AU Blogspot

 
                Thanks to Ryan Junell for permission to use this Photo.

“My big picture goal is to become a detective.”  That’s something a police sergeant or lieutenant hears from every street cop. It seems few want to spend their career pushing a black and white around their beat. While working the streets is a great job, eventually you come a point that you want to do something else. Perhaps, you want to be a detective. Here’s some good advice on getting a detective spot.

Education is the best part-time job.  Your career is under your control. If it is drifting it is because you are letting it drift. So, take the wheel. A great first step is to get an undergraduate degree. Take a look at my article Criminal Justice: Why and How. Then, consider, an interview panel doesn’t care what courses you took. They aren’t going to ask you about your undergraduate class in criminological theory. However, they are going to know, and you are going to tell them that an undergraduate degree says:  

1.  You can work independently. 

2. You can work in groups. 

3. You can manage competing resources.

4. You can manage a long term plan.

5. You are capable of research

6. You can read and write at the college level.

7. You were exposed to different cultures

Doesn’t that sound like a first class detective? While you are working on your undergraduate degree work on your skills as a police officer. About halfway through my probation on the department I responded to a homicide scene. A man had been stabbed to death on a street corner. Like the typical blue suit, I put the tape up, started the log and called the detectives. They came and investigated. Even though it happened in broad daylight, no one saw a thing. (more…)

              Thanks to jenjoaquin for permission to use this Photo! 

The following podcast features Chere Estrin, CEO of Estrin Legal Ed. and Ashworth University contributing blogger.  Mrs. Estrin is one of the nation’s foremost experts on the paralegal profession and has written a number of bestselling career guidance books on the legal education/criminal justice field.  We’d like to thank Mrs. Estrin for giving us the opportunity to share her insider perspectives with our Ashworth Blog community.  Take a few minutes out of your day to listen to this podcast.  Let us know what you think!

Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University Paralegal Program 

 
                  Thanks to micaela for permission to use this Photo.

Practically every day, in one legal publication or another, you’re going to read about how the billable hour will eventually meet its demise.  Whether this occurs in the next 10-20 years is questionable.  What we do know, is that CorporateAmerica is pushing back hard against inflated hourly rates including paralegal rates that can go as high as $250.00 per hour or more.

When news broke last fall that a few New York City lawyers had reached the US $1,000-an-hour mark (that’s US $16.67 a minute), a partner at a major firm in the city warned that the profession may have hit the “vomit point” with clients.He was right: although the skyrocketing rates lawyers charge have been something of a joke for decades, several large U.S. corporations are no longer laughing. Some clients, it seems, are less willing to accept “open-ended, indefinite and unknowable liabilities when they walk into litigation,” says Lorne Sossin, a law professor at the University of Toronto. Now, to cash in on this discontent, a handful of boutique firms are beginning to offer alternatives to the billable hour, the industry standard since the ’60s.

A recent article in Maclean’s, a Canadian national weekly, stated that charging by the hour—or in six-minute blocks—was originally meant to improve transparency. The problem, says Hugh Totten, a member with Valorem (latin for “value”), a new Chicago-based law firm that offers clients contingency fees (payable only if the result is favourable) and fixed fees, is that the billable hour “creates an incentive for endless litigation and for a complete lack of efficiency.”This critical refrain isn’t new. In a 2002 report, the American Bar Association’s commission on billable hours blamed hourly quotas for driving young lawyers from the profession (an estimated 45 per cent of lawyers quit law by their third year), and for leaving little time for pro bono work. The commission identified several alternatives. (more…)

               Thanks to Wonderlane for permission to use this Photo.

Now here’s an interesting situation:  Brian Valery, a paralegal working for Anderson, Kill, a pretty large firm in Washington, D.C. ups and decides he’s going to tell his colleagues and supervisors that he’s going to law school.  After a time, he decides he’s going to let them know he passed the bar.  Impressed with his work and obviously in good with the partners, the firm hires Valery as an associate. 

All is going well for about two years.  So good, in fact, that Valery wins 50 cases for the firm. Come to find out, not only did Valery not pass the bar, he never even earned a law degree. Now, a New York judge has sentenced Valery to five years of probation.  He must also return the $225,000 he earned from insurance-litigation firm Anderson Kill & Olick and serve 100 hours community service, the New York Post reported Thursday.

If this weren’t so serious, it might be funny.  Does that mean that you don’t really need a law degree, that being a paralegal is sufficient?  I mean, 50 wins in two years is pretty darn impressive!  For every attorney who has ever put down a paralegal, take that!  And that!  We don’t even know if Valery received paralegal training and certainly, asking him won’t produce an acceptable answer. (more…)

         Thanks to Sebastian Januszevski for permission to use this Photo.

With the doom and gloom news about slow growth and possible recession swirling around us,  there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel.  Wait!  It’s not a train coming at us.  It’s actually good news.  According to a press release from Robert Half issued today, the hiring of paralegals is expected to remain steady as law offices continue to build teams to handle rising caseloads. Litigation paralegals are sought by law firms who are managing an increasingly high volume of lawsuits.

