News Category 2
The benefits of giving the paralegals in your firm formal recognition - Amanda Hamilton, NALP
21/05/18. Do you have Paralegals working in your firm? Are they being recognised? It can be tempting not to give Paralegals the recognition they deserve, particularly if it appears to reduce costs.
Paralegals are defined as ‘persons who are trained and educated to perform certain legal tasks, but who are not qualified solicitors, barristers or chartered legal executives’.
Formally recognising the Paralegals within your firm has many benefits:
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It can encourage clients by giving them comfort that they are being dealt with by a recognised professional - even if they are not seeing a Solicitor.
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If your Paralegal staff sign-up to a professional membership body like the National Association of Licenced Paralegals, they have access to training and can gain formal qualifications, adding value to your firm and its reputation.
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The legal climate has changed dramatically over the past few years and Paralegals have taken on a new significance in the roles they perform. Some do work for solicitors, others for barristers and in-house legal departments, but more and more, Paralegals are working for themselves. For example, in specialist areas like tenant evictions or small claims for money owed. For a legal firm, having access to registered, specialist Paralegals can allow you to offer a wide range of services. These Paralegals may be employed within your firm, or contracted on a freelance basis.
This shift towards using Paralegals is happening because an increasing number of Paralegals are filling a gap that has been left by the eradication of legal aid.
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Paralegals are no longer just graduates who cannot find training contracts or ‘would be’ solicitors. Some may wish to be given the opportunity of course, but for the most part, the Paralegal Profession is a genuine career path option for many who may not be given that chance.
Attracting and retaining top talent is always a challenge – but by offering formal recognition for your Paralegal staff, and perhaps allowing them days off for training, or offering to pay for their training, or releasing time during work hours to help them complete the training tasks, you can attract better applicants and retain your best people.
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People like to be recognized and rewarded for the work they do – this is one way to achieve that. On the flip-side, ignoring the status and contribution of your ‘non-qualified solicitor staff’ may lead to a talent exodus as staff look for fulfilment elsewhere – perhaps by setting up their own independent practice. It is therefore in the solicitors’ best interests to properly recognize the value of their paralegal staff and their status.
For Paralegals working within your firm, there are bespoke nationally recognized qualifications to help them hone their skills and knowledge – building their confidence and increasing the services you offer to clients.
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If your Paralegals are suitably trained and qualified this can create the opportunity to delegate more work to them, freeing you up to take on more clients – or perhaps have an afternoon off now and then!
Remember, Paralegals can do virtually everything that a solicitor can do, including, but not limited to, assistance in a matrimonial matter; helping with a claim if a client is being taken to court over a debt or needs to take a third party to court to recover a debt; taking action against an employer through a Tribunal; writing a Will or obtaining a Lasting Power of Attorney in respect of a relative; housing and welfare matters. You could also apply for ‘Police Station Accreditation’ for your Paralegal staff so that they can assist clients who have been arrested for a minor criminal offence and need representation.
However, there are certain activities that designated ‘reserved activities’ and these remain the monopoly of solicitors. For example: automatically having the right to represent someone in all courts, the conveyancing process (i.e. buying and selling property) and some probate activities (i.e. sorting out a person’s estate (assets) after they die).
Apart from this, there is plenty of scope for a Paralegal within your firm not only to advise and assist a consumer, but also to gain a Licence to Practise in order to do so.
To find out more contact NALP (National Association of Licenced Paralegals) http://www.nationalparalegals.co.uk
Amanda Hamilton is Chief Executive of NALP, a non-profit Membership Body as well as being the only Paralegal body that is recognised as an awarding organisation by Ofqual (the regulator of qualifications in England & Wales).
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Striking Whilst the QOCS is Hot - Andrew Roy, 12 King's Bench Walk
18/05/18. In XY v (1) Ingenious Media Holdings Limited (2) Ingenious Media Limited [2018] EWHC 350 (QB) HHJ Walden-Smith, sitting as a Judge of the High Court, dismissed an appeal by a litigant in person against an order striking out his stress at work claim.
The appeal raised a novel point as to whether, to what extent and in what circumstances impecuniosity can satisfy the first limb of the Ladd v Marshall [1954] 1 WLR 1775 test for admitting new evidence on appeal, that the evidence could not have been obtained with reasonable diligence for the hearing below.
The cases also illustrates (1) the scope of release clauses in prior agreements and (2) an often overlooked means by which QOCS can be displaced.
Background
The Claimant alleged that he suffered psychiatric injury due to occupational stress whilst employed by the Second Defendants as a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser between July 2000 and June 2009. (The First Defendant is the Second Defendant’s parent company; they were treated indistinguishably for these purposes).
The Second Defendant and the Claimant had previously been involved in litigation against each other arising out of the Claimant’s employment. This prior litigation did not include any injury claim although, on the Claimant’s evidence he knew at the time that he had a psychiatric injury (depression) which he attributed to the Second Defendant. The litigation was settled in January 2011 by way of a compromise agreement. The crucial provision of the agreement read:
This Settlement Agreement is in full and final settlement of all claims of any kind, known and unknown, which the Parties have or may have against each other, and whether referred to in the litigation hereby compromised or otherwise.
The Claimant pleaded that he was not bound by this because he lacked capacity at the relevant time due to hypomania caused by anti-depressant medication. He also argued that the claim was not within the scope of the agreement as he was not aware at the time that he had hypomania. He later added an allegation of sharp practice as a third basis of impugning the agreement, alleging that the Second Defendant had planted an impostor witness in his camp to give him bad advice to accept the compromise agreement.
Strike out at first instance
The Defendants applied under CPR 3.4(2)(a) to strike out the claim on the basis the statement of case disclosed no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim. The application relied upon the fact that the Claimant had not produced any evidence to show that he lacked capacity at the relevant time. Although he had report from a consultant psychiatrist, this did not so state. The expert instead indicated the need for a...
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PI Practitioner, May 2018
16/05/18. Each issue a particular topic is highlighted, citing some of the useful cases and other materials in that area. You can also receive these for free by registering for our PI Brief Update newsletter. Just select "Free Newsletter" from the menu at the top of this page and fill in your email address.
Low-Velocity Impact Claims - Defendant's Expert Evidence: A Practice Note
LVI claims are becoming and more common in the current climate of personal injury litigation. Fast track litigators will be extremely familiar with the standard defence adopted in many such claims: although there was a collision caused by the negligence of the defendant, it was of such low speed that it could not have caused injury. In claims of this nature, there is frequently opposing oral evidence from the claimant and the defendant. For example, the claimant alleges there was a rear-end shunt which was sufficient to jolt the vehicle and cause soft-tissue injuries. The defendant, conversely, accepts that there was a collision, but states that it was at less than walking pace and therefore could not possibly have caused injury...
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Caparo Revisited - Paul Jarvis, 6KBW College Hill
14/05/18. In Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2015] EWCA Civ 15; [2014] PIQR P14), a case that concerned an action in negligence brought by a woman who was injured in the street during an attempt by police officers to arrest a man suspected of drug dealing, Hallett LJ held that in deciding whether the officers owed the woman a duty of care the three-stage test in Caparo (Caparo Industries plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605, 617 – 618) “applies to all claims in the modern law of negligence” (para.40). In her judgment, and applying the third limb of that test, it was not fair, just or reasonable to impose a duty on the police to an individual such as Mrs Robinson because the police owed a wider duty to the public to prevent and detect crime, and that wider duty was incompatible with the existence of a narrower duty to prevent harm to members of the public when acting in compliance with that wider duty.
Dissatisfied with that outcome, Mrs Robinson appealed to the UK Supreme Court (Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police [2018] UKSC 4; [2018] 2 WLR 595). Lord Reed held that the Court of Appeal’s conclusion that the three-stage test in Caparo applies to all claims in the modern law of negligence “mistakes the whole point of Caparo, which was to repudiate the idea that there is a single test which can be applied in all cases in order to determine whether a duty of care exists” (para. 21). Instead, the correct approach to determining whether a duty of case exists in any given case is to look to the established authorities and, in novel situations, to develop the law “incrementally and by analogy” with those authorities...
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It's a Fair Cop: Supreme Court Reviews Duty of Care (and a Foot Note on the Worboys Case) - Patrick West, St John's Chambers
19/04/18. Robinson v Chief Constable of West Yorkshire [2018] UKSC 4 SC (Lady Hale PSC, Lord Mance DPSC, Lord Reed JSC, Lord Hughes JSC, Lord Hodge JSC) 08/02/2018.
Everyone who has passed through law school will remember the case about the snail in the ginger beer. Poor old Mrs Donoghue. A smaller number will recall Caparo Industries Plc v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605, a much drier case all about accountants. The latest inheritor of tortious principles is poor Mrs Robinson, knocked down in a busy shopping street by a group of policemen arresting a drug dealer.
Since 1990 we should all have been reasonably clear about duty of care and when it arises. But many of us including, it appears, the Court of Appeal, are beset with “uncertainty and confusion” about it. At least that’s the view of Lord Mance who gave the leading judgment of the Supreme Court in Robinson.
Mrs Robinson was 76 years-old and frail. The last thing she expected when she set out down a Huddersfield shopping street in 2008 was that she might be caught up in the arrest of a drug dealer by four plain clothes police officers and injured.
DS Neil Willan spotted the dealer Ashley Williams in a park and called for back up to effect an arrest. The officers decided to arrest Williams outside a bookmakers by two of them taking hold of him and the other two blocking his escape route.
The arrest began. Williams resisted and as the five men tussled they moved towards Mrs Robinson. Williams backed into her and knocked her down with the five men landing on top of her and injuring her. She sued for personal injury in negligence and also assault and trespass to the person occasioned by DS Willan.
Mr Recorder Pimm at first instance found the officers negligent, as they had foreseen that the suspect would try to escape arrest and the potential for harm to nearby individuals if he did, yet proceeded without noticing the appellant's nearby presence. Significantly, DS Willan had given evidence that he would have walked past Williams if any pedestrians were in harms way. He also stated they needed to make the arrest fast before Williams could dispose of his drugs and without him spotting they were police officers. Unsurprisingly given what Williams said about being aware of passers-by the Recorder held, that the police did have a duty of care towards Mrs Robinson and it was reasonably foreseeable she might be injured if they arrested Williams close to her. The blocking officers were too far away to be effective when the arrest began which meant they could not control Williams properly. However, the Judge held that...
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