Paralegal Corner: Be Nice to Your Lawyer’s Paralegal
I cannot count the number of times I have been the target of a client’s anger or irritation only to hear that same client interact in a completely respectful manner with the attorney only a minute later. We understand that you are probably going through one of the most stressful and traumatic periods of his life; however, it does not give you license to treat us poorly during the process.
When we are mistreated forever tell our lawyer about it. Most of the time, the attorney will notice the poor treatment and will insist on interacting only with you in the future. If you don’t think that’s a “punishment,” I suggest you study the differences between your attorney’s hourly rate and your paralegal’s hourly rate. I have also seen attorneys fire clients for an interaction that was deemed particularly egregious. Supposedly, if he didn’t want the lawyer to remain his lawyer, he would have fired him and not the other way around.
Paralegals have long memories and more power to influence your case than you think. Some of the tasks we routinely handle on a client’s case are:
- Keeping an organized case and moving forward
- Provide the client with updates on their case.
- Drafting of many of the pleadings and related correspondence
- Presentation of documents in court
- Disseminate information about the case to those who need to know
While most paralegals won’t let a negative interaction with a client seriously affect any future work on their case, it’s quite common for us to put “difficult” client issues at the bottom of our to-do lists.
The bottom line: Before launching an attack on your attorney’s paralegal, you should first consider how important the above tasks are to you. Bottom line: JUST BE NICE.
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