Secrets of
Management Unveiled
An insider’s look at the role of paralegal
managers.
By Brad J. Baber, CLA
March/April 2003 IssueAre
you considering a promotion to a paralegal manager position? Maybe you
have just accepted a promotion within your firm and are thinking: What
next? The transition from paralegal to paralegal manager might seem easy
and logical at first glance, however, the skills you relied on for your
success as a paralegal are only part of the equation for success as a
paralegal manager.
Paralegal managers have different styles and approaches. Some managers
continue to work as paralegals in addition to managing a group or
department of paralegals. These are referred to as “working” managers. I
began my career as a working paralegal manager. The variety of job
titles used by law firms and corporations to identify their managers of
paralegals can be confusing: paralegal coordinator, director of legal
assistants, legal assistant coordinator, manager of paralegal services,
corporate paralegal coordinator, senior paralegal … and the list goes
on. Regardless of what you are called or whether you are still working
as a paralegal, if you have direct responsibility for the overall
performance of a group of paralegals, then welcome to the world of legal
assistant management.
Duties
The duties of a paralegal
manager fall into several categories, depending on how the firm views
the role of the manager. Your position, or the one you are considering,
might involve responsibilities in any or all of the following areas.
Speaking from experience, it’s usually a good idea to clarify the firm’s
expectations in each of these areas before accepting your new
responsibilities. Since my duties over the years have covered almost all
areas of paralegal management, I will provide a brief description of the
responsibilities associated with each.
1. Recruiting and
Hiring: This includes developing recruiting strategies to hire the best
candidates, preparing recruiting materials, conducting employment
interviews, making offers of employment, negotiating salaries,
explaining employee benefits and coordinating new employee orientation.
2. Training and Professional Development: Training doesn’t end with new
employee orientation. Responsibilities in this area include developing
meaningful continuing legal education for your department (using firm
attorneys, outside resources and yourself as trainers, as appropriate),
evaluating and approving requests to attend outside CLE courses,
conducting individual coaching sessions to address performance issues as
they arise, and providing learning resources such as books, manuals and
tapes that address relevant legal topics.
3. Workflow Coordination: Firms vary greatly on how much involvement
they expect from paralegal managers in this area. For some managers,
this is their primary duty. In this case, each new paralegal project is
sent to the manager who then identifies a paralegal to handle the task
based on expertise and experience. Presumably, past performance and
matching the right personalities plays into the equation as well. This
is often referred to as the “paralegal pool” concept in staffing. In
other firms, paralegals are permanently assigned to teams or practice
groups. The group then assumes the responsibility for keeping the work
flowing to their assigned paralegals. In this instance,
the paralegal manager might step in only when additional help is needed
at peak times by temporarily assigning paralegals from slower areas to
help out in the interim.
4. Productivity and Profitability: Paralegals, if utilized properly, can
be significant contributors to the firm’s bottom line. Firms vary on how
much emphasis they place on the profitability of their paralegals. Most
consider it important. This means managers must exercise keen judgment
in hiring the right people, at the right time and take an active role in
motivating their staff to work productively and efficiently. Managing in
this area requires a solid grasp of financial and management reporting
tools, tracking of billable hours, billing rates, realization rates,
employee costs versus revenue and so forth. Your firm might provide
reports to you for use in achieving your objectives or you might be
expected to develop your own. A solid grasp of Microsoft Excel or other
spreadsheet applications is crucial to perform these duties.
5. Performance and Review: Most paralegal managers coordinate all
aspects of the evaluation and salary review process for their staff.
This might mean designing evaluation forms, tracking with whom
paralegals worked to obtain evaluation feedback, assembling evaluation
forms and data, making salary recommendations based on current salary
survey data, and conducting evaluation conferences. In addition to an
annual review, you might be involved in addressing performance issues
throughout the year, including issuing warnings for poor performance,
and even conducting terminations of employment.
6. General Administration of Paralegal Department: This category is for
all the extras that are required to run an effective paralegal
department, and includes diverse duties and responsibilities such as
conducting training sessions for attorneys on paralegal utilization,
coordinating and conducting department meetings and social events,
making recommendations on the hiring of temporary workers, project
assistants, or other nonattorney professionals (i.e., nurse consultants,
investigators, lobbyists, etc.), participating at firm management
meetings, enforcing office policies and procedures, and generally
educating your organization on the unique role paralegals play in
providing legal services and where they fit into the management
structure of your firm.
