The Estrin Report

Happiness Comes to Firms in Small But Important Perks

Sometimes it's just the small things that matter.  When workdays stretch into worknights and the pressure to meet the quota for billable hours grows, lawyers and paralegals at the firm of Perkins Coie can often expect a little bonus.

The firm actually has a "Happiness Committee" that surprises lawyers and staff members with lifestyle perks to keep morale up and takes the pressure off of long hours and stressful pressure to keep billable hours high. 

In Perkins Coie’s Chicago office, members of the firm’s “happiness committee” recently left candied apples on everyone’s desks. Last month, the happiness committee surprised lawyers, paralegals and assistants in the Washington office with milkshakes from a local Potbelly Sandwich Works, a favorite lunch spot.

Perkins Coie is not the only firm creating additional lifestyle perks primarily designed to retain young associates.  "We're in a war for talent," says Gary Beau, HR Director for Kirkland & Ellis.The benefits go beyond the laptops and BlackBerrys, late-night rides home, Friday beer-and-pretzel fests and sports tickets that are standard fare at many large and midsize law firms. Many of the new perks recognize a lifestyle change that law firms are just coming to grips with.

DLA Piper, the country's largest law firm, reimburses employees $2,000 when they buy a hybrid car. Fulbright & Jaworski offers on-site tailoring and offers employees reimbursements when they buy a Suburu, Nissan or General Motors car.

Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, a 600-lawyer firm, offers employees a personal coach and psychotherapy.  O’Melveny & Myers, a large California-based law firm with offices in Asia, holds yoga classes at its Newport Beach office for lawyers and their staffs. And Kilpatrick Stockton, a large firm with offices throughout the Southeast, has a nap room in its Raleigh, N.C., office, complete with a reclining chair, sofa and travel alarm clock.

Arnold & Porter, based in Washington, was among the first to offer on-site day care, in 1995. Only a few firms, including Crowell & Morning, have followed suit — deterred, among other things, by insurance and zoning issues.

Some firms have come up with variations. Dechert, a 1,000-lawyer firm based in Philadelphia; Fried, Frank; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; and Fulbright & Jaworski provide emergency nanny services, in which the firm will find and send a nanny to a lawyer’s home.

While the perks are focused on keeping associates from turning-over, it's good to see that many of the perks also apply to the hard-working paralegal who has pretty much the same billable hourly demand but no chance of making partner.  Finally, law firms seem to be "getting it".

Brand New Position: Chief Sustainability Officer

Law firms may be more in dire need of a Chief De-Stress Officer but Nixon Peabody announced that it has appointed its first Chief Sustainability Officer. 

This week the firm appointed Carolyn S. Kaplan, an attorney in Nixon Peabody's energy and environmental practice, to the new role of Chief Sustainability Officer. The law firm says Kaplan is the first attorney to hold this position in the legal industry, while noting that many of its clients' corporations have such a position.

Kaplan will work with the firm's operations director to develop green initiatives within the company. Reducing the company's carbon footprint — the amount of greenhouse gases its activities produce — and starting sustainability projects with clients also fall within her job description.

The article notes that Kaplan, located in Boston, will be traveling between the firm's 17 offices.  We hope she'll be taking the Prius.

Florida Enacts Voluntary Registration for Paralegals - Trend Towards Regulation Gets Hotter

For those of you who are dismissing the idea of paralegal regulation, now's the time to sit up and take notice!  Recently, Florida enacted a voluntary Registered Paralegal Program that regulates who can be called a paralegal.   The program requires 30 hours of continuing legal education requirements every 3 years.

To become a Florida Registered Paralegal, a person must be supervised by an attorney and meet certain prior education and work history requirements.  Because a paralegal is defined as a person working under the supervision of an attorney, those who are delivering services directly to the consumer can no longer call themselves a paralegal.  This program is very much like Business & Professions Code 6450 enacted in California in 2001.

The difference between California and Florida is that the State Bar of California does not govern paralegals but there are mandatory continuing legal education requirements and certain education requirements to enter the field in order to call yourself a paralegal.

What effect does this have on the paralegal field and the legal field as a whole?  A higher standard for entry to the field is being set.  This trend is literally sweeping the country.  So far, at least 12 states have either enacted some type of regulation or is considering regulating paralegals.  Canada has also joined the regulation bandwagon.

Regulation sets a certain standard for those calling themselves a paralegal and there are inherent benefits for establishing these standards. Paralegals who are regulated possess higher education and continue to stay current through mandatory continuing legal education.  These factors force a highly educated person to be the standard, not the exception in the field. (Remember, prior to regulation, anyone who wanted to could call themselves a paralegal.) The result? Law firms will end up paying higher salaries to attract and maintain the more qualified professional. 

