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News Briefs: January/February 2008 Below are some of the latest happenings in the paralegal community. These short snippets represent excerpts of stories that can be found in the Janurary/February 2008 issue of Legal Assistant Today.
Got News? – Do you know of a significant new law under consideration or recently passed in your area? Are you aware of changes to rules or codes that significantly impact the work done in your specialty area? If so, we want to hear from you. If you submit an original news lead that turns into a news story that we print in Legal Assistant Today, we will pay you $25. If you have a original news lead that you think we would like to hear about, e-mail us.
Conference Season Paralegal associations educate and
update at annual events. The International Paralegal Management
Association A record 219 people attended the IPMA’s
23rd IPMA Annual Conference & Expo in The most popular sessions this year were
“Decontaminating Toxic People: How to Manage People Who Create
Problems, Puzzlement and Perplexity,” a two-part workshop presented
by Marsha Petrie Sue, CEO of MPS, Inc., a global speaking practice
and training company in Arizona, and “Law Firm 911 — Dealing with
Changing Structures, Firm Mergers & Acquisitions,” presented by
Marci M. Krufka, a principal at Altman Weil in Pennsylvania. While the conference offered vast networking
opportunities as a result of the highest number of attendees in
IPMA’s history, the goal was to offer more than that. “We hope the
conference experience provides members with not only excellent
management and leadership skills to enhance their careers and the
contribution they make to the overall success of their firms,
corporations, schools and government agencies,” new IPMA president
Joyce McGuiney said, “but also provides them with new ideas for IPMA
chapter meetings, enhancements of the paralegal management
profession at the local level and a spirit of community that
enhances all aspects of their lives.” The 2008 IPMA Annual
Conference & Expo will be held in
Nals … the association for legal
professionals Attendees of Nals’ 56th annual
educational conference and national forum, held Oct. 11 to Oct. 14
in The conference included nine education sessions,
two focus groups, and two keynote speakers, including speaker Atlas
Lee, a senior consultant at eSentio Technologies in The events of the conference reinforced the
educational aspect, offering 12.5 hours of continuing legal
education credit. “Whether you are a seasoned veteran of the legal
profession or just starting your career, it is important to continue
to learn,” Siroky said. The 2008 conference will be held in
The National Federation of Paralegal
Associations The NFPA convention, held Oct. 18 to
Oct. 21 in
The American Association for Paralegal
Education The legal field is going global, and
AAfPE’s 26th annual conference, held Oct. 24 to Oct. 27 in Drawing 365 attendees, this year’s conference
included session topics on outsourcing, international experiences
for students, international employment law, international students
in paralegal programs, and trends and issues in paralegal education
in the global economy. “Even students dealing in an area like family
law may find that they are dealing with international issues,” Next year’s conference will be held in
New voluntary system sets education,
work experience and ethics requirements. On Nov. 15, the Florida Supreme Court
approved the addition of “Chapter 20, the Florida Registered
Paralegal Program” to the rules regulating the Florida Bar, setting
in place a voluntary registration system for paralegals in the
state. The long road toward this paralegal regulation step started
in 2005 when regulation legislation was first presented to the
Florida Legislature (see “South Fla. Paralegal Association Opposes
Regulation Petition,” November/December 2006 LAT). The Florida Bar
opposed the legislation in part because it believed any regulation
of paralegals should be monitored by the judicial, rather than the
legislative, branch of government. On Aug. 15, 2006, the Florida Bar
filed its petition with the Florida Supreme Court to amend the
rules, with a public comment period that lasted until Sept. 22,
2006. The court received 103 comments on the proposed amendments, a
majority of which were in favor of them, including comments filed by
the Paralegal Association of Florida and the American Alliance of
Paralegals, Inc. On April 16, 2007, the Florida Supreme Court held
oral arguments on the matter. The FRP program is voluntary, and nonlawyers who
meet the In adopting the rules, the Florida Supreme Court
stated, “We believe the program will inure to the benefit of the
public in the same way the Florida Rules for Certified and
Court-Appointed Mediators inured to the public’s benefit.” The
amendments will take effect March 1. The decision is available on
the Florida Bar Web site at
http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2007/sc06-1622.pdf.