Areas
of Initiative
Unless you report to a higher level
manager of paralegals (i.e., director of legal assistants in a large
multioffice firm) you are likely the only go-to person in the firm for
all issues related to paralegals. If your firm doesn’t come to you with
questions or issues relating to paralegals, then you must take it upon
yourself to proactively educate attorneys and other firm managers on the
importance of involving you in discussions where paralegals are
concerned. On a daily or weekly basis I interact with directors and
managers in virtually all areas of the firm regarding a variety of
issues. Some of these issues involve developing formal policies and
procedures for paralegals in concert with other departmental procedures.
Examples include:
• Human Resources: on questions of benefits, disciplinary protocol,
clarification of personnel policies
• Information Technology: identifying special software needs, issuing
laptop computers for special projects, developing training
• Library & Records Services: maintaining paralegal educational and
reference resources, coordinating training with LexisNexis and Westlaw,
developing online research resources
• Facilities & Support Services: identifying useful courier or copy
outsourcing services, coordinating office space, setting up meetings and
catering lunches
• Accounting & Payroll: developing meaningful, regular management
reports, obtaining specialized or customized financial, payroll or
productivity reports, making adjustments to billing goals or other
corrections
• Attorney Recruiting & Training: for joint training projects, training
of new associates on paralegal utilization
• Pro Bono: to promote the role of paralegals in the firm’s pro bono
work in a meaningful way.
Clearly, it’s important to maintain a good working and networking
relationship with managers and staff in every area of the firm in order
to accomplish your goals as a manager and to promote your role as
paralegal manager. Ideally, you should be in a dialogue with managers in
these areas whenever a paralegal is affected. This enables you to better
serve the needs of your paralegals and accomplish the goals the firm has
set for you. Remember the goals of your legal assistant department might
not always jive with the goals of another department and some
negotiation might be required. This is where building good working
relationships comes in handy. One of the most effective ways to do this
is by attending regular firm management meetings where managers report
on recent developments and ongoing issues in their area of
responsibility.
In carrying out your duties and responsibilities as a manager, one group
that should not be overlooked is the most obvious: paralegals. If you
manage a large, diverse group of paralegals, in several geographical
areas, it’s important to spend time with your paralegal staff
individually and in groups as much as time permits. While I confess I
could do a much better job at this, I am an advocate of the “management
by walking around” principal. This simply means getting out of your
office each day and being with your paralegals individually, even if
only for a moment. Each person you manage is unique. One of the rewards
of being a manager is an appreciation of the unique relationship you
develop with each person you manage. As a manager, it’s important to
cultivate a relationship with each individual you supervise so they are
encouraged to come to you with problems, questions or feedback. After
all, you are their dedicated resource in the firm for virtually any
issue affecting their employment.
Perhaps it’s beginning to sound like there are a lot of responsibilities
to juggle as a paralegal manager. It’s true, there are. But when the
going gets tough and you begin to get overwhelmed, it’s good to think
about your overall mission. If your firm doesn’t have a mission
statement for you, it will serve you well to write one for yourself. In
general terms, I view my mission as: maximizing the paralegal
contribution to the firm’s business objectives and making the firm the
best place for paralegals to work. Every decision I make and every
initiative I begin is evaluated against this mission. It helps to have
this mission to guide me when my thinking gets fuzzy as it can for all
managers.
Three
Key Differences
The differences between
working as a paralegal and a paralegal manager are considerable.
Transitioning to the role of paralegal manager means you are leaving the
paralegal profession and entering a new profession: management. Most
managers specialize in a particular industry or process. Paralegal
managers perform many of the same duties other types of managers
perform, however, they specialize in the legal service industry or more
specifically, in the management of legal assistants.
In my first paralegal management job I served as the firm’s legal
assistant recruiting and training coordinator and was eventually
promoted to paralegal manager. In both positions I was a working manager
since I still performed regular paralegal duties. My billing goal was
reduced to accommodate my management responsibilities in the firm.
My job was divided almost in half: 50 percent paralegal and 50 percent
manager. This arrangement required some special juggling since I
continued to serve the firm’s clients in my legal work, while the firm
itself was my client in my management role. Most attorneys had an
appreciation for the time demands of both jobs but during busy times,
they were both competing for my time and attention. I often felt like I
actually held two full-time positions instead of two part-time
positions.
