Paralegals are professionals in the law field who are deeply involved in the cases but are not a direct participant of them. Paralegal responsibilities are vital and include assisting the lawyers and attorneys in preparing for their cases. They do the ground work for the lawyer even before the latter looks into the case.
Paralegals can be called as assistants because they have a word with the clients first and ask them the details of their issues. It is just like an assistant to the doctor, like the assistant nurses or doctors ask you the ailments and then note down the vital symptoms. When a lawyer has to deal with a case, he or she needs to find out certain things and listen carefully to what the client is saying. This comes in the main paralegal responsibilities.
Preparation for Case
It is not sufficient for the lawyer to know what the client has got to tell and has suffered. There are many other technical things like the following to detect the client�s stand to have locus standi, i.e. the ability and right of being in front of the court. It means, whether or not the person has suffered any legal injury and also if they are eligible to ask for a remedy from the court. The following will elaborate more on these factors.
Lawyers generally do not have the time to listen to everything the client has to tell, that is why they have paralegals to take care of it. Now it is the paralegal responsibilities that matter for reporting the exact course of incidents narrated by the clients, to the lawyer.
When the client tells something, it should be questioned on various angles, to know the situation and circumstances better. The questions also make certain stances clear with respect to the legal scenario.
For example, the client might not know certain points for viewing the entire incident from a third person�s point of view and hence, same applies to the person against whom he or she wants to file a case. These are called the facts of the cases.
Asking questions and noting down everything in a proper format is a paralegal�s responsibility. The lawyers depend on these notes made by the paralegals and only then have a word with the clients directly. This shows you the level of responsibility and meticulousness that is required in becoming a paralegal.
Preparing for presenting a case in front of the court is not a simple task. It needs a lot of research and thoroughness with the Acts and Sections of laws. A lot of research goes into the preparation and everything is noted down in the file which the lawyer refers to while presenting and fighting the case.
Filing the lawsuit, sending letters to the parties, updating or applying to the court, preparing the case sheets, etc., are paralegal responsibilities. They are responsible for drafting the case papers as well which are presented to the judge or jury.
The list given below is where paralegals work:
Following is the list of places where paralegals find jobs:
These are few pointers of paralegal responsibilities and the duties of their job. You will find much more details in the articles in the categories given on the sides of this page. The paralegal job profiles are categorized under these sections for convenience.
Here is the list of different types of paralegal job responsibilities: