Court Reporter Columbus, OH

Paralegal or Legal Assistant is an exciting profession in the Criminal Justice field. Imagining a law office without a paralegal can be quite difficult. The right hand of the lawyer is how you can describe. What we will examine in this article is the role of the paralegal or the legal assistant in the criminal justice field.

The role of the legal assistant, as suggested by the name, is to assist the lawyer. It is vitally important to know that the paralegal cannot give legal advice or act as a lawyer. What you need to remember is that what the paralegal does must be under the supervision of the lawyer. The paralegal can do the following under the watchful eye of a lawyer.

Client interviews can be conducted by the paralegal. They must identify themselves as paralegals to the client before starting the interview. The legal assistant in this instance will help the lawyer assess the facts of a case by talking to the client. This saves the lawyer valuable time. That time can also be used by the lawyer to work on strategies for the case.

Witnesses can be located and interviewed by the legal assistant. You may have seen Julia Roberts play the role of a paralegal that locates and interviews clients if you watched the movie Erin Brockovich. In one of the scenes, she clearly states that she is not a lawyer. Paralegals cannot give legal advice and this is the point that is being underlined. They identify themselves as such is another point it also underlines.

Legal assistants can research and prepare legal documents. Paralegals do acquire the training and experience necessary to prepare legal documents. In order to ensure that it meets the legal requirements that such document requires, all the lawyer has to do is double check the work. This is actually considered as a valuable timesaver to a lawyer.

Another thing the paralegal can do is attend court trials. In this case, they help the lawyer with the case files. By doing this, the lawyer is not fumbling in court looking for files or evidence. In order to keep him or her organized, the paralegal is there.

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