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Coming to a firm near you!

02 October 2009 / James O’connell
Issue: 7387 / Categories: Opinion , Legal services , Profession
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Little attention has been paid to a quiet revolution so profound that many solicitors’ firms may end up as quasi-alternative business structures. For over a decade, firms have been employing paralegals in ever greater numbers. They have also been delegating ever more complex, client-facing, work to paralegals. That fact is old news; what’s new is that we are approaching the point when paralegal fee-earners in firms may begin to outnumber solicitors—where solicitors become a minority in their own profession.

With most practitioners focusing on the implications of the Legal Services Act 2007, little attention has been paid to a quiet revolution so profound that many solicitors’ firms may end up as quasi-alternative business structures.
For over a decade, firms have been employing paralegals in ever greater numbers.

They have also been delegating ever more complex, client-facing, work to paralegals. That fact is old news; what’s new is that we are approaching the point when paralegal fee-earners in firms may begin to outnumber solicitors—where solicitors become a minority in their own profession.

The

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