Paralegals in a union????  Yep.  According to The Star-Telegram.com, protesters who marched Monday morning in Ft. Worth weren't airline employees, and airline management wasn't the target. This demonstration was conducted by employees of the Allied Pilots Association, and the managers being criticized are union pilots. The Allied Pilots Staff Employee Association represents 23 employees...

Outsourcing to paralegals and attorneys in India remains a booming business.  In fact, Dupont, the model for progressive paralegal departments, outsourced so much work to LPOs (Legal Process Outsourcing) last year, that it saved the company over $500,000 in legal fees. In an article in Time magazine this morning, Tom Sager, chief litigation counsel for Dupont, said, "There's been some...

Talk about capitalizing on someone else's misery!  According an article in the The Tampa Tribune, law firms are scrambling for more staff, particularly paralegals, in an effort to meet the wave of foreclosures in hard-hit areas of the country. One Tampa law firm, Florida Default Law Group, filed more than 400 foreclosure lawsuits in Hillsborough County in February alone, according to a Tampa...

This is one of those trivia facts that you're not too sure what to do with but makes a difference in how you might perceive the paralegal field. Most schools, articles, books, tall tales, and verbal chronologies of the paralegal field identify the field as starting in or around 1978 or so.  In fact, the first paralegal program at UCLA started about then. However, in a solicitation for...

Yesterday, Tita Brewster, President of the National Association of Legal Assistants and I were invited to speak on the topic of paralegals for the Podcast show, Lawyer2Lawyer.  This was the first time I've participated in this type of show.  (Yes, I've done radio & TV, video, newspaper, magazine articles but nothing so today.) What an interesting experience!  We are now...

A new show on Fox TV starring Julianna Margulies is one of the few shows prominently featuring legal assistants as part of the legal team.  The show, Canterbury's Law, has been sent to reviewers for prescreening.  Described as a "dark legal drama", the show stars Margulies as a convincing lawyer whose only true solace is her work. (I'm sure this doesn't sound like anyone we...

Here's a twist:  While many paralegals aggressively seek to expand their assignments, a New York lawyer gets disbarred for overusing his paralegals and running afoul of ethics violations. According to The New York Law Journal, real estate lawyer Keith G. Rubenstein, eager to bolster his shaky finances, signed an unusual arrangement to serve as a front for a Queens personal injury practice...

Halleleujah!  Rarely do law firms or corporations acknowledge contribution of paralegals when a major case is won.  Paralegals may work until midnight for months giving up weekends, holidays and birthdays but how often do we see their names mentioned when attorneys take bows over a major win?  Going against tradition, the DOJ issued a press release today about a major win that also...

Practically every day, in one legal publication or another, you're going to read about how the billable hour will eventually meet its demise.  Whether this occurs in the next 10-20 years is questionable.  What we do know, is that CorporateAmerica is pushing back hard against inflated hourly rates including paralegal rates that can go as high as $250.00 per hour or more. When news broke...

Finally, a firm that is honest about what it's doing.  Only, I'm not so sure this is good news for paralegals.  It may be good news for graduate students in India and for clients opting for lower cost legal fees.  It seems like you can have one or the other but never both. Howrey has opened an office in India.  "It's not outsourcing," insists Robert Ruyak, managing...