Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 07:42:40 EDT
From: Bapopik
Subject: Paralegal (Shapiro, 1970)
"Paralegal" sounds like its been around since the Greeks, but it's not
so. The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is an ad from August
22, 1972 in the NEW YORK LAW JOURNAL.
I'm researching business and legal terms, and I found this in BUSINESS
WEEK. "Paralegal" appears to have been coined by an Philadelphia lawyer named
Shapiro, in 1970. (All true American lawyers are named Shapiro.)
This is from BUSINESS WEEK, 26 December 1970, pg. 62:
MANAGEMENT
_Legal aides_
_for busy lawyers_
Three young Philadelphia lawyers have taken a page from the medical
profession's book in an effort to help attorneys swamped with paperwork and
clamoring clients. Richard J. Braemer, Daniel Promisio, and Paul E. Shapiro
(shown in photo--ed.), all former members of Philadelphia law firms, have set
up the Institute of Paralegal Training to turn college graduates into
paraprofessionals. The assistants will handle research and administrative
chores so that lawyers can spend more time practicing law.
While the concept is relatively new in the U. S. legal profession, it is
well-established in British law firms. There, some 30,000 legal assistants
take care of a full range of routine, mostly administrative legal functions.
Their output ir reviewed and approved by solicitors, and they cannot give
legal counsel to a client.
But in the U. S., says Mitch Miller, a Philadelphia lawyer who is active
in the legal assistant movement, "You might say lawyers have a problem in
delegating work. Doctors are smarter. They wised up a long time ago."
(...)
Braemer, Promisio, and Shapiro charge $500 for their three-month course.
They have already put in almost six months training their first two classes of
assistants--mostly women--in the basics of corporate law. They lecture on
such topics as employment and merger and acquisition agreements, stock
options, regulation of public sales of securities, and the Securities Exchange
Act of 1934.
This is from BUSINESS WEEK, 29 June 1974, pg. 86:
LEGAL AFFAIRS
_The hot job market for paralegal aides_
(...)
_A new phenomenon._ Many law firms have long employed non-lawyer clerks, but
the specially trained paralegal is a phenomenon of the 1970s.
The grandfather of the paralegal schools is Philadelphia's private
Institute for Paralegal Training, now only four years old (and in April 1973,
bought by Bell & Howell Co.). Since 1970 it has graduated 1,200 students of
whom about 1,000 are employed in banks, law firms, and corporations in 45
cities, according to Paul C. Shapiro, a founder and co-director of the
institute. About 5% have gone on to law school.
From its original offering of one three-month corporate law course, the
institute's program had broadened to embrace six courses: estates and trusts,
real estate litigation, employee benefit plans, general practice (a four-month
course), and criminal law (to be offered for the first time in the fall).
(...)
There are now more than 50 training programs in the U. S., most of them
unlike Person's or the Philadelphia Institute--nonprofit affiliates of
colleges and universities. According to Mrs. Lilly Cohen, administrator of
the one-year-old paralegal program at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.
Y., paralegal courses are given at two-year and four-year colleges, in
secreatarial schools, and even at the master's degree level. But the largest
number of such courses are in the junior colleges, says Mrs. Cohen.
FUN PERSONAL FACT: I have never--as a lawyer in New York City--been paid as
much as New York City paralegals. When I graduated, passed the bar exam, and
couldn't find a job, one firm told me, "we can't send a lawyer as a
paralegal." Oh....When I got my first job (not THAT long ago), I watched a
cable show called "Law Line" that was about paralegal employment. "Paralegals
start at $25,000," the guest said. My salary was $19,100.