Here is a classic case of "everything old is new again". The Wall Street Journal today reported that the latest in vacations is the "staycation" - staying at home instead of getting away on your personal time off.  The ABA Journal picked up the article with a story about a frugal lawyer who chose to stay at home instead of spending two weeks at a lovely beach....

We may be about 4 months late with this report but heck, we just found it.  The ABA's Law Practice magazine issued its 19th annual report on what's hot; what's not in the legal field. Here is a refreshing look at some interesting and exciting new developments specifically for paralegals:Hot New Areas for Paralegals: Virtual Assistants.  A form of outsourcing that is new. VAs are...

The National Law Journal published an article the other day entitled "Ecosystem of Legal Services Is Evolving".  It was written by Mehul Patel who was previously the Chief Marketing Officer of a major San Francisco law firm who is now the EVP of Axiom Legal, a "new" type of contract attorney provider.  Only Axiom Legal does not claim to be a contract attorney...

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...