Bench & Bar of Minnesota

The Legal Services Delivery Team
By Michael J. Ford

The typical legal services delivery team consists of an attorney, a paralegal, and a legal secretary. From time to time another attorney may join the “team” for a particular aspect of the representation, such as an associate who provides motion practice support to a partner. The members of each team may be members of other teams as well, such as paralegals who provide support to more than one attorney, or secretaries whose services are spread among a number of attorneys.

This article is not intended to cover all of the different models by which legal delivery teams might be organized. Rather, the thrust of these comments is directed at the working relationship between the members of the legal services delivery team.

There are two relatively typical orientations for the working relationship between the members of a legal services delivery team. This article will explore both, and then recommend a more balanced hybrid of the two.

The Support Staff Orientation

The support staff orientation treats the delivery of legal services as separate activities. The attorney works within the attorney’s sphere. The paralegal does what paralegals do. The secretary does what secretaries do. This orientation breaks the delivery effort into separate areas; much like individual boxes, and each member of the legal services delivery team then operates within his or her box. This tends to be an ineffective working relationship given the lack of coordination between the members of the team. Attorneys who operate in a team with such an orientation may, from time to time, experience frustration with support staff who seem relatively unresponsive to the attorney’s direction of the overall effort. By contrast, legal secretaries and paralegals who operate within a legal services delivery team with a support staff orientation may feel relatively more in control of the demands placed upon them.

The Attorney Orientation

The attorney orientation of a legal services delivery team focuses the team on the needs, desires, and direction of the attorney. In such teams, the legal secretary and paralegal are expected to “drop what they are doing” at a moment’s notice and provide the attorney whatever the attorney wants, when the attorney wants it, and in whatever format the attorney demands it. Such legal services delivery teams typically operate in a constant crisis mode. Attorneys tend to procrastinate, and in a legal services delivery team oriented to the attorney’s needs, desires, and wants that oftentimes results in short-fuse requirements for the legal secretary and paralegal. This is the typical orientation for most legal services delivery teams. Oftentimes attorneys cannot imagine any other way of operating. Support staffs, as might be expected, find this to be a frustrating orientation framework to work within.

A Hybrid Orientation

A hybrid orientation for the legal services delivery team that delivers a superior product for the client is one in which each of the members of the team works interdependently towards a common goal.

In practical terms, this hybrid approach requires that each of the members of the legal services delivery team recognize the critical importance of the others’ contributions. The attorney recognizes that without the legal secretary, scheduling of matters, the preparation of critical correspondence and legal documents, and the organization and retrieval of material relevant to the representation would be impossible.

The legal secretary recognizes that if the aims, objectives, and overall legal effort are not carried out in accordance with the attorney’s direction, the representation will fail and the client will suffer.

The paralegal who operates within this hybrid orientation framework for the delivery of legal services realizes that the paralegal’s efforts complement and supplement those of both the legal secretary and the attorney. In turn, the attorney recognizes that, to a certain degree, the paralegal can serve as the attorney’s alter ego with both clients and other counsel. The legal secretary understands and appreciates that the paralegal facilitates the work that the legal secretary must carry out as part of the secretary’s sphere of responsibility.

Other typical characteristics of this hybrid orientation framework for the legal services delivery team include:

Regular consultation with all members of the legal services delivery team concerning scheduling issues.
Attorney solicitation of input from both the paralegal and the legal secretary on critical decisions relating to the representation.
Recommendations by the paralegal and legal secretary to the attorney of methods and processes that might be employed in the representation that the attorney may not have thought of.
Prior planning and forethought by the attorney concerning the requirements of the representation so as to facilitate the flow of work and avoid, to the extent possible, falling into the crisis management approach in the representation.

The foregoing maxims outlining the hybrid orientation framework for the legal services delivery team can be best illustrated by this all too frequent example.

Example: A matter has been pending in the law office for a number of months. A document - it could be a contract or an appellate brief or motion brief - is due out on a date known well in advance. Because of the press of other matters, and the procrastination in which attorneys are all too prone to indulge, the attorney does not attend to the matter until the day of the deadline. The attorney then compounds this inappropriate handling by not engaging in a discussion with the secretary or paralegal about the impending deadline but, instead, dictating or otherwise preparing the material required. As the close of business looms, the attorney triumphantly appears at the workstation of the legal secretary and delivers the draft documents to be typed into final form. The legal secretary is forced to call the paralegal for assistance in assembling documents to be enclosed with the material prepared by the attorney. Some time after, and on occasion well after the close of business, the project is completed and presented to the attorney for final review and revision.

Needless to say, this all-too-frequent procedure can be frustrating for all concerned. Had the attorney recognized and respected the important contribution that the legal secretary and paralegal make to the delivery of legal services, the attorney would not have let the matter get to this point.

In addition, a legal secretary and a paralegal operating within