TI's monthly access fee to Lexis Nexis® was $44,000. Of course, it was a large corporate subscription that included everything imaginable, but expensive nonetheless.
It is a good practice to ask when interviewing if a firm subscribes to Lexis Nexis®, and if so, how much of your job will require daily use of those resources. In asking this type of question, you will let your interviewer know that you are not oblivious to your professional tools. It will also give you an answer by which to gauge the complexity of your new position. A paralegal who does not use Lexis Nexis® at least weekly serves in a position that is not heavy in research duties. This does not mean that research paralegals are higher, or have more prestige in the world of law. It simply means that you know going in that your new position will have more variety than straight research work. It is an answer that helps you to gauge whether the position will fit your personality and career needs. After all, if you can't sit still, what's the point of having 85 percent or more of your job performed on Lexis Nexis®? Conversely, if you don't care to chat people up or deal with public relations issues, then what is the point of seeking a position as an intake or deposition paralegal? Paralegals averse to public relations are better suited to positions heavy in research, and you would be well suited to spend your day on the famous Lexis Nexis® system.
Your Firm's Case Tracking Systems; eCase, Paradox, etc.
Each firm has a tracking system the paralegals use to centralize client cases and communicate with one another, especially between departments. Generally, a case is tracked from initial consultation, to intake, to medical if applicable, to research if required, to interrogatories, to probate if needed, to discovery, to deposition, to trial prep and to the trial itself, followed by attorney consultation and settlement offers. After a settlement offer has been accepted, the client is turned over to a client relations paralegal to help them keep up with the payment disbursements and all of the necessary paperwork to process payment. Every step of a case's progress is important to the client, particularly when they have no clue about what, if anything, is happening on their case. Many times the client expects more regular communications than firms and their lawyers give. So, you catch the calls asking the "what-for" questions. You, and every paralegal in the firm who is working on the case, must be ready to answer the client's questions. To do this effectively, you must have access to a tracking and filing system that is accurate and up-to-date.
In the mid-1980s, and all the way into the late 1990s, firms began implementing the latest and greatest tracking systems available, utilizing various computer programs to track the case development and progress. Two of the most popular programs used by firms were/are Paradox and eCase. Paradox has nearly faded out of law offices and eCase remains popular, especially among mass tort firms, where a single lawsuit may include 10,000 claimants.
PARADOX
Perhaps the earliest of the tracking programs, Paradox entered into the legal field in the mid 1980s in a DOS format. Over the years, different versions of this database manager were released, even adapting to the Windows systems that were beginning to dominate most offices. Many firms used the DOS version of Paradox until very recently. It was an "old faithful" for them -- reliable, even though it was very clunky and a somewhat complicated system for extracting data. In mass torte firms, paralegals must process literally hundreds of cases each year. To do this effectively, paralegals must be able to have an overview of their case load. They must be able to "see" all of their cases at a glance, and at once. Paradox made this part of case management a burden for the paralegal, and by the end of the '90s, Paradox began to be replaced by eCase.
eCASE
According to its website, eCase was "developed to work in conjunction with Needles® Case Management software; the program enables updated case information to be automatically exported intoeCaseStatus on a daily basis. Your clients then simply log into the program with an assigned user name and password to easily view their updated case file."
This is the easiest explanation of eCase I have located. It is very important for a firm to be able to have their clients access their case file. In terms of software development and computer progress for the paralegal, a system designed to give the client online access was previously unheard of, and yet proved a welcome relief from the non-stop phone calls from clients. The Needles® eCase system also created a transparency between the client and the attorney/paralegal that was not previously possible. This transparency helps to increase trust and eliminate errors in case facts. The client has an opportunity to identify anything that is recorded wrong before the error costs the case time.
OTHER SYSTEMS
Today, small-to-medium-sized firms use other programs to track their client cases and transfer information between the various paralegals who work on each case. Some of those programs include some of the more commonly known databases, such as dBase III and Microsoft's Access. The ease with which paralegals and legal secretaries use Windows systems on their computers, and the current expectation of the client to produce immediate answers to common questions, lends itself to an increased use of such tracking systems. Indeed, the old filing systems of firms in the early 1980s are long gone and the "research stacks," as they were known, are now categorized as "case history rooms."
