Re: Would Legal Insurance boost employment?

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Well there are paralegals and there are paralegals, its a blanket
term. But the core idea is that any given legal task can be
segmented into an assembly line. So that any particular paralegal
only has to be educated in 1 or 2 skill sets to be functional.
The place I saw it in brutal effect was in the Bankruptcy Mills.
Once a person makes the decision to file bankruptcy there isn't
much lawyering involved except technically in the exemption
planning. The typical mill has lawyer contact at only 3 points.
1) Intake, 2) Review & Signing, 3)341 Hearing. So a Chapter 7
might only take 1 hour of attorney work, the rest can be done by
paralegals. Another place you see it is the Personal Injury
Mills. There the only lawyer contact is at intake and then it
goes to the paralegals ("Plaintiff's Adjusters" Ha, ha, ha). 90%
of the cases are routine and settled by the paralegals (and yes
usually undersettled, but thats a business decision). The mills
might have a small trial team for the 10% of cases that go to
trial. But even there is still going staff intensive. And I've
seen it in action at Business Law Firms as well... anything that
can be commoditized is churned out by a backroom paralegal staff.
And lets not forget the government. You just need volume.

So I see Legal Insurance as requiring the creation of Paralegal
driven clinics. The only way to cut costs in Legal Work is to
segment the work and give it to minimally trained but highly
specialized low cost providers.

On 8/19/06, Still Looking wrote:
> I really don't understand the overreliance on paralegals. I
> think the idea that paralegals, as a whole, are as competent
> as lawyers is based on false assumptions, such as, a paralegal
> certificate education is equivalent to that of an attorney
> having undergrad and graduate degrees.
>
> I have seen errors made by what were probably paralegals that
> lawyers would probably have been less likely to have made. It
> had nothing to do with law school education. Just general
> knowledge that a person with the inclination to not take the
> short cuts in life would acquire through that kind of
> experience.
>
> But that is part of political correctness in America.
>
> On 8/19/06, rrr wrote:
>> I was never on it, but a friend of mine did some time as a
>> Attorney for Hyatt. She never had anything good to say
> about
>> it, and eventually quit doing it over a Will dispute. She
> had
>> written a will and the client kept wanting revisions. She
>> wanted a separate payment for eact revision, Hyatt wanted
> her
>> to to do all the revisions for the same one Will price. I
>> think her biggest complaints were 1) you don't get paid
> until
>> after the work is done, 2) the clients expected Platinum
>> Service for Tinfoil Prices. I did did take a look at the Fee
>> Schedule, and it was truly minimal. I think that universal
>> Legal Insurance would hurt lawyers (reduce the profitablity
>> of going to law school), but benefit the paralegals
> (increase
>> the need for trained paralegals), since I think the only way
>> to do it cheaply enough is to use non-lawyer staff. The
>> business of law is trending to that anyways. 1-2 Lawyers
>> supervising a room full of paralegals churning paper. Thats
>> what Legal Insurance would lead to.
>>
>> Is that good or bad for society? I don't know. I don't think
>> it does much for those of us who invested in Law School.