Regulation of Paralegals: an Upcoming Issue
| Publication year | 1993 |
| Pages | 493 |
| Citation | Vol. 22 No. 3 Pg. 493 |
1993, March, Pg. 493. Regulation of Paralegals: An Upcoming Issue
The paralegal/legal assistant field is still a relatively new occupational field with many basic issues unresolved. For example, questions such as what a paralegal is and what a paralegal does are still asked. A number of states have begun to examine the issue of paralegal regulation. Colorado has yet to discuss this issue formally. The purpose of this article is to inform the members of the Colorado Bar of the issues involved with paralegal regulation and the steps being taken by other states.
A widely held definition of a paralegal/legal assistant is the American Bar Association ("ABA") definition, which states:
A legal assistant is a person, qualified through education, training, or work experience, who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, governmental agency, or other entity in a capacity or function which involves the performance, under the ultimate direction and supervision of an attorney, specifically---delegated substantive legal work, which work, for the most part, requires a sufficient knowledge of legal concepts that, absent such assistant, the attorney would perform the task.(fn1)
This is a broad definition. A paralegal may have no education or training, but have work experience in the legal field. A paralegal may have education or training in the legal or any non-legal field. If the paralegal has legal education or training, the curricula for paralegal training programs varies greatly. The ABA does grant approval of paralegal training programs. The two typical ABA programs are (1) a two-year college degree program with a required number of paralegal courses or (2) a certificate program consisting of a required number of paralegal courses available primarily for students with a four-year college degree (the ABA does allow for exceptions to the requirement that certificate students have a four-year college degree). However, many non-ABA-approved paralegal programs exist with various entrance requirements and curricula.
Regarding what a paralegal does, the ABA definition states simply that a paralegal does what an attorney would otherwise do. In addition, a paralegal works under the supervision of an attorney. Many unresolved issues remain involving...
To continue reading
Request your trial