Paralegals and lawyers - a team approach.

Several years ago, while trying a personal injury case, I attempted to introduce an important piece of evidence. Opposing counsel promptly objected. He said the evidence had never been furnished to him in discovery. The trial judge was ready to sustain the objection until my paralegal stepped in and saved the day.

She tapped me on the sleeve and told me that we had. a letter on file to prove we had notified opposing counsel about this evidence some months before trial. She then produced that letter within 30 seconds.

After reviewing the letter, the judge overruled the objection and admitted the evidence. Without my paralegal's assistance, I probably never would have been able to find that letter, and the objection would likely have been sustained.

Paralegals can offer tremendous assistance in all aspects of litigation. If you arc not using them, you should. Paralegals can perform all services a lawyer performs except give legal advice, take depositions, accept fees from a client, and try cases. Here's how you can make the most effective use of your paralegals.

Case Management

The initial client interview is a perfect time to introduce the client to the paralegal. After all, the paralegal is the person the client will have the most contact with throughout the case. The interview also gives the paralegal the opportunity to obtain factual and witness information from the client and to establish rapport with the client. It also lets the client see the confidence you have in the paralegal and lays the groundwork for more detailed discussions between the client and the paralegal.

Although there will be times when the client prefers to talk exclusively with the attorney, this is not generally necessary. I have found that once the client sees the confidence the attorney has in the paralegal, the need for attorney-client discussions wanes, and a rapport with the paralegal is easily established and maintained.

The paralegal can monitor the case from this point on. All incoming mail and communications about the case should be directed to the paralegal, who can then immediately inform you of whatever needs your attention--motions, notices of depositions, discovery responses, or client questions. My paralegals usually communicate with my clients and opposing attorneys more than I do which leaves me out of the phone-tag game and saves me time.

A good paralegal keeps a case moving toward trial. All clients are interested in having their cases resolved promptly. The paralegal helps achieve this by making sure that discovery requests are sent out promptly to opposing parties and that your client responds to discovery requests on time.

The paralegal can review the discovery responses received from the opposing party for clarity and completeness. A good paralegal also initiates informal dialogue, with opposing counsel to ensure that satisfactory supplemental responses are forthcoming or prepares a motion to compel completion if opposing counsel won't cooperate.

Your paralegal can keep you apprised of the status of discovery. A well-trained paralegal will make sure that the discovery depositions of all parties and important witnesses are timely set and confirmed. Your paralegal can meet the client to obtain the necessary information and documents to fully answer the opposing party's discovery.

Investigation

A paralegal can be the one to locate, contact, and interview witnesses as well as summarize those interviews. The paralegal con also schedule the witnesses for deposition and trial and maintain contact math them throughout the case. This allow you to keep tabs on a witness who might otherwise move or change jobs without notifying your office. It also keeps the witness interested in your case.

Researching and Drafting

Legal research may be the area in which paralegals are least effective, depending on the nature of the work you need done. But unless your case is completely novel, a good paralegal should be able to do basic research of the case law and statutes and apply pertinent statutes to the case at hand.

I encourage my paralegals to keep abreast of developments in the law and to attend legal seminars regularly, particularly in their respective areas of expertise. The more proficient their skills are, the more useful their work is to me.

Depending on the extent of your inhouse library and your access to computers, hospitals, universities, and other facilities, paralegals can also save you untold hours locating and obtaining research materials about the medical, engineering, or other technical aspects of your case.

A paralegal familiar with litigation can draft virtually all the routine documents required for your case--complaints, answers, motions, and discovery requests. I have dictated only one complaint in the past five years because the paralegals who work for me are so efficient at drafting them. I save a great deal of time by not having to sit down and review the file, gather documents, and dictate complaints. MN, part is to carefully review the paperwork before filing. Even then, I make only occasional, minor changes.

Experienced paralegals can prepare routine discovery requests for a case and respond to at least two-thirds of the discovery requests your client is likely to receive. The more specialized the practice --or the paralegal--the higher that percentage will be. In domestic cases, for example, my paralegals prepare and respond to 95 percent of all discovery requests. I simply review their work.

Depositions

In complex litigation, particularly cases with voluminous documents, it is essential that you take the paralegal most familiar with the case with you to important depositions. The paralegal can assist with document retrieval while you are examining the witness and can also learn important facts about the case that you might otherwise miss.

Just as at trial, if you are prepared to present a document to the witness being examined, you may be able to obtain favorable answers that you might not otherwise get if you have to spend time searching for the document. As we all know, deponents will use such a delay to talk with their attorney or review documents and prepare their answers. This can be prevented with the help of a well-organized legal.

Paralegals who prepare summaries of deposition transcripts can usually reduce the transcripts by about 90 percent. If you take a lot of depositions, you can probably justify hiring a paralegal to do nothing but summarize these transcripts. The attorney hours saved will pay the paralegal's salary many times over. By summarizing depositions, your paralegal will gain detailed knowledge of the case and be better able to assist you throughout preparation and trial.