When the National Association of Legal Assistants and the National Federation of Paralegal Associations both came out with certifying exams years ago, few, if any, employers paid much attention.  Possessing a CLA or RP after your name meant very little in terms of getting a raise or much recognition beyond your peers.  That tide is turning, thanks to associations such as the Los Angeles Paralegal Association and others who support the designation.  Law firms are just beginning to understand the intense study and preparation it takes to pass the 2-1/2 day exam.

The field is coming into a new era.  Whether you support it, hate it or disengage yourself from it, regulation is not going to go away.  Any thoughts?

Paralegal's Failure to Comply with Regulation Results in Serious Consequences

According to an article in the Los Angeles Paralegal Reporter (originally printed in the Los Angeles Daily Journal) by Stacey Hunt and Michael R. Jencks, attorneys and paralegals need to sit up and take notice of three recent decisions out of the Eastern District of California.  These cases are some of the first in the state to deny or reduce paralegal fees for the paralegals' failure to comply with the requirements of Bus. & Prof. Code Section 6450, et seq.

In order for a person to use the paralegal or legal assistant title, he/she must possess one of the following: (1) a certificate of completion of a paralegal program approved by the ABA or (2) a certificate of completion from a paralegal program or a degree from a postsecondary institution that requires the successful completion of at least 24 semester units or equivalent in law-related courses or (3) a baccalaureate or higher degree, plus a minimum of one year of law-related experience under the supervision of an attorney who has practiced in California for at least three years.  Further, paralegals must complete mandatory continuing legal education of 4 credits of ethics and 4 credits of law-related topics every two years.

Attorneys who are not ensuring that the paralegals they hire are qualified under the code are exposing themselves to potentially serious financial and ethicial consequences.  The cases, Sanford v. GMRI, Inc. dba Red Lobster, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27581, White v. GMRI, Inc. dba Red Lobster, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2059 and Martinez v. G. Maroni Col., dba Church's Chicken #948, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32366 each billed substantial fees for paralegal work.  In each case, the court ruled the paralegal's were not qualified under the provisions of Section 6450.  Fees were either denied or substantially reduced.

Further, the court drew a distinction in both the Sanford and White cases, between paralegals as being qualified under the law and legal assistants, which the court believed were not qualified.  In fact, Bus. & Prof Code Section 6454 provides that "paralegal" and "legal assistant" are synonymous terms.  Law firms should not bestow the legal assistant title on secretaries or other persons who are not compliant with Section 6450.

California is not the only state to require regulation of paralegals.  At least 12 states so far have either moved toward regulation or are seriously considering regulating paralegals.  Canada has recently undergone even a stricter passing of regulation.

While there are no enforcement agencies for paralegals, this indirect enforcement of Section 6450 is a strong indication that you do not want to be put into a position of having to write off a large amount of paralegal fees billed because you were unable to recover them from an opposing party.  Even worse, would be exposing yourself to ethical issues by misrepresenting to a client that you are qualified as a paralegal and billing yourself as such when, in fact, you are not.

New York Paralegal Named Director for Theatre of the Deaf

Aaron Kubey is the new executive director-president of the National Theatre of the Deaf, which has gone through financial crises, leadership changes and relocations in the past few years.

Kubey, a paralegal in a New York law firm, is currently artistic director of the New York Deaf Theatre.

Kubey takes over the position Nov. 5 at the 40-year-old organization, now based in West Hartford. He succeeds Paul L. Winters, who served as executive director for four years and has been a board member since 2001.

Kubey is a 1994 graduate of the Model Secondary School for the Deaf at Gallaudet University in Washington. He worked with NTD's Los Angeles Little Theatre of the Deaf from 1995 to 1997.

He also worked with Deaf West in Los Angeles and the Centerlight Theatre in Chicago before joining the New York Deaf Theatre.

Can McDermott Will & Emery's Drop in Associate Salaries Cause Ripple in Paralegal Hires?

With soaring associate salaries in BigFirms reaching $160,000 per year for first years, something had to give.  McDermott Will & Emery, a 1,000 attorney firm, announced it was creating a new class of associates.  Instead of turning to contract attorneys or sending its grunt work overseas, McDermott has decided to bring in 15 lawyers with a few years of experience who do not want to work BigFirm hours.

The idea is to pay this new group 25% less and have them work 30-40 hours per week.  This is a very interesting development for paralegals.  With first-year associate salaries pushed over the top, jobs for paralegals were predicted to increase as clients objected strenously to training first-years on their dime and increased billing rates.  Associates are churning due to excessive billable hours in order to stay profitable. The tendency to force lower level work down to the lowest competent level was never so necessary as when the $160k salary came into play. Now, this new group is expected to take on more mundane tasks such as document review, a paralegal assignment since the beginning of time.

It's interesting that firms insist on hiring associates to do paralegal work in order to keep the revenue line up.  Frankly, if they did the math, they may find that while the top line is greater by billing out associates, planning and executing a carefully crafted paralegal program can actually net a greater profit margin percentage, avoid turnover and keep their associates and clients happier.  When will we ever learn?