Happy Anniversary? Revisiting the FRCP amendments one year
later. With the rapid evolution of workplace
technology in the past decade, a need arose for federal rules
governing electronically stored information and electronic discovery
procedures, particularly in the litigation field. In an effort to
meet that need, a series of amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure were adopted on Dec. 1, 2006. Just over one year
later, most legal professionals agree that the changes are
beneficial; however, there remains debate on how well the amendments
are understood and how well they are being followed. Broadly speaking, the FRCP amendments were
intended to mandate “meet-and-confer” sessions for e-discovery
issues; discuss “reasonably accessible” versus “reasonably
inaccessible” data; address claims of privilege for inadvertent
production; create a “good faith” provision for unproduced data; and
establish ESI as a separate category for disclosure (see
“E-Discovery Explosion,” July/August 2006 LAT). According to
Courtney David Mills, senior litigation paralegal and litigation
technology specialist at the “They [were created] to formalize the basic
principles that had already been adopted via case law and everything
else stating that ESI was discoverable and part of litigation,”
Mills said. “I think in that regard they were very successful. I
think everyone now realizes that e-mails and ESI are discoverable.” Attorney David Concannon of the Law Offices of
David G. Concannon in According to Mary Mack, who serves as technology
counsel for Fios Inc., a Portland, Ore.-based company that provides
e-discovery and litigation readiness services, the first year has
been a period of adjusting to the amendments. “There are those who
thought that this would really streamline things, but because they
are so new and people are not prepared, the beginning of litigation
is more complicated than it would have been in the past,” she said.
“Even the forward-looking companies that started right when the
rules went into effect are still putting down their baseline
processes.” Regardless of a firm’s or corporation’s previous
experience with e-discovery, it seems that wherever they work,
paralegals are heavily involved in complying with the amendments.
“Paralegals shoulder quite a bit of this work,” Mack said. “When we
work as a service provider, paralegals are often on the case. Many
times they are the people who see the need to plan first, even
before the attorneys.” Regardless of what lingering issues remain, who
handles the work and how long the transition takes, Concannon, Mills
and Mack agreed that the amount of time and resources devoted to ESI
and e-discovery will continue to increase. “I think that in five
years, the percentage of a litigator’s time, an IT person’s time or
a legal assistant’s time spent with electronic discovery is going to
be inverted,” Concannon said. “It might be 20 percent today. It’s
going to be 80 percent in five years. It will be the way they do
business.”
Vacated federal judgment raised
potential issues for professional designations. Providers of paralegal certifications
could have unwittingly been victims of an August 2007 federal court
decision that stripped trademark protection from a professional
designation given to graduates of a training program for legal nurse
consultants. But on Sept. 22, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn
N. Hughes vacated his judgment on the request of both plaintiff and
defendant, and owners of federally protected marks now can rest
easier knowing they can exclusively use their marks — at least for
the time being. That is good news for paralegal organizations
such as the National Association of Legal Assistants, which awards
the federally protected designation Certified Legal Assistant and
Certified Paralegal to individuals who have met its certification
and re-certification requirements, and the National Federation of
Paralegal Associations, which awards the federally protected
designation Registered Paralegal to individuals who have passed its
Paralegal Advanced Competency Exam. Other professional organizations
and many states also award The question of trademark protection for
abbreviations stemmed from Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc.
v. Evans & Associates, LTD (D. Tex. Civil Action H-06-0320, Aug. 29,
2007), a January 2006 action brought in the United States District
Court for the Southern District of Texas. The plaintiff,
Houston-based Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, a provider of
training programs for legal nurse consultants, awards the mark CLNC
— an acronym for Certified Legal Nurse Consultant — to graduates of
its certification programs. Medical-Legal brought the trademark
infringement action against Evans & Associates, a Cuyahoga Falls,
Ohio-based provider of training programs for legal nurse consultants
that awards the mark RLNC — an acronym for Registered Legal Nurse
Consultant — to graduates of its programs. “Different certification marks may well involve
different usages and facts which could well cause a different
outcome if [the In his written decision before vacating the
judgment, Judge Hughes noted a certification mark must “attest to
the quality of the service supplied to consumers.” Since the CLNC
mark does not — it only certifies that a nurse has taken
Medical-Legal’s training — the judge determined that the mark was
not a certification at law. “The “We sometimes wonder if other professions face
the same struggle in distinguishing certification from training
programs that award certificates. Would someone with a certificate
in accounting be the same as a CPA?” Brewster asked. “The
distinction is clear, and we believe it is important to communicate
this regularly.”
Patent Reform Act of 2007 Moves to Senate Inventors and the legal profession will
face new rules if act passes. Fifty-five years after President Harry
Truman signed the last major patent legislation, it is back in
Congress and patent paralegals and attorneys are keeping a close eye
on its progress. The House committee passed the Patent Reform Act of
2007 on Sept. 7, leaving it for consideration before the Senate. The PRA was introduced in April 2007 in the
House of Representatives by Chairman Berman (D-California), and in
the Senate by Chairman Leahy (D-Vermont). “If the Senate bill
passes, and the conference committee works out the differences in
the two bills [from the House and the Senate], this would be a
landmark legislation in the area of patent modernization,” said
Jefferson Taylor, director of governmental affairs of the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office. If the act passes, inventors will have to move
quickly to secure patents for their creations. The act will, among
several provisions, require inventors to adhere to a first-to-file
application process rather than the existing first-to-invent
procedure. Although paralegals might not play a large role during
the prosecution process (i.e., the time the idea is conceived up to
the issuing of the patent), the roles paralegals do play during
litigation and the enforcement of the patent after it’s issued might
be affected by the new law. If the PRA passes, the “The first-to-invent rule that this country has
followed since its inception is a strong protection for individuals
and small companies that simply cannot afford to file patent
applications every time they come up with what might be a new idea,”
said Philip Mann, patent trial attorney at the Mann Law Group in
Seattle. A basic filing fee for a small entity starts at $155 and
increases from there depending on the type of patent, company, etc.
