Paralegals serve an important purpose in the legal system. They are responsible for very important tasks that help other legal professionals, such as Las Vegas Criminal Lawyers, do their jobs and keep the courts running. We will look at what paralegals do and why they are so important.
One of the major roles that paralegals serve to law firms is the role of a case manager. Paralegals are responsible for making sure a case has all of the appropriate steps taken when it’s given to a law firm. This includes scheduling and calendar related tasks, fact checking, contacting clients, and summarizing documents among many other jobs. All of these tasks are often tedious small jobs that, if left up to the attorney or lawyer to execute, would eat into his or her time preventing the more complex aspects of the job from being done. Paralegals can be tasked with this dirty work so to speak and free the legal professional up to focus on their own work.
In many cases, a paralegal can specialize in a particular field of legal work. This includes anything from family law where the paralegal might help conference a divorce case or read a will, to corporate law where the paralegal may well spend most of their time filling documents. If the paralegal specializes in civil law, he or she might have to do an extensive amount of footwork tracking down witnesses and conducting interviews.
Paralegals are able to do quite a lot of legal hefty work. However, most states have strict rules on certain things they cannot do. Paralegals cannot, under any circumstances, actually give legal advice. They also cannot represent clients in court, set legal fees, or even accept a new client into a practice. For all that, they are barred from doing; the job does come with many benefits to balance that out. For example, a paralegal can choose from a number of different job types that can suit both their personality and interest. As mentioned above, setting in a cubicle and preparing documents as a corporate law paralegal may not exactly excite many, while some may prefer it to the hustle and bustle of preparing evidence and rushing from courtroom to courtroom. Likewise, paralegals have the opportunity to seek employment with a firm either full-time or as a freelancer. Freelancing carries a greater number of responsibilities but also allows the paralegal more freedom in their lifestyle.
It cannot be stated enough that paralegals are an important and integral component of the legal system. Law firms not only depend on them to carry the weight of the more burdensome workload, but also because they can dramatically cut the cost of a case for both the firm and the clientele. If firms actually had to hire and assign multiple lawyers or attorneys to a case, it would make simple legal services far too expensive for the vast majority of people. Becoming a paralegal does not require the same amount of education and testing that lawyers and other experts have to go through, thus also making it easier for paralegals to accept lower wages comparatively.