Many people mistakenly believe that paralegals are equivalent to lawyers. However, paralegals are not lawyers and do not have the authority to offer legal advice. Instead, they perform many tasks that lawyers typically do not. Opting for paralegal outsourcing services for legal tasks like drafting documents, performing legal research and writing, proofreading, or bookkeeping to the paralegal, the lawyer can take more time out and concentrate on other projects.
Thus the lawyer can devote a maximum of his professional time to more crucial topics. This further helps in saving costs, too, since the paralegal’s time is usually billed at a much lower rate than the attorney’s.
Paralegal staffs work for lawyers who cover varied and huge practice areas. Law firms and legal professionals who handle litigation, bankruptcy, family law, foreclosures, probate, estate planning, collections, business/corporate, personal injury, and securities law can benefit from hiring paralegal services.
Broadly, such services can be divided into two parts based on skills and specialization.
There are certain paralegal tasks that are voluminous but demand low-end skills. On the other hand, certain tasks are of qualitative nature and demand legal knowledge to a certain extent.
A few common paralegal responsibilities include
- completion of forms,
- document management,
- proofreading,
- bookkeeping,
- data entry,
- title search,
- and also extending legal editing and publishing support.
Some of these tasks may appear very simple, but the fact is that each service demands maximum concentration and seriousness. Employees of a busy law firm may find it difficult to handle these responsibilities on their own. This is one reason why the concept of outsourcing certain legal tasks has gained huge support from USA-based law firms and legal advisors.
The recent economic slowdown has led many US law firms to outsource paralegal services.
While the US-based attorney usually charges an approximate of $200 -$300 on an hourly basis, his counterpart from the offshore team charges quite a nominal amount of around USD 75-100 per hour. This straightaway results in saving up to 50%-90% of the cost, which is really an impressive amount!
Thus hiring legal attorneys from the outsourcing company seems quite a practical and economical approach. Not only the law firm saves money, but it can be sure of the best standard service within a limited time frame.
