With law firms taking on more and more non-qualified staff, paralegals are enjoying a boom time. but the prospect of a training contract can be illusory, reports Rachel Rothwell


If there is one thing that law firms just cannot seem to get enough of at the moment, it is paralegal staff.



With their numbers now totalling an estimated 150,000, paralegals already easily outnumber the 93,000-or-so solicitors practising in England and Wales – and a recent survey showed that some 90% of London firms are planning to take on more this year (see [2004] Gazette, 18 November, 6).



But why the sudden rush on paralegals – and could they pose a threat to those in proud possession of a practising certificate?


Management consultant Tony Williams, former managing partner of City giant Clifford Chance, is in no doubt as to why paralegals have suddenly become so attractive – technology.


He explains: ‘Paralegals can be very cost effective compared to trainees and young lawyers, and developments in technology mean they can be used much more. You can now get good-quality templates, so that the risk management aspect is more effective. On-line training is available for different levels of experience and good document software makes it easier to scan, index and process documents, which takes away a lot of the potential risk in using non-qualified staff.’


But paralegals are not the legal equivalent of supermarket shelf stackers, confined to monotonous tasks. In fact, if you listen to John Stacey-Hibbert, chairman of the National Association of Paralegals (NAP), then anything solicitors can do, paralegals can do – better. Or at a lower salary, at least.


He says: ‘Paralegals are not office fodder – they handle their own caseloads, and in fact a paralegal with six years’ experience will be doing exactly the same work as the solicitor who is employing them. Most of what a solicitor does is more about being a businessman than a lawyer, and a lot of it is very routine – conveyancing or [low-value] litigation, for example, or criminal matters, where the solicitor instructs a barrister if a case gets more involved. All that work can be done just as easily by a paralegal as by a solicitor. There are very few things on which a solicitor has a statutory monopoly.’


Mr Stacey-Hibbert plans to bolster the status of non-qualified legal staff with a paralegal licence in February. Paralegals will need to show a certain level of legal knowledge and competence to obtain a licence, and will then be subject to the NAP’s disciplinary code, with its power to revoke the licence. They will be obliged to keep up to 12 hours of continuing professional development a year.


He says: ‘This will be a great marketing tool for firms – many firms are already listing all their staff on their Web site, and they will be able to say that all their staff are experienced, qualified people, which will carry more assurance for clients. We would also hope that licensed paralegals will be able to command a higher salary.’


But Giles Rubens, management consultant at Hildebrandt International in London, is less convinced. He says: ‘I expect the cost of becoming licensed might be quite substantial, but would that make paralegals better able to do their job, especially when you look at the more process-driven operations?


‘I’m not sure there would be that much interest for firms in getting their people licensed. Some firms will just prefer to put in place very good training that is specifically related to the task people will have to perform.’


Mr Rubens says that large national law firms such as DLA and Eversheds have been hugely successful in using a process-driven approach to maximise their competitiveness. But not every firm has caught on, with some still wedded to that old-fashioned notion that legal work is best done by lawyers.


He has an inkling as to why: ‘When you advocate the use of paralegal staff, what you are really saying to solicitors is that, yes, you are a master craftsman, but machinery has come in that means things no longer need to be done by hand. Firms find it hard to come to terms with the fact that the skills of their craft, that they have spent a lot of time honing, are not always valuable. They are denying the realities of the market.’


So who are these paralegal staff? Most of them are career paralegals (not legal executives), with no desire or inclination to qualify as a solicitor. For them, there is decent pay, with an average salary of £19,000 in London for those with less than a year’s experience, rising to £40,000 for experienced staff.


But then there is the paralegal underclass. A growing number of non-qualified fee-earners are law school graduates, looking for training contracts. Some two-thirds of trainees have worked as a paralegal before securing their contract, in a practice that is now becoming the norm. But they are the lucky ones. In many cases, would-be trainees find the Holy Grail of a training contract dangled tantalisingly before them in a bid to make them accept derisory salaries – but the offer proves as illusive as the Grail itself.


Mr Stacey-Hibbert recounts: ‘I recently received a telephone call from a young woman who had been offered a paralegal job with a five-partner London firm, on the basis that if they like her, they may offer her a training contract. She asked me what kind of salary she should expect, and I said anything from £16 to £24,000. But what had they offered her? Five pounds a week – and that was only because they had to pay her something [for indemnity purposes]. They told her that if she doesn’t want it, there are dozens of people out there looking for the legal work experience.’


The Trainee Solicitors Group (TSG) helpline took 185 calls from paralegals last year, with many complaining of empty promises by law firms. TSG chairman Peter Wright says: ‘Paralegals often take a position with the “promise” of a training contract that does not materialise. They are kept hanging on 18 months down the line, but they can’t get the high salary and promotion prospects that a solicitor has – and they can only count a maximum of six months of paralegal work towards their training contract once they eventually secure one. Where firms are deliberately making a promise they don’t intend to keep, it is a very cynical strategy.’


He adds: ‘Paralegals often handle caseloads of more than 100 cases, and in fact they tend to have far more responsibility than a trainee does. But unlike trainees, there is no protection for them against being sued by the firm if things go wrong with their work. A few years ago, some firms did start taking measures against paralegal staff, and that is a worry.’


The paralegal recruitment market may be blossoming at the moment, but if you follow the logic on a step further, it leads in only one direction – Asia. Mr Williams says: ‘Offshoring is already occurring in some clearly defined areas such as patents and trademarks, but it could well develop beyond that in the next three to five years.’


Mr Rubens says: ‘Once you can deliver services through processes, you do not need to pay English rates. Anything that is process-driven can be done in India or Malaysia, and that is what is likely to happen in five years’ time. Written English is very good in India, which makes it ideally suited for outsourcing legal services.’

He adds: ‘There may be a lot of opportunities for paralegals at the moment, but they could be short-lived as more work is done abroad. Paralegals’ days are numbered.’