The Traditional Setting Still Employs Seven Out of Ten Paralegals
This fact should tell us that there are lots of different paralegals out there in law firms who do not fall under Litigation, Real Estate, and Bankruptcy practice areas. These were chosen simply to paint a picture of complex activity done by thoroughly qualified and fully occupied professional paralegals. Thousands of paralegals work under various practice area specialty names.
Perhaps the first one, which in many ways is more challenging than any other, is the general practice. This means that you must be prepared to study up on areas you have not handled before. Once these specialty areas are fully absorbed into the conscious and subconscious they can get much easier than they might first appear, but the generalist paralegal "hath a continual challenge": facing what comes through the door next. Most general practice areas are simply short ways of saying, "We handle about five practice areas, plus, Mr. Client, if you get a D.U.I., we will represent you."
There are also numerous other practice areas:
- Domestic Paralegals
- Bilingual Generalist Paralegals
- Workers' Comp Paralegals
- Personal Injury Paralegals
- Insurance Defense Paralegals
- Water Law Paralegals
- Antitrust Paralegals
- Immigration and Naturalization Paralegals
- Entertainment Law Paralegals
- Civil Rights Paralegals
- Employment Law Paralegals
- Environmental Paralegals
- Product Liability Paralegals
- Lender Liability Paralegals
- Securities Paralegals
- Corporate Paralegals
- Criminal Paralegals
- Commercial Paralegals
An overall career formula . . .may be to get wide experience as you begin and also work toward a specialty as opportunities arise.
In-House Counsel
A new association is rising up to represent a growing number of paralegals who populate the halls of Corporate America. Corporations must have counsel, and small companies may have an attorney on retainer. In this situation, the paralegal deals with the company as a client and bills time. As companies grow, they continue this relationship with an attorney or switch to a larger law firm that can provide a full array of services. There may be a team of paralegals and attorneys that handle the XYZ corporation's legal matters: employment law matters, intellectual property matters, contract and vendor matters, and corporate matters.
Eventually the company sees a real need to hire an attorney to work with both the officers and executives and deal with outside counsel. Sometimes the in-house counsel office remains small-the attorney has a secretary and maybe a paralegal. The meetings (small matters of representation and corporate activities) stay in-house, and then larger litigated or complex matters go to the outside counsel. This is the point where many companies are, in terms of their legal support. The inside attorney, a full-time employee of the corporation, and sometimes a vice president handle all legal matters and then determine what goes outside.
Corporate counsel legal assistants It really does not matter what service the company performs or product it makes: you, as a paralegal, could be working for a company in any state that has hired an attorney who is full-time, in-house corporate counsel. As these positions become more and more numerous, the quality of paralegal work in this area increasingly attains its own identity.
Corporate law, employment law, intellectual property, and other matters increasingly fall to in-house support. A paralegal who works for an interstate gas company says she loves the job because of the "predictable variety and the travel." She says, "I travel just enough to keep things interesting, but not so much that it gets tedious." Corporate counsel paralegals are a growing army out there; and with a national association (the American Corporate Legal Assistants Association), the use of paralegals in this area will grow even more and benefit from the identity that the association creates.
Why is paralegal work in the corporate world growing?
More and more accountants and executives in corporate America are concluding that they can hire attorneys and paralegals as employees. From a career point of view, a paralegal has an opportunity to be a corporate employee, getting benefits and the chance to be promoted within the corporation. The trend toward larger in-house counsel staffs (bringing in greater numbers of legal support to handle large litigation matters) means that the paralegal will become even more viable. That viability will increase because the billing system of the firm is not in force. If a paralegal can do a job and is trained for it, the paralegal will probably be given the responsibility, in view of the fact that the paralegal will still be supervised by in-house counsel. There will not be an economic incentive to give the work to the attorney.
A few specific growth areas are also contributing to the growth of paralegal employment within corporations.
Growth in Insurance A large and successful national insurance company is building an addition onto one of their regional headquarters. Why? Their litigation department will be housed there. Insurance companies across the country are concluding that instead of "farming out" their litigation matters to large firms, they can hire a firm, make them full-time employees, and keep them busy. The insurance company would no longer scrutinize large bills with hourly fees; it cuts paychecks to attorneys and paralegals who are their own employees.
In addition, trained paralegals are applying for and getting positions with titles like "policy service representative," for which they are being trained for several months. One paralegal exclaimed to me, "I am having to learn about the insurance laws for seven different states in our region.
And after that, I have to be ready to train our agents concerning their policies in all these different states!" Insurance is a field that promises great growth for people trained as paralegals. The paralegal status will continue to benefit them all the way through the promotions in their career as insurance professionals.
