Escaping from purgatory

In SJ 159/05, in an article entitled ‘Paralegal Purgatory’, Luke Murphy wrote a positive, balanced,
and supportive article about paralegals. But his article also demonstrated the unhelpfully narrow focus that most solicitors have about the nascent paralegal profession.

If they think of paralegals at
all, most solicitors focus on the plight of legal practice course (LPC) graduates without training contracts. These reluctant paralegals understandably see their paralegal status as a badge of failure, or at least as the gap year from Hell, spent in Murphy’s ‘paralegal purgatory’.

Most commentary, even supportive commentary like Murphy’s, defines paralegals by direct comparison to solicitors on issues like competency, training, prospects, and salaries. Too often the underlying assumption is that paralegals are the police community support officers (PCSO) of the legal world: inferior ‘fake’ legal practitioners slowly replacing real solicitors to save costs.

There is clearly some truth in cost savings increasingly being sought through the delegation of fee-earning work to the most junior employee competent to handle it. But just looking at paralegals as PCSOs is somewhat narcissistic, reducing paralegals to little more than pawns in
the tussle between solicitor employers and solicitor employees.

Yet look beyond solicitors’ practices and it quickly becomes evident that most paralegals
are not frustrated solicitors-in-waiting, just as most nurses are not failed doctors. Instead, they are career paralegals, a greater number of which work in-house (mostly without solicitor oversight), and considerably more work in the unregulated sector.

This is why Murphy’s questioning of the professional paralegal register (PPR) currently being created by the Institute of Paralegals (IoP), in conjunction with the National Association
of Licensed Paralegals, is so misplaced.

There is a whole world of unregulated legal practitioners out there who want to be held
to professional standards and to be given professional recognition in return. They are not wannabe solicitors for the most part,
if only because their jobs, practices, and companies usually only exist because solicitors can’t afford to or don’t want to do that type of work.

Most paralegals want additional responsibility and greater recognition. They are more than willing to accept professional obligations in return. But rights and recognition can only be given
to identifiable groups which
can tick the obvious boxes (standards, education, etc.).

Right now, ‘paralegal’ is a default, catch-all term meaning everyone who is not a regulated lawyer. The PPR is part of the IoP’s push to create the essential foundations for the nascent paralegal profession.

In 2015, one of those
essential foundations is actively addressing consumer protection and expectation. The PPR will allow consumers and the legal profession to identify those paralegals who have voluntarily chosen to assume professional obligations. While relatively unimportant to paralegals in solicitors’ firms, it is extremely important for the majority of paralegals who are not. SJ

James O'Connell is head of policy at the Institute of Paralegals