Watching Over, Watching Out: Lawyers' Responsibilities for Nonlawyer Assistants

Abstract

Lawyers depend on the efforts and support of many different nonlawyer assistants to practice. Law firms could not operate without nonlawyer staff. Legal secretaries perform numerous tasks essential to lawyers' work. Accounting staff create and send bills, process fee payments, and manage operating and trust accounts. In litigation practices, legal assistants-paralegals, if you prefer-manage various aspects of cases, prepare discovery responses, conduct fact investigations, research expert witnesses, and more. In transactional practices, legal assistants frequently handle Uniform Commercial Code filings and other key submissions, perform various records searches, and coordinate the assembly and collection of closing documents. Law firms with intellectual property practices employ patent agents to perform patent searches, prepare and record patent assignments, and prepare, file, and prosecute patent applications. Summer associates and law clerks perform important legal research, draft documents for review by lawyers, and undertake a variety of other practical responsibilities. Lawyers reach outside their firms for assistance from appraisers, private investigators, process servers, and e-discovery vendors. Large law firms outsource various projects to a range of service providers. The list of nonlawyers who regularly assist lawyers goes on. Unfortunately but understandably, nonlawyer assistants sometimes err. Although it is lamentable, it is true also that nonlawyer assistants are occasionally guilty of deliberate misconduct. Lawyers who are called to account by clients, courts, or disciplinary authorities for events attributable in whole, or in major part, to their nonlawyer assistants' mistakes or misconduct may be tempted to shift responsibility from