Why regulation and licensing are vital
Regulation offers protection for paralegals
The National Association of Licensed Paralegals
"The collective voice of the Paralegal profession"
Are legal services better provided by professions that are self-regulatory, that are regulated by the Government, or that fall somewhere in between?
The National Association of Licensed Paralegals believes that the profession is better served if paralegals take steps to ensure self-regulation. As a result, the Association has introduced measures to ensure the paralegal profession is properly regulated and it has implemented a code of practice. Licences are also issued to ensure high quality standards of work.
Meet key criteria to obtain a licence
For the Association to issue a licence to a paralegal, the paralegal must demonstrate knowledge of law, competence, dedication, good standing and continuing professional development.
It is essential that paralegals strive for personal and professional excellence. They should possess integrity, professional skills and dedication to the improvement and expansion of the paralegal role in the delivery of legal services. The Association believes that the best way to maintain this is that all allied legal professions remain autonomous. Paralegals should retain primary control of the development of their profession but collaborate closely with the other sectors.
Skilled paralegals should have a distinct identification - which they can achieve through regulation and by obtaining a licence from the Association. They are then bound by the rules and codes of The National Association of Paralegals.
All acceptable qualifications will be considered to show knowledge of substantive law and procedure. To demonstrate competence, a paralegal must have the necessary period of qualifying experience. For dedication, paralegals must undertake to observe, perform and be bound by the Association's rules of conduct and their grievance and disciplinary procedures. They must also be of good standing, shown by a 'certificate of fitness', and continue to develop professionally (at present 10 hours a year).
Self-regulation of paralegals helps solicitors
Without self-regulation, paralegals as a body are not able to expand to properly fulfil their true potential to enable solicitors to concentrate on the more complex cases, to help increase the productivity of the firm and to increase the efficiency of the legal profession and the confidence of its clients.
Collectively, paralegals form the largest section of the legal profession and they also exist, across the board, in many areas in commerce, industry and the public sector. Whereas there are some 112,500 practising solicitors, more than 200,000 unadmitted staff carry out direct 'fee-earning' work. Out of this number only some 7,100 are legal executives. The rest are, by definition, 'paralegals'.
Statistics show that the majority of Paralegals in law firms work with minimum supervision and as many as 76% of those questioned by the study only discussed the more complex cases with the person to whom they were responsible, it can be seen how large a portion of the legal work undertaken by the legal profession as a whole is, in fact, carried out by paralegals.
Paralegal role is crucial
Therefore, the role of the paralegal is crucial to the practical and economic sustainability of the provision of legal services by solicitors' practices. They are an extremely important part of the legal profession, but an underestimated one.
In the past, before the Association introduced regulation, the main difficulty for paralegals was that, unlike Legal Executives, they had not been specifically identifiable. The title 'paralegal' on its own, is a generic term and does not distinguish the skilled from the unskilled. The Association considered that in order to take full advantage of all that fee-earning unadmitted staff in law practices had to offer, skilled para legals had to have a distinct identification which could only come about by regulation.
Clementi Report
In 2003 the Government commissioned Sir David Clementi to look into the question of regulating the provision of legal services and to report on his recommendations. The Clementi Report was not a report on the regulation of professions, per se, but a regulation of the provision of legal services. It was indetified during the consultation period, that nowhere in Sir David Clementi's original Scoping Study were Paralegals brought into the equation and it was considered that to leave matters to the Clementi Report would leave Paralegals in the wilderness.
The question of rights of audience and other extension of rights, which would make the paralegal more functional within the legal profession, were not within the remit of Dr Clementi and his report. They do not fall within the regulatory gaps with which the Report was (inter alia) concerned. Such matters are already regulated by statute.
Development of career Paralegals
Today there is a continuing need for the development of career paralegals. This is especially so with the increasing number of law graduates in recent years unable to gain a training contract or afford the LPC. The Post Graduate Diploma in Paralegal Practice was introduced as alternative career path for Paralegals.
Universities are now starting to realise the necessity for an alternative career route for their undergraduates. The University of Sunderland in 2005, instituted, in conjunction with the Association, a programme whereby undergraduates could choose to take the Association's Higher Diploma in Paralegal Practice in addition to their degree course so that, on graduation, they graduate with the joint qualifications plus Graduate Membership of the Association. This is proving a very popular and successful joint venture.
The Association hopes that a specifically identifiable paralegal branch of the legal profession will encourage universities and undergraduates alike to seriously consider the career as a paralegal as a viable alternative. One of the difficulties in this, as identified by the Trainee Solicitor's group, is that there have previously been no regulations or guidelines relating to Paralegals, or indeed even a definition to clarify the exact status of someone undertaking such a role.
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