The appeal of being self employed is undeniable for most people, especially those who have held down a job in the corporate environment for a significant amount of time. Fortunately, in today’s declining economy, more and more companies are beginning to recognize the benefits of allowing their employees to work from home offices full or part time. Not to mention the benefit of downsizing their staff and outsourcing their labor requirements. The legal industry is one sector of the job market that is following this trend.
Freelance paralegals are being hired by law firms for a multitude of reasons – including but not limited to, reducing payroll expenses, temporary employee shortages, immediate access to specialized labor, reducing startup expenses, the advent of paralegal temp and staffing agencies, just to name a few.
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It is important for aspiring and existing paralegals to be aware of and use the valuable resources available to them, including various paralegal associations. Joining an association gives paralegals and legal assistants access to numerous resources previously not available to them, such as, continuing education and professional development programs to all paralegals, current events and information covering the profession, continuing education materials/seminars, professional certification programs, networking opportunities, conferences, survey findings and manuals to help paralegals excel in the workplace.
Each organization will require their own dues and fees for membership, though discounts may be available for students or recent graduates.
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Recently I discussed the concept of becoming a freelance paralegal, and in this article I’ll talk about a similar, overlapping concept, that of the virtual paralegal – specifically pricing your services.
Just to reiterate, a freelance paralegal is a paralegal who is not employed by a law office, corporation, government, etc, like that of a traditional paralegal. Freelance paralegals establish a business, working for themselves on a contractual basis – most of the time from their own homes on a “virtual” basis. So virtual paralegals are essentially the same thing as freelance paralegals, the difference being virtual paralegals perform their duties wherever they want – most of the time from a home office.
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According to Paralegal Today’s 19th Annual Salary Survey published in it’s April/June issue, editor Sally Kane indicated that, while salaries are on the rise as much as they have previously been during the apex years, the job market is thawing and compensation is slowly recovering to reach previous levels.
The survey consisted of paralegal participants across the country and indicated that the average paralegal salary for paralegals employed at law firms was $50,730 in 2010, a 1.3% increase from 2009. Corporate salaries rose to $63,566 representing a 1.7% increase. The participant with the highest reported income made $152,500, and the lowest was $14,400.
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A growing trend amongst the paralegal field is that of the freelance paralegal, also called an independent paralegal or contract paralegal. Freelance paralegals are no different than a traditional paralegals besides not being employed by an attorney and a law office, corporate entity or government. Freelance paralegals are retained on a contractual as-needed basis by many supervising attorneys in these settings. They are classically trained and qualified to perform paralegal work similarly to traditional paralegals.
When did paralegals begin to operate independently? Paralegal training was scarce back in the late 1960s and 1970s and many non-lawyer practitioners learned to service clients through hands-on experience and applying that knowledge towards the legal self-help movement. This trend largely surfaced in California through legal aid attorneys who realized many of their prospective clients were the working poor who simply couldn’t afford legal services.
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