Paralegals and The Quest for Validation
By L. Collette Nagy

There was a time when families made arrangements for their children to prepare for adult responsibilities by serving apprenticeships. There were cobblers, furriers, tradesmen of many varieties and even lawyers who learned their craft without formal education. For instance, Abraham Lincoln became a legislator, lawyer and President of the United States without going to school.

Now there are degrees. Nothing learned counts without a degree. Some kind of certificate will do in an absolute pinch but there is a common compulsion to have the right degree, or two or three of them – maybe more. Somehow, there has to be a connection between this pursuit of degrees and the high price of professional services, which raises a question: does it really make sense to take a line of work that directly supports an expensive profession and ratchet up the cost of embarking on that career?

The ongoing campaign by paralegal associations to impose formal standards of degrees, tests and certification usually centers on two issues: ethics and “professionalism,” the latter term apparently referring to a common desire for validation. Many paralegals fear being mistaken for secretaries and demand, instead, to be categorized with lawyers.

There is an important distinction between ethics and education that desperately needs to be emphasized. A person with no formal schooling at all may live up to high standards while the next one down the line might have an advanced degree and yet completely lack ethics. There are plenty of stories about lawyers who have cheated their clients, which indicates that demanding more proof of education or successful testing does not in itself confer ethics any more than demanding more education for paralegals will prove their honesty or ethics.

Many paralegals’ quest for validation could be about earning ability but the core issues are evidently more emotional. One such indicator is the poorly kept secret that legal secretaries in large law firms typically take home more pay than do paralegals in the same firms. Even where the qualifications are similar, quite a few paralegals would rather go on a fixed salary and work unpaid overtime that leaves them constantly exhausted than to be called “secretary,” even for more money. What they are really looking for is respect and dignity.

Unfortunately, one of the results of such efforts to distinguish themselves is unproductive rivalry with legal secretaries, creating an arena of conflict that necessitates high-maintenance human resources issues – in effect, a need for peacekeeping forces. Another result is perceived rivalry with “associate” lawyers. Paralegals talk and write about the amount of work they do compared to those lawyers, contrasting incomes and becoming oblivious to issues like the risks and liabilities inherent to the practice of law. The rationalizing involved sometimes borders on delusion.

“Standard certification,” or imposing an arbitrary standard on paralegals, isn’t really about making people do better work or causing them to live by higher ethics. Requiring a certain number of hours of education from “legitimate” institutions and administering tests is not going to inspire more conscientious work. Nor will it make paralegals superior to secretaries or give them the same status as lawyers.