Paralegals can also be trained to pester the opposition until those often-promised late-filed exhibits are sent to you and attached to the deposition transcript. Nothing is more frustrating than reviewing depositions on the eve of trial and finding that late-filed exhibits were never supplied. The paralegal can prevent this from occurring.

Trial

I file a trial memorandum in every case I try, whether it is a bench or jury trial. This is a time-consuming process, but well-trained paralegals can save you many hours if they arc proficient at producing memoranda. Again, the more specialized your area of practice, the more proficient your paralegals can become at producing these documents.

Paralegals can also schedule and confirm the timely attendance of witnesses. You have enough to keep up with without having to worry about whether your next witness is going to be present in the courthouse and ready to testify when you need him or her, or whether the witness you may not be able to call as planned can come back tomorrow or must be squeezed in today.

My paralegals have developed what they refer to as a "trial tool kit." Before each trial, they stock this kit with paper clips, a stapler and staple remover, highlighters, tape, correction fluid, pens, transparency markers, a pointer, a holepunch, a calculator, index and exhibit tabs, change for pay phones, breath mints, cough drops, and all the other minutiae you would otherwise find yourself wishing you had but didn't think to bring.

My paralegals are also responsible for seeing that any needed VCRs and television monitors, overhead projectors and screens, extension cords, plug adapters, and extra bulbs for the machines are present and operable before trial begins.

The trial notebook is the most important tool at trial. It contains motions in limine, juror lists and jury-box charts, voir dire questions, opening statement, order of proof, questions for each witness, a complete exhibit list, anticipated evidentiary memoranda, closing argument, and jury instructions. Although paralegals would not draft opening and closing statements, they can have great input into both. Paralegals can help in voir dire (much of which is routine) md in preparing jury charts, screening potential jurors by reviewing the jury list, and preparing witness and exhibit lists. A good paralegal can also assist you in selecting exhibits to be used at trial and will be adept at producing quality diagrams, charts, graphs, and summaries.

When I try a case, I have a paralegal keep up with the location and order of the exhibits I intend to introduce, so all I have to do is put out my hand when I need one. This way, I don't lose the jurors' attention or my train of thought while searching for an exhibit.

If you are the lone attorney trying a case with only a paralegal to help you, don't discount using that person to help you identify potential problem jurors or jurors you believe will be advantageous to the case. Your paralegal can take notes about prospective jurors as you ask them questions during voir dire.

The ability to retrieve a document at a moment's notice is the single most important benefit to be obtained from having an experienced paralegal beside you at trial. You cannot possibly keep up with all the documents in a complex case. We have all seen lawyers fumble through boxes, briefcases, or files trying to find a vital document at a key stage of a trial. A paralegal who,is familiar with your case can learn to anticipate what you will need and when you will need it, and to produce that document within seconds when timing is crucial.

Your paralegal can be trained to take notes during trial concerning witness statements, procedural instructions, disposition of motions in limine, and key statements by opposing counsel. I am often too involved in the direct or corss-examination of a witness to do this. The notes will often assist in examining witnesses and in fine-turning your closing argument.

In most cases, a paralegal is capable of ensuring the admissibility of your client medical expenses and other special damages. With your guidance, the paralegal can obtain a stipulation from opposing counsel that these damages may be introduced without objection or issue subpoenas for witnesses to substantiate those damages.

Supervision

Depending on the size of your office, paralegals should report directly to the attorney for whom they are performing services. Although I encourage autonomy, paralegals are not lawyers and need closer supervision than lawyers. I have also found that it is practically impossible to adequately supervise more than two or three Paralegals, particularly if they are working exclusively for me. I could not keep up with all the documents they would produce, much less adequately supervise them.

The extent to which you rely on a paralegal is largely up to you. I have summarized many of the services that paralegals can perform for a litigation attorney. There arc certainly others. When you consider the time saved and the value of that time, you can't afford not to hire a paralegal.

There are, however, expenses other than salary related to the cost of hiring a paralegal. Depending on the size of your staff, paralegals may or may not do their own typing. Some prefer to do much of their own typing, drafting directly onto a word processor rather than dictating and waiting for a typist to return the finished product. If your paralegal is not going to type, you have to consider hiring additional support staff or reallocating clerical personnel to accommodate the additional work.

Before you hire your first paralegal, make sure to sit down and explain to your existing associates and support staff how the paralegal mill fit into your litigation team. No one should feel threatened if each one understands the paralegal's duties and responsibilities.

Exceptional Value

I will always remember another incident that illustrates the value of paralegals. One of my paralegals who was assisting the trial of a personal injury case noticed during voir dire that a prospective juror kept staring at my client in a condescending way.

As the paralegal and I discussed the prospective panel, she told me this, and I peremptorily challenged the juror. I later learned--by talking with an attorney who selected the juror for his panel --that had I not peremptorily challenged the juror, I would have either lost the case or obtained a substantially lower verdict.

Paralegals enable you to accomplish more tasks because they allow you to assign and supervise work you probably should not do. If you have well-trained, proficient paralegals, you will be able to process more cases and handle them more effectively You will also derive more pleasure from your practice because you will be making the most efficient use of your time, training, and expertise.