Changing Roles and Increasing Importance of Legal Support Staff

Paralegals, legal assistants and legal secretaries are collectively known as legal support staff in law firms. They work very closely despite of having different roles and job responsibilities. Majority of the tasks performed by paralegals and legal assistants are billed to the clients by law firms whereas legal secretaries perform secretarial tasks which are not billable. In past, technological advancement has greatly affected the roles of legal support staff in law firms. Work efficiencies are improved which made law firms reduce the support staff. They shifted their focus to improve the attorney-paralegal/assistant ratio. Remaining support staff who used to assist one or two attorneys before, started assisting more and secretaries were involved in billable tasks thus improving the overall attorney-support staff ratio of the firm.

These support staff work directly with attorneys on a given case. They know ins and outs of the case. Attorneys look up to them for any case related update before client meetings. Still they perform number of tasks which can be managed by or outsourced to a specialized legal support company. Many of the law firms are working with companies like Draft n Craft which provide variety of legal support services to law firms. Now support staff do not get involved in researching and finding cases on Westlaw andLexisNexis, preparing case summaries, indexing thousands of discovery documents, preparing spreadsheets, summarizing depositions and drafting of various legal documents. They just coordinate with the legal team of Draft n Craft and supervise their work. This arrangement allows them to free up their time and focus on more substantive tasks. At the same time law firms enjoy a great deal of cost savings and improved overall efficiency that bring more satisfaction for clients.

Established in 2008, Draft n Craft has been in existence for more than 8 years and earned a reputation of being a quality provider of legal support to US law firms, In house legal departments and other legal vendors. Not only this, but the company keeps on spreading awareness about legal outsourcing and its benefits by organizing legal conferences and seminars at regular intervals.

For more information about services, turnaround time and rates, visit www.draftncraft.com or send an email at connect@draftncraft.com

Webinar on Outsourcing of Legal Transcription

This Webinar on outsourcing of Legal Transcription was conducted by Shweta Saini, Head- Marketing, Draft n Craft, on 20th Day of November 2009. The Webinar holistically looked at legal transcription as an important service and the web cast covered :
· Analysis of the ethical and regulatory aspects of Legal Transcription outsourcing.
· Drivers & Risks of legal transcription outsourcing.
· Errors and Omissions insurance coverage.
· Evaluating if there is actually any labor arbitrage possible given the associated risks and negative externalities?
· Evaluating the importance of Contract Excellence.
· Price considerations.
· Course of the work flow.
· Issues of Confidentiality and Quality
· Less Haste, More Speed
This recording of the webinar is a must view for attorneys, in-house Counsels, paralegals, LPO professionals, law students.