Well being that I'm a paralegal student... this is what I'm told.

yes i do omg im so fucked

No. Paralegals are not allowed to practice law. Many paralegals open services that help people fill out documents, but these services often create more litigation or get shutdown because the paralegal engages in the unauthorized practice of law. And FYI: I was a certified paralegal and am now a licensed attorney. Thus, I fully understand each persons role from both sides.

This is answer is in response to a comment posted at: http://www.answerbag.com/a_view/5622565 The comment stated: “I guess what I was getting at is that, in mid-to-large firms, it is becoming more and more common to replace attorneys and pass on the savings on to clients.” I am not sure where you are getting your data, but the legal journals contradict you. I will explain the highlights of why this is below, but if you want to read more about it do a Google search for “partner utilization & profits.” In most industries cutting costs equals higher profits. However, that is not necessarily the case with lawyers. The reason being is that unlike manufacturing and others service industries, most attorneys are not hired for a specific result. For example, if you hire a cleaning service to clean your house, you are paying for the end result of a clean house. Therefore, anything the house cleaner can do to get to that result cheaper would mean more profit. Similarly, if you are building a widget, you will make more profit if you can find a cheaper way to manufacturer the item. A lawyer on the other hand is paid a specific rate per hour worked, and any costs are billed to the client as well. Thus, a lawyer will maximize profit by doing more of the work themselves, or by hiring other attorneys who can bill at a higher rate (while the partner pays them less than what they are billing). Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. For example, a contingency attorney is only paid for the final result. Thus, these attorneys would benefit by lowering costs. The problem with paralegals is that you are limited how much you can bill for their time. A firm may bill $500 per hour for a partner, but only $75 per hour for a paralegal. At first glance that $75 per hour would seem to be enough to pay the paralegals salary plus have a profit, but that is only true if a majority of the paralegals time is spent doing billable work, which is often not the case becasue paralegals cannot practice law. Moreover, a big firm is better off paying an associate attorney to do the work because they can bill at a much higher for his or her services. For example, a paralegal might make $50-80k a year at a big firm, and the firm might bill $75 per hour for the paralegal's services. If we assumed that the paralegal billed 2000 hours a year (which is high for a paralegal), then the firm will profit $70-100k from that paralegal. In contrast, the firm could hire an associate attorney at $150k per year, but bill him or her out at $250 per hour. Therefore, if that associate bills 2000 hours per year (which is a standard minimum), the firm would make a profit of $350k. In addition, the associate can be better utilized because he or she can do more than a paralegal.