Regardless of whether you are a working manager or a full-time manager,
there are three fundamental differences between working as a paralegal
and working as a paralegal manager. The first is job focus. While it can
be said paralegals, in the course of their duties, often serve as
managers of information, technology, procedures and sometimes support
personnel, among other tasks, the primary focus of a paralegal manager
is on the management of people and processes. In both firms where I have
managed, the population of my department has ranged between 75 and 115
paralegals, consultants and project assistants. When the focus is on
managing such a large number of employees, there is always considerable
emphasis on personnel related functions (hiring, firing, training,
evaluating, etc.) and financial and business reporting.
The second key difference between a paralegal and paralegal manager
position is in the goal of the two positions. Paralegals work more
closely with the firm’s clients on reaching the objectives of the
litigation or transaction. The paralegal’s goal is directly related to
the clients’ objectives. The goal of the paralegal manager indirectly
serves the firm’s clients by supporting the structure of an effective
paralegal department. However, the primary goal of the paralegal manager
is more closely tied to the firm’s overall business objectives. While
this distinction might seem subtle at first, it colors every aspect of
the job and impacts every decision you make as a paralegal manager. The
question you continually ask is: “What is in the best interest of the
firm?” instead of, “What is in the best interest of the client?”
The third key difference between working as a paralegal and a paralegal
manager is the level of independence and personal responsibility
required in the job. It’s true successful paralegals performing at high
levels often work independently and must demonstrate initiative in the
job. But this is all done within an ethical framework that limits the
role of the paralegal and makes the attorney directly responsible to the
client for the paralegals’ work. The paralegal is assisting the attorney
in serving the client. For the paralegal manager, it can be said that
the firm is his or her client, and while there is usually some
supervisory structure in place, the paralegal manager is often charged
with coming up with his or her own plans and initiatives to meet the
business goals of the firm. The degree to which these efforts are
successful is a direct reflection on the paralegal manager, and he or
she assumes responsibility for their success or failure.
Benefits and Challenges
The benefits of working as
a paralegal manager are directly related to the satisfaction that comes
from performing the management duties required in the position. My
greatest rewards have come from watching bright, eager, entry-level
paralegals grow into highly skilled, senior-level case managers, or in
observing a paralegal do a complete performance turn-around through a
series of performance counseling sessions. Equally satisfying is
receiving recognition from the firm for increasing productivity and
profitability in my department and making a positive contribution to the
firm’s bottom line. Some of the fun I have had as a paralegal manager is
the creativity involved in organizing social events, conducting training
sessions or focus groups, and in developing a department that has a
history of traditions that fosters a very collegial and team-oriented
atmosphere.
The challenges of working as a paralegal manager generally involve
dealing with difficult performance or personnel issues among paralegal
staff, or having to be on the ball constantly when interacting with
attorneys who are among the most highly educated, profoundly intelligent
and professionally aggressive professionals in the world. They are
usually strong communicators with definite opinions on how things should
operate in their firm.
I often joke that a legal assistant manager spends half of his or her
time developing reasonable and cost-effective policies and procedures to
meet the firm’s business objectives, and the other half of his or her
time helping lawyers figure out how to circumvent those procedures to
accomplish their individual objectives. A sense of humor is also
critical in the role of being a paralegal manager.
It’s generally recognized that using paralegals on a regular basis to
handle routine legal and procedural matters is more efficient and
cost-effective than having lawyers perform those same tasks. Paralegal
managers can develop a major profit center for a law firm by carefully
managing the hiring, training, professional development and staffing of
paralegals in combination with the control of overhead costs of the
department. Paralegals who step into the role of paralegal manager must
demonstrate an appreciation for the business operations side of the
firm, including a commitment to the firm’s business objectives, along
with the right people skills to motivate others to help reach the firm’s
business objectives.
Resources abound to support your efforts to educate your firm on the
value of a paralegal manager, and to support a new manager as they
embark on a new career. I recommend getting acquainted with the Legal
Assistant Management Association through its Web site at
www.lamanet.org.
Taking the initiative to learn how to be a great manager is the first
step to a new level of challenges and rewards in a management career
that will likely be an impressive complement to your successful career
as a paralegal. |
