ROLE  AMBIGUITY  AND  PARALEGAL INTERNS

IN  LEGAL PRACTICES :  A PRELIMINARY STUDY

 

 

Introduction  and  Review

 

In the late 80’s, one of the authors helped design a curriculum based on the role

requirements for a practicing paralegal (Snell, Joel C. and Donald .W. Green,1987.)

 

Since that time, one of the authors along with others developed a professionalization

model for paralegals. The major question was who are paralegals? What responsibilities should they have?

(Green et. al. 1990) Essentially, the main thrust of the article is

that occupations that evolve into professions go through stages from DIFFUSION,

the early stage where chaos and ambiguity dominate to two dueling  levels of establishing

EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS and promoting ASSOCIATION BOUNDARIES.

AGITATION AND SELF REGULATION where members promote self regulation

is followed by the last stage of FORMULATION OF A PROFESSIONAL CODE.

 

This model and discussion was recently reprised by THE LAMA MANAGER

(Green, 1996.)

 

The authors also used the medical model in the article, because medicine’s professional

trajectory pre-dates the legal profession by about 50 to 75 years.

 

 

Legal Assistant Interns

 

It would appear that the paralegal profession is in the process of the 4th stage. At the time of this writing,

DIFFUSION has passed, EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS  and  ASSOCIATION BOUNDARIES

have become  a bit more clarified (Green, et. al 1996.) However, unlike nurses who have developed all the stages and now have independent nurse practitioners who can in selected instances write scripts, paralegals are not at that level of autonomy.(Cockerham, 1995.)

 

Thus, the thrust of this article is to go first hand and talk with Legal Assistant interns who

are now  quasi-practitioners in the field. Are these interns experiencing stress because of the lack

of  role clarity stemming from an emerging field? (Pearlin, 1989.)

 

Protocols

 

A structured interview was conducted with 17  intern paralegals  who  had been in their position for

more than a year so that first year adaptations were reduced. The interviews took nearly an hour to

complete. They were conducted by phone and  word by word narratives were recorded to catch

any nuances in individuals perception of stress in the legal profession.

 

The sample was purposive and relatively small  because of the time duration to complete the

interviews. Additionally, sample size was reduced because  interns who become graduates move out of state, go on to undergraduate  and graduate training, and related phenomena that could contaminate the findings. We wanted working  legal assitant intern practitioners who had already established themselves in the field.

 

The instrumentation contained 25 opened ended questions dealing with the following:

1)  work role requirements  2) size and quality of work setting 3) specific legal activities[ from

abstracting evidence to drafting interrogatories] 4) current social and occupational demographics

5) attitudes toward fellow colleagues and importantly supervisory practicing attorneys. Authors

promised  confidentiality . The instrumentation was pretested for efficaciousness and clarity and is available upon request.

 

Findings

 

Because the authors used  qualitative structured interviews, a small purposive sample, and an open

ended instrumentation,  an overview will be given rather  than statistical break outs that may give the appearance of  empirical legitimacy, when in fact we were striving for a preliminary study to

deal with the fundamentals of professional role ambiguity.

 

Work Role Requirements: The overwhelming majority work for private attorneys with a few exceptions

of those employed by government or private agency.  They work in diverse settings of one attorney

to nearly 40  lawyers. The modal is less than 5 legal counselors.

 

Size and Quality of Work Setting: Most work with others including secretaries, receptionists, probation officers,  and certified legal assistants. Support staff run from none to thirty others. The interns rank is

relatively low, work 25 to 50 hours a week and are supervised by attorneys.

 

Specific Legal Activities: There are 36 activities that are noted and respondents could do

all of them alone or with supervisory others.

 

Current Social and Occupational  Demographics: All are interns in the paralegal programs working toward completion of their degree. Most want  to be office paralegals. As they move toward

the  legal assistant  status, they perceive on balance that they are becoming a professional of a lesser stripe

than an attorney.

 

Attitudes toward Other Office Members and Attorneys: Most find other workers not angry or jealous of them relative to  obtaining their paralegal education. They perceive that the public dislikes attorneys, but

want a good lawyer to represent them if they are in trouble. On balance, working with lawyers,

paralegal interns , with a few reservations, like attorneys.

 

Conclusion

 

It would appear that whatever role ambiguity that the profession is experiencing

at the macro-level, it is not felt at the local or micro- level as indicated in these preliminary findings.

We looked at individuals who are in the process of becoming paralegals and are leaving

the status of  legal secretary or related. As these new entrants in to the field of

paralegalism, they do not experience the stress that we hypothesized. It may be that

at the micro-level, clarity is most closely felt in the work setting and professional

status discontinuity is not felt on an every day basis.

 

Future studies will look at practicing paralegals. Do they feel the stress from lack

of role clarity? role conflict? role strain?

 

References Cited

 

Cockerham, William C. (1995)

Medical Sociology, (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:Prentice Hall) 207-220.

 

Green, Donald W, Snell, Joel C, R. Corgiat and T. Parimanath (1990)

"The Professionalization of the Legal Assistant: Identity, Maturation, States, and Goal Attainment" Journal of Paralegal Education and Practices,

October, 1990. Vol. 7, #1.

 

Pearlin, Leonard (1989)

"The sociological study of stress" Journal of Health and Social Behavior,

Vol. 30, September, 241-256.

 

Petrepolous, Diane (1996)

"Educational Standards a Priority" The LAMA Manager,

May-June, 10-11

 

Snell, Joel C, and Donald W. Green (1987)

"A Legal Assistance Program Evaluation Design" Journal of Paralegal Education and Practices,

October, 1987, Vol. 4, #1, 53-55.