WRITTEN BY: DEBRA CASSENS WEISS Law on Call—touted as the first entirely nonlawyer owned law firm in the United States—is open for business in Utah. Law on Call is operating as a result of legal reforms approved by the Utah Supreme Court in August 2020, according to a March 15 press release. The two-year pilot project allows law firms with nonlawyer owners and nontraditional legal service providers to operate in a “regulatory sandbox”…

One of the perks of operating a virtual paralegal business is the flexibility to work from anywhere outside of a law office. Many companies have recently gone on record with a newly adopted work-from-anywhere or hybrid teams approach including Twitter, Google, Facebook, Zillow, Slack, Microsoft, and Capital One. Early data is already showing that one in five Americans has relocated due to COVID-19. Remote workers have reported saving an average of 40 minutes commuting to and…

The discussion about nonlawyers practicing law without a law license has been an ongoing debate but it usually focuses on nonlawyers providing legal advice. Arizona Supreme Court has taken a different spin on the debate and has unanimously approved nonlawyers such as paralegals can now own a stake in a law firm. This ruling has eliminated the ethics rule 5.4, which bars nonlawyers from having an economic interest in a law firm, now creating new businesses…

On March 18, 2020, Senate Bill 3533, the Securing and Enabling Commerce Using Remote and Electronic Notarization Act of 2020 (the “SECURE Act”), was introduced as bipartisan legislation to authorize and establish minimum standards for electronic and remote notarizations that occur in or affect interstate commerce. A substantially identical version of the bill was introduced in the House on March 23, 2020 as H.R.6364. If the SECURE Act becomes law in its current…

According to PayScale’s Compensation Best Practices Report, remote work is becoming a major part of law firms’ benefit packages. Most paralegal positions posted on LinkedIn comes with some type of remote working arrangement at least until the pandemic is controlled. Law firms are looking for ways to reduce their payroll expenses by having their paralegals work remotely. Some have already seen some cost savings from a remote work strategy that have nothing to do with…

The pandemic has transformed millions of employees into overnight virtual workers. The legal industry who was reluctant to embrace technology is now into overdrive on the future of delivering their services to clients. The coronavirus has also accelerated a major shift to freelancing that is severing ties between companies and employees. Unemployed and furlough paralegals have started or considered freelancing which have added to the increased proportion of the workforce on freelance job platforms. However,…

For most small business owners, trying to stay afloat during a pandemic has come with both ups and downs. The down side, of course, is the slump businesses have seen. On the up side, entrepreneurs were spared the impact of layoffs that many employees suffered. And even if your business hit a low point during the peak of the pandemic, the potential to get back up and running lies in your hands. When you’re ready…