The Paralegal Role & Law Practices and Organization
T o define what it means to be a Paralegal, we should seek wisdom from two of the largest legal organizations: The American Bar Association (ABA), and the National Association of Legal Assistants (NALA). The agreed upon definition between these two organization states: "A legal assistant, or paralegal, is a person qualified by education, training, or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work, for which a lawyer is responsible." In other words, a paralegal's primary focus is to take responsibility for legal labor that would otherwise be inherently delegated to a lawyer. Some of these tasks include conducting client and witness interviews, managing client documents, keeping track of deadlines, conducting legal research, and drafting legal documents. Over the last five or six decades, paralegalism has gained incredible traction within the