For the full fee schedule, visit
www.uspto.gov. At the beginning of November 2007, the PRA was
one of more than 200 measures before the Senate, without a specific
date for consideration, but inventors, patent attorneys and
paralegals continue to keep an eye on Senate activity. In the
meantime, they are making sure their patent applications are ready
if the PRA passes, thus starting the race to the USPTO.
A Reliable Backup Plan More law firms offer unique benefits
focusing on children and the elderly. It’s 7 a.m., and you have to be at the
law firm where you work in one hour. Your child has a fever and your
spouse can’t take time off from work. So, what do you do? You either
miss work to care for your child and use vacation time, or you use
sick time but fall behind, creating more work for your co-workers
who must cover for you. Or, you can use your employee benefit of
low-cost emergency in-home childcare to call a caregiver to come to
your house for the entire day while you head to work with the
assurance of knowing your child is safe. Several years ago,
paralegals and other law firm employees would not have had this
option. But today, more and more law firms not only offer their
employees emergency in-home backup care for their children and
elderly parents, but center-based backup daycare, too. Law firms like White & Case, Pillsbury Winthrop
Shaw Pittman, Crowell & Moring, and Ropes & Gray are just a few
employers that offer these types of benefits. White & Case and
Pillsbury Winthrop both were recognized by Working Mother magazine
and Flex-Time Lawyers, a national consulting firm, as two of the
best law firms for women in 2007 for offering caregiving benefits.
“Overall, our approach to benefits and compensation is that we want
to be competitive in the marketplace and we also want the benefits
we offer to be relevant to people,” said Debbie Johnson, chief human
resources officer at Pillsbury Winthrop in Offering family-friendly, work-friendly benefits
doesn’t just have an impact on retaining top talent but it also
reduces absenteeism and the workloads of co-workers who must cover
for an absent employee. “In terms of the direct impact that it has
on other employees, it increases the productivity of everyone and
the morale,” said Ellen Dwyer, co-managing partner at Crowell &
Moring in Rick McKenna, chief administrative officer of
White & Case in
Law Firm Librarians Exploring New
Territory Survey indicates roles expanding into
marketing research, knowledge management. According to Law Firm Inc.’s sixth
annual survey of law firm librarians at Am Law 200 firms, today’s
law firm librarians are continuing to move beyond traditional
library work. The survey, sent to the 200 largest law firms in the
country in the spring of 2007 with results released in the
July/August 2007 issue of Law Firm Inc. magazine, reveals that law
firm librarians’ roles are expanding into marketing, competitive
intelligence, computer training and knowledge management projects. Of the 95 law firms who responded to the survey,
84 percent reported that law firm librarians play an active role in
the firm’s knowledge management efforts, and 63 percent said the
library was the main resource for marketing research. The survey
also indicated that a growing number of firms now have at least one
library staff member whose sole job is to develop business
intelligence. Most notable, though, is that 76 percent of law firm
librarians who participated in the survey reported that they enjoy
their expanding roles into nontraditional law firm librarian
activities. The Law Firm Inc., survey was conducted by
sending survey questions to head law firm librarians at Am Law 200
firms. Questions covered the law firm librarians’ responsibilities
and the library’s budget, resources and staffing. Ninety-five
librarians responded. A partial list of the results from the survey
is available at
www.lawfirminc.com. To purchase the complete results, go to
www.almresearchonline.com.
The Business of Law in The American Bar Association has
recognized the increasing integration of business into law by
approving Lake Superior State University’s business administration —
legal management baccalaureate degree in June 2007. The two-year-old
hybrid major at LSSU in Sault Ste. Marie, According to Carol Andary, LSSU’s coordinator of
legal studies and a professor at LSSU who currently teaches several
law courses, the business administration-legal management degree’s
curriculum took just over one year to be approved through the ABA’s
review process, which includes the submission and analysis of
detailed reports and documentation to ensure that an already
approved school provides sufficient depth, content and quality in
any new legal program it provides to students. “[ABA approval is]
sort of a guarantee that the program [has a] set of minimum
standards as to quality in terms of the curriculum, the faculty, the
people who have input on the curriculum, the placement program,
those kinds of things,” said William Weston, chair of the ABA
standing committee on paralegals. The new business administration — legal
management degree equips students to tackle various specialties in
legal and business professions by teaching how law and business
integrate. It serves five different career tracks: paralegal/legal
assistant, legal administration manager, business management — legal
emphasis, paralegal/legal assistant management and business
management — law school bound. Students are required to complete
three main components totaling 128 semester credits: 60 to 61
credits in business courses such as accounting, business and
business law, economics, finance, marketing and management; 28 to 31
credits in required and elective law courses such as legal research,
legal writing, law office management, tribal law, and environmental
law; and 30 to 31 credits in general education courses and an
alternative dispute resolution and conflict management course. Renee Jent, CLA, a paralegal with ProNational
Professional Liability Group in
Legal Resources Web Analyses Internet Fact Finding for Lawyers, by
Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch, is not just a newsletter for lawyers
but others in the legal field, too. With its content targeted to
legal professionals, the newsletter features analyses of various Web
sites focused on different topics from government resources to
accessing public records. Each listed Web site is accompanied by its
purpose, a detailed description of its content, the authors’
opinions and tips on how to most effectively use the site. A
one-year subscription starts at $99 for six bimonthly issues but the
inaugural issue is available online for free. For more information,
visit
www.ali-aba.org.
Lessons Learned “Lessons From the Top Paralegal
Experts,” by Carole A. Bruno, published by Delmar Cengage Learning,
formerly Thomson Learning, combines success stories from 15
paralegal professionals along with information on how they do their
jobs with respect to creativity, leadership, expertise in their
specialty, technical skills, knowledge, mentoring and organization.
Some of the experts include Michele M. Boerder, CP (litigation);
Celia C. Elwell, RP (legal research and writing); Nancy B. Heller,
RP (litigation); and Siobhan S. Smith (corporate and business). The
book also includes checklists, forms and discovery shortcuts for
paralegals in the litigation area with advice from six paralegal
litigation experts. Other features include technology techniques,
investigative and Internet tips, and information on client
interactions and interviewing. The book is available for $23.95 at
www.delmarlearning.com.
Full-Text Reserve Litilaw, from Lexbe.com, is a free
online repository of more than 500 full-text articles authored by
lawyers for presentations at continuing legal education seminars and
conferences. The articles are organized into more than 30
substantive and procedural legal specialty categories, including
e-discovery, ethics, expert witnesses, antitrust, corporate and
securities, government, intellectual property and tax. Litilaw also
features nearly 100 articles on computer forensics, legal research,
litigation support and practice management. For more information,
visit
http://litilaw.lexbe.com.
Suite Symphony IBM released IBM Lotus Symphony, a free
online suite for creating and sharing documents, spreadsheets and
presentations. Lotus Symphony Documents is IBM’s free downloadable
word processing program for creating, editing, sharing and saving
documents. It allows users to begin with a blank document, import a
document from a file or select a template. Lotus Symphony
Presentation, for creating graphical slideshows, also can be created
from a blank document or from a template. IBM Lotus Symphony
Spreadsheets includes navigational elements, such as toolbars, an
editing window and a status bar. For more information, visit
www.ibm.com/software/lotus/symphony.
Document Vault Docstoc, launched on Oct. 30, is a free
online repository for documents and forms in the legal, business,
technology, education and creative fields. Users have an unlimited
amount of storage to upload files. The site also allows users to
request specific documents. By clicking on the “Request” tab and
entering a title, tag, category, language or file type for a
specific document, users can choose to receive the document by
e-mail when another user uploads it. Searching for a specific
document is easy because everything is organized by category and
tag. Users can search for a specific legal document in the
categories of contracts, employment, family, forms, incorporations,
IP, M & As, real estate, and wills and trusts. Under the financial
category, users can find documents such as tax forms and accounting
documents, and under the business category, users can find documents
in subcategories, such as contracts, employment, financing,
operations, project marketing, and sales and marketing. For more
information, visit
www.docstoc.com.
The Right Blawg BlawgSearch, by Justia, a legal media
and technology company, features more than 1,000 legal blogs in more
than 50 different categories including animal and dog law,
bankruptcy, criminal law, environmental law, international law, law
librarians, paralegals, tax law, and technology. Searching for a
specific blog can be done by relevance or date and also allows for
subscriptions to RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds of the
searches, meaning users can choose to receive updated content from
blogs of their choice. The site also gives instructions on how to
set up a blog and provides resources to do so. Blawgs.fm, also by
Justia, features searching for legal blog posts with multimedia
files. Some of the categories on Blawgs.fm include business law,
civil rights, immigration law, media and communications, and trials
and technology. For more information, visit
http://blawgsearch.justia.com and
http://blawgsfm.justia.com.
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