Paralegal and Attorney Information and Resources
Paralegals are an invaluable part of the legal system and community. They provide support for attorneys, law offices, corporations, government agencies, and other entities that require legal aid. Paralegals do many different things that include but are not limited to, researching legal precedent, preparing legal documents, and performing investigative work on legal claims and cases. Because there are many different specialty areas of law, many paralegals specialize in one or more area of the legal field.
The American Bar Association (ABA) defines a paralegal as a person qualified by education, training or work experience, who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity, and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible.
Influential Paralegals
Paralegals are rarely in the limelight and rarely get the glory for the work they do yet they are influential. An excellent paralegal can make a good attorney great by providing the attorney with the information and tools to do this. Yet, when an attorney wins a case after a long, hard battle with their paralegal working tirelessly behind the scenes, it tends to be the attorney that people see and give complete credit to.
Negar Ashtari
The roots of the paralegal profession are about providing legal services to people who otherwise couldn’t afford professional legal services. Ms Ashtari dedicates herself to this at the Tahirih Justice Center which is a national nonprofit that works with immigrant women and girls who are fleeing violence and war overseas. Negar’s work and commitment to social justice has helped to bring over 22,000 women and girls to safety.
Krista Bullard
While serving as a U.S. Army paralegal in Iraq in 2006, Ms. Bullard’s job duties changed from the more traditional duties of filing paperwork and advising soldiers on legal matters, to those of convoy escort duty when war necessitated all hands on deck. From a .50-caliber turret in an escort Humvee, Bullard stopped an ambush. This allowed her convoy to continue on to their destination. Her command sergeant major gave her credit for helping to save the men and women in her convoy.
Linda Teater
By day, Ms. Teater is a litigation paralegal at a law firm, by night she fights to help the homeless. She volunteers to coordinate legal night clinics for the homeless through Project Homeless Connect. This organization connects homeless people with a variety of much-needed services.
Chere Estrin
Ms. Estrin is influential in that paralegals from around the world began flocking to her blog 2005, one of the first of its kind. Prior to becoming a paralegal at an entertainment law firm, she owned a theater company. After working her way up as a paralegal at the entertainment law firm, she started her own paralegal staffing firm. Blogs