Hallelujah!  Praise the litigation gods!  “Intellectual property, litigation, corporate and security, and bankruptcy law are generating a significant amount of casework and a steady increase in demand for legal services,” said Charles Volkert, executive director of Robert Half Legal. “Many employers, particularly those at large and midsize law firms, are offering higher salaries to job candidates who possess the most sought after practice area expertise, certifications and technical skills.”

The five in-demand positions for 2008, according to Robert Half Legal: (more…)

 
             Thanks to Miyuki Mouse for permission to use this Photo.

It’s not unusual for a firm to use tough tactics when litigating a case. But tough tactics cost Patricia Dillman, (a litigation support manager who came up through the ranks as a paralegal) her job.  This story seems to be everywhere. 

After working under three bosses in less than a year, Dillman, the director of Holland & Knight’s litigation support group, decided to look for a fresh start. She settled on not only a different firm, Hughes Hubbard & Reed, but also a new city. Dillman accepted a $200,000 annual salary to move from Washington to Hughes Hubbard’s New York office. In September 2007, Dillman put in her two weeks and prepared for the move. But then Hughes Hubbard informed her that because of a possible conflict, raised by
Holland, there was no longer an offer. Dillman was out a job.

She responded by suing her former firm for tortious interference in D.C. Superior Court in November, asking for $300,000 in damages. Hughes Hubbard’s decision to rescind its offer stems from an oil spill off the northwest coast of Spain in 2002. The tanker Prestige sank, spilling most of its load of 77,000 metric tons of oil. It was Spain’s worst environmental disaster, damaging the fishing and tourism industries.  Hughes Hubbard is representing the American Bureau of Shipping in a lawsuit filed by the Spanish government in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Holland is representing the Spanish government.

But what I have an issue with is not so much that one firm may be using this paralegal as a pawn in the case but her own attorney has issued a statement that clearly underplays ethics and conflict of interest because Dillman is a paralegal.  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” says Lynne Bernabei, Dillman’s attorney and a name partner at Bernabei & Wachtel. “The bar has an ethical concern with lawyers being stopped from moving from one firm to another firm. But Dillman was a paralegal.”

Excuse me???  The implied word missing here is “Dillman was [only] a paralegal.”  Is this to imply that the bar has an ethical concern about lawyers, but not paralegals? (more…)

 
                  Thanks to Eric for permission to use this Photo.

The Warren Court greatly expanded various constitutionally-rooted exclusionary rules that serve purposes other than truthseeking, purposes such as deterrence of excessive police violence and unreasonable invasions of privacy. There was a great outcry in some quarters against the Court’s expansion of such rules in the 1960s: It was often said that the Supreme Court had forgotten that the fundamental purpose of a criminal trial is to determine the truth.

The outcry had an effect: In the last two or three decades the Supreme Court has dramatically limited the scope of nontruthseeking constitutional exclusionary rules. But guess what? When almost no one was looking, the Supreme Court also limited the reach of constitutional exclusionary rules whose primary purpose is the enhancement of the priority of truth — factfinding accuracy — in the criminal process.

So the upshot for the Warren Court ’s critics was this: Heads we win, tails you lose. Justice Marshall, dissenting in Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98 (1976), noticed this irony as long ago as 1976. Complaining of the Court’s relaxation of its rules against the use of unduly suggestive eyewitness identifications, he wrote:

[O]ther exclusionary rules have been criticized for preventing jury consideration of relevant and usually reliable evidence in order to serve interests unrelated to guilt or innocence, such as discouraging illegal searches or denial of counsel. Suggestively obtained eyewitness testimony is excluded, in contrast, precisely because of its unreliability and concomitant irrelevance. Its exclusion both protects the integrity of the truthseeking function of the trial and discourages police use of needlessly accurate and ineffective investigatory methods.

It is time for the Court to reverse course once again. This time the Court should focus on developing due process principles that protect the integrity of factfinding in the criminal process. (more…)

              Thanks to Susan Roberts for permission to use this Photo.

In a recent interview, Scott Drexel, Chief Trial Counsel for The State Bar of California, made the following suggestions to stay away from trouble with The State Bar:

Know the rules of professional conduct of your State. For example, in California, whenever there is a complaint against an attorney, he/she has a duty to cooperate with the investigating body. To me, this sounds like a violation of one’s Fifth Amendment rights; but, failure to cooperate is analogous “obstruction of justice” and is a separate violation of the rules.  Also, settling a malpractice action cannot contain a provision for withdrawal of a State Bar complaint without becoming a separate complaint by itself.  I think many attorneys would fail the quiz if these questions were on it.

Supervise your staff.  Failure to supervise your staff properly has become a major issue in California. Too often, staff is deemed to have “practiced law” by their actions – a clear violation of the rules.

Create a law practice management plan.   More than 50% of all complaints against attorneys have a connection to the management of the office. Failure to pay attention to The Business of Law® will cause much grief for the lawyer. (more…)