By Mike Scott
Legal News
When the pressure is on at law firms and as part of corporate legal teams around the state, paralegals are increasingly finding their skills in demand.
And the pressure is on at many law firms around not just Michigan but the country.
The ongoing recessionary period has forced companies and individual clients to pay more attention to the cost of their legal bills, and the cost-cutting needs of area firms have been well documented.
Yet these trends have given paralegals more opportunities not just in law firms but as valuable legal professionals for companies of all sizes.
And while many professionals are taking pay cuts, paralegals largely are seeing their salaries either remain flat or increase.
At a national level wages of paralegals and legal assistants vary greatly.
In May 2008, full-time wage-and-salary paralegals and legal assistants earned $46,120.
The middle 50 percent earned between $36,080 and $59,310. The top 10 percent earned more than $73,450, and the bottom 10 percent earned less than $29,260.
In Michigan the average starting salaries for bachelor degree paralegals ranges from $35,000-$39,000 annually, said Dr. Jennifer Cote, Department Chair, Paralegal Studies for Madonna University in Livonia. Those figures vary depending on prior experience.
“A lot of my students are already working in the legal field in some capacity prior to graduation,” said Cote, who has served on the American Bar Association Standing Committee on paralegals and as Chair of that group’s Approval Commission.
Barbara Craft, department coordinator for legal studies at Davenport Univesity, said there is “a strong economic argument for the utilization of paralegals because they provide high-quality services at a reduced rate when compared to lawyers.
“They can help a firm increase profits while reducing costs and the services they can provide are very comparable to attorneys,” said Craft, who is a frequent counselor to aspiring paralegals.
By law the only services that paralegals can’t provide that lawyers can are legal advice and the ability to appear in court on behalf of a client.
The 2010-2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Occupational Handbook indicates that paralegals and legal assistants are projected to have much faster-than-average employment growth over the next decade and that 71 percent in the profession work for law firms.
Most professionals in the field have an associate’s degree in paralegal studies, or a bachelor’s degree in another field and a certificate in paralegal studies.
“Employment of paralegals and legal assistants is projected to grow 28 percent between 2008 and 2018, much faster than the average for all occupations,” the Handbook states. “Employers are trying to reduce costs and increase the availability and efficiency of legal services by hiring paralegals to perform tasks once done by lawyers.
“Paralegals are performing a wider variety of duties, making them more useful to businesses.”
In many ways paralegals are being given more responsibilities, which helps cut down on client costs.
But it also can free up the time of a firm’s lawyers to conduct more business development opportunities, which in turn can lead to even more firm revenue, Craft said.
Meanwhile many companies are centralizing or outsourcing attorney services and using paralegals as full-time staff more often in their organizations, Craft said.
In West Michigan, anecdotal evidence suggests that paralegals are being hired at increasing salaries, while new law school graduates who pass the bar are having a difficult time finding jobs.
“In recessionary times paralegal services and their value will remain constant,” Craft said.
Yet in some parts of the state, the growth opportunities for paralegals aren’t as obvious in the short-term.
Metro Detroit firms are not hiring many lawyers or paralegals at this time, because they have lost a significant amount of automotive legal business, Cote said. It is true that some corporations are relying on paralegals to do more substantive legal work.
“Since the corporation is the client, the lines between the practice of law and the requirement that paralegals work under the supervision of an attorney blur a bit,” Cote said, stressing one of the challenges facing the legal industry right now.
Most paralegals develop specialties while working, she added. Statewide schools with paralegal programs tend to teach a generalist legal curriculum so that graduates are able to take whatever positions are available, not just in one narrow specialty.
Something else that has risen is the number of students enrolled in paralegal educational courses. After several years of “lower or flat enrollment” in the program, Davenport has seen its enrollment of paralegal students rise gradually over the last five years.
“This recession may actually be a positive development for paralegals because their value is enhanced,” said Craft, who has practiced law for more than 30 years in Michigan.
Madonna University has experienced what Cote would term as a stabilization of students enrolling in the paralegal program. For the last several years, Madonna has had about 80 paralegal students enrolled in a given semester, she said.
The Michigan Works program has given a lot of displaced workers from OEMs and Tier One suppliers in the automobile industry money to attend classes for two years, Cote said. Unfortunately, the money in Wayne County for such training is exhausted.
The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) federal grant also provides significant funding for re-education of workers whose jobs were sent to another country.
“We have not seen an increase in enrollment but rather a stable enrollment because of the economic downturn and the grant programs,” Cote said.
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