Executive stress

As legal executives aim for parity with solicitors, paralegals are having a harder time, reports Scott Neilson

Things have never been so good for non-solicitor fee earners at law firms, at least in some ways.

Shortfalls in qualified solicitors in some fields mean that firms have extended the recruitment net to include legal executives and paralegals - the latter often being law students who cannot get training contracts, ironically.

This raises the question of whether firms see paralegal staff as cheap labour.

However, for the Institute of Legal Executives (ILEX), which this year is celebrating its 40th anniversary, things seem pretty rosy.

Membership has reached 22,000, while last month the Bar Council approved ILEX fellows to instruct barristers directly under the BarDIRECT scheme.

ILEX president Mary Dowson said: 'The BarDIRECT scheme is a further step for legal executives to be recognised on a par with solicitors.'

And Ms Dowson marked the start of the anniversary by announcing earlier this month that ILEX plans to push the boundaries of legal executives' work in the next year.

'We intend that 2003 will see legal executives acting as advocates in some criminal cases and exercising the independent right to conduct litigation,' she said.

'The search for equality with barristers and solicitors is key to ILEX's ambitions,' Ms Dowson says.

'Legal executives already act as commissioners for oaths and as advocates in certain civil and family cases.

With extended rights of audience in civil and matrimonial proceedings, they can now represent their clients in the county courts and magistrates' courts, which enables them to manage the case from start to finish.'

Phillip Partridge, a legal executive with Leicester firm Marrons, maintains it is vital that ILEX continues to create the conditions in which legal executives can exercise independent rights to conduct litigation.

'It is in the public interest to provide choice for the consumer.

There is a vast number of unmet needs among businesses and the general community, and expanding the role of the legal executive will allow these needs to be addressed,' Mr Partridge says.

Legal executives are fee-earning lawyers.

Their day-to-day work is similar to that of a high street solicitor.

However, only ILEX's 6,000 fellows can actually call themselves legal executives.

Most trainee legal executives combine their study for the ILEX qualification with a job working in a law firm or in-house legal department.

The ground recently gained by ILEX is in stark contrast to the lot of paralegals - that other non-solicitor fee-earning grouping within the profession.

As legal executives go from strength to strength, paralegals look to be losing ground - and fast.

Law firms are now in the dock on charges of not paying overtime, getting their paralegals to do the work of solicitors for a fraction of the cost and inducing legal practice course (LPC) graduates into jobs on the promise of a training contract - only to dishonour the bargain at a later date.

Many of the problems currently surrounding paralegals could be put down to representation.

So, is now not the time for legal executives to take paralegals under their wing? After all, ILEX already offers paralegal training for those who do not meet entry criteria for becoming legal executives.

The minimum requirement is usually four GCSEs, although ILEX will consider mature students without formal qualifications but with an appropriate background.

ILEX secretary-general Diane Burleigh sees nothing to be gained from lumping legal executives in with paralegals.

She is keen to keep the boundaries between the two well defined.

'Unlike legal executives, nobody sees paralegals as a separate branch of the profession.

They have no structure and really no professional body looking after them.

Therefore, law firms see them as cheap but bright cannon-fodder', Ms Burleigh says.

'By contrast, a legal executive is a qualified lawyer.

So it's a bit like chalk and cheese.

'Our whole ethos is that we are looking at people who are going to become lawyers.

We have no strategy at the moment to create an ILEX division for all these law graduates who can't find a training contract.'

She adds: 'I really sympathise with the LPC graduates who are working as paralegals.

They have gone through their educational process wanting to be a solicitor.

And it takes some of them quite a long time to realise that they may not be able to achieve that in the way that they thought they would.

There are not enough training contracts.

An alternative route through ILEX, however, can still get them there in the end.'

So, are law firms taking advantage of their paralegal staff? In essence, this was the question posed by the Trainee Solicitors Group (TSG) late last year, as it pored over its latest set of six-monthly helpline figures.

The TSG reported that more than a quarter (28%) of the 629 calls that it had dealt with within the half-year period had been from paralegals alone, a rise on previous years.

TSG chairwoman Nadia Akhtar says the jump in calls from paralegals was large enough to bring the issue to her group's attention for the first time.

Ms Akhtar says an increasing number of legal practice course (LPC) graduates are being taken on as paralegals on the promise of securing a training contract after a period of probation - only to be told they are out of luck six months later.

The law firms in question, she says, never have any intention of offering a contract - they are out to take advantage of workers who are keen, skilled, and readily available as 'cheap labour'.

Ms Akhtar explains: 'We are concerned that they are being misled and that six months down the line they are finding themselves behind everyone else and not that far ahead of the next wave of LPC graduates.

'Bearing in mind that they aren't guaranteed a contract, no matter what has been suggested or promised, graduates have to ask themselves if they really want to go down this road.

Legal experience is always useful.

But it isn't necessarily beneficial when it comes to helping you find a training contract', she says.

John Stacey-Hibbert, general secretary of the National Association of Paralegals, says law firms have now become accustomed to 'getting it on the cheap' - using paralegals to do the work of a solicitor and then remunerating them, safe in the knowledge that this particular branch of the profession does not at present benefit even from a professional minimum wage.

'We get a lot of graduates asking us what can they do about it', says Mr Stacey-Hibbert.

'One graduate rang us and asked us what she could do about a firm that had offered her only 5 a week.

The firm told her there are so many graduates out there that they could take their pick.

If she didn't want to work for nothing, somebody else would.

'Some of the bigger firms in London have woken up to the reality that they have a large pool of graduates who are desperate to get their foot in the door and will cling to the hope that they might get a contract.

But nowadays, I estimate there are about twice as many LPC graduates as there are contracts available.'

Martina McCormack, a former paralegal, manages a team of litigation and dispute resolution paralegals at City giant Clifford Chance.

She is unsurprised by the TSG's concerns.

'A paralegal on my team three years ago was applying for contracts.

She applied to an east London firm and they sent her an offer letter, to take her on as a paralegal.

They said if she did well they would give her a contract.

Needless to say they didn't.

There's definitely scope for exploitation,' Ms McCormack says.

And it is not just graduates who are complaining of exploitation.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence, says Ms McCormack, of law firms pressuring their career paralegals into working unpaid overtime and refusing to offer them anything in the way of formal training.

Much of the problem, explains Ms Akhtar, is that paralegals work in a stressful and results-driven profession but fall outside the Law Society's training regulations.

'Paralegals have only the protection of general employment law.

Yet many are actually doing the same work as trainees and therefore should be entitled to the same protection in terms of a minimum salary and standards of training and supervision in the workplace.'

The issue is clouded by a lack of hard data.

For example, no one seems to know how many of paralegals are actively seeking training contracts (Mr Stacey-Hibbert estimates the figure to be about 30%).

Nor is it known if firms are offering their paralegals (career or graduate) much in the way of training.

'You're dealing with a transient market,' Ms McCormack points out.

'All of the coming and going with paralegals - many of whom are temps - means it would be very difficult to maintain even a database of names.

Somebody should attempt it, nevertheless.'

Meanwhile, the Law Society is quick to point out the potential pitfalls of regulating paralegals.

'If the Society attempted to influence in some way the relationship between paralegals and law firms, then the firms which wanted to escape such influence could describe paralegals in other ways, such as secretaries or legal assistants,' a spokesman says.

Indeed, at the heart of the problem lies the question of definition.

Paralegal is a generic term that means simply to 'assist a solicitor'.

Perhaps the most useful definition is found in a 1997 Law Society report that defines paralegals as 'non-admitted staff, employed in private practices, who spend at least some of their time on direct fee-earning work'.

However, prospects for career paralegals may be on the up.

Firms have already begun to take this branch of the profession more seriously, Ms McCormack says.

'People at the very highest level in this firm are interested in what goes in within my team of paralegals.

There's a huge interest in attracting the best paralegals - not just at Clifford Chance but throughout the whole of the Square Mile.'

Sian Regan, who heads up the legal support division at legal recruitment company Hays ZMB, agrees.

She says the UK's approach to paralegals will slowly come to resemble the US model, where paralegals have for some time now had their own qualifications, state-based associations and a vocal coast-to-coast governing body.

North American firms tend to see paralegals as a profession within a profession, she says.

Furthermore, there are plenty of courses on offer with which career paralegals can bolster their bargaining power.

The National Association of Paralegals has developed the post-graduate diploma in paralegal practice.

The course can either be done full-time over five weeks or part-time over 22 weeks.

Meanwhile, career paralegals can always take advantage of the training on offer from ILEX.

Sheffield-based national firm Irwin Mitchell has taken a lead in this by offering ILEX training in-house to secretarial and paralegal staff.

Both Ms McCormack and Ms Regan say other firms are likely to follow Irwin Mitchell's example.

All of this may warm the heart of career paralegals, most of whom already enjoy salaries ranging from 17,500 to 26,000, while US law firms in London pay their paralegals around 15% more.

Top UK career paralegals can even demand between 40,000 and 50,000.

However, the earning capacity of the more focused paralegals will provide cold comfort to LPC graduates.

But these would-be lawyers do in fact have one further option, points out Ms Akhtar.

'There are a lot of high street firms out there with training contracts.

But they don't necessarily have the resources to place expensive advertising in the legal press and on the Web.

And they can't pay what the large firms pay.

They also look for their trainees at different times of the year.

There are other opportunities, other ways around this problem - if graduates are willing to broaden their horizons.'

Scott Neilson is a freelance journalist