Tactics to negotiate your salary Decide What You Need From Your Job The first step of any negotiation, whether it’s for your salary, benefits, or a proper coffee, is knowing what you need. Look at your monthly and annual budget, what you’re currently paying for retirement and insurance, what tax bracket this new position grants you, and go from there. Also, consider the work environment. Can you work from home part-time, or will you always need to commute? Perhaps childcare weighs in on your budget. These are all reasons to note and jot down, so you can let your potential employer know where ..read more

Tactics to negotiate your salary Decide What You Need From Your Job The first step of any negotiation, whether it’s for your salary, benefits, or a proper coffee, is knowing what you need. Look at your monthly and annual budget, what you’re currently paying for retirement and insurance, what tax bracket this new position grants you, and go from there. Also, consider the work environment. Can you work from home part-time, or will you always need to commute? Perhaps childcare weighs in on your budget. These are all reasons to note and jot down, so you can let your potential employer know where ..read more

Law firms and legal agencies around the world were forced to quickly adapt to work from home policies to avoid closing their offices, which became mandatory for other businesses due to the COVID 19 pandemic. There have been mixed feelings about this new norm whereas some paralegals appreciate the flexibility to work anywhere convenient for them and reporting savings from commuting to and from the office. Remote work has grown in popularity with 80 percent prefer to work from home, but the reality is only 3.6 percent of total employee workforce currently works remotely. However, employers are r ..read more

The legal industry in the United States is primarily regulated by judges and lawyers, this makes access to legal help for average Americans enormously expensive and out of reach. The only way to increase access to justice is to expand the group of people and organizations that can provide legal help beyond JD-trained and licensed lawyers. Millions of litigants across the country have no choice but to represent themselves in state courts even though they do not have any understanding of the law and legal procedures. Some States argue that allowing paralegals, authorized nonlawyers and organizat ..read more

WRITTEN BY: DEBRA CASSENS WEISS Law on Call—touted as the first entirely nonlawyer owned law firm in the United States—is open for business in Utah. Law on Call is operating as a result of legal reforms approved by the Utah Supreme Court in August 2020, according to a March 15 press release. The two-year pilot project allows law firms with nonlawyer owners and nontraditional legal service providers to operate in a “regulatory sandbox” in the state. Law.com and Reuters Legal have coverage. Law on Call’s clients pay $9 per month to get unlimited phone access to lawy ..read more

One of the perks of operating a virtual paralegal business is the flexibility to work from anywhere outside of a law office. Many companies have recently gone on record with a newly adopted work-from-anywhere or hybrid teams approach including Twitter, Google, Facebook, Zillow, Slack, Microsoft, and Capital One. Early data is already showing that one in five Americans has relocated due to COVID-19. Remote workers have reported saving an average of 40 minutes commuting to and from the office in addition to the cost of travel. There is an aspect of mental health and work-life bala ..read more

The discussion about nonlawyers practicing law without a law license has been an ongoing debate but it usually focuses on nonlawyers providing legal advice. Arizona Supreme Court has taken a different spin on the debate and has unanimously approved nonlawyers such as paralegals can now own a stake in a law firm. This ruling has eliminated the ethics rule 5.4, which bars nonlawyers from having an economic interest in a law firm, now creating new businesses called “Alternative Business Structures.” The court also instituted a new licensure process that will allow nonlawyers, called “legal p ..read more

On March 18, 2020, Senate Bill 3533, the Securing and Enabling Commerce Using Remote and Electronic Notarization Act of 2020 (the “SECURE Act”), was introduced as bipartisan legislation to authorize and establish minimum standards for electronic and remote notarizations that occur in or affect interstate commerce. A substantially identical version of the bill was introduced in the House on March 23, 2020 as H.R.6364. If the SECURE Act becomes law in its current form, it will authorize every notary in the US to perform remote online notarizations (RON) using audio-visual communication ..read more

According to PayScale’s Compensation Best Practices Report, remote work is becoming a major part of law firms’ benefit packages. Most paralegal positions posted on LinkedIn comes with some type of remote working arrangement at least until the pandemic is controlled. Law firms are looking for ways to reduce their payroll expenses by having their paralegals work remotely. Some have already seen some cost savings from a remote work strategy that have nothing to do with base pay, particularly as regards to infrastructure. For example, law firms could save money by shrinking their office space, red ..read more

The pandemic has transformed millions of employees into overnight virtual workers. The legal industry who was reluctant to embrace technology is now into overdrive on the future of delivering their services to clients. The coronavirus has also accelerated a major shift to freelancing that is severing ties between companies and employees. Unemployed and furlough paralegals have started or considered freelancing which have added to the increased proportion of the workforce on freelance job platforms. However, many paralegals are turning to freelancing out of necessity, and not by choice. For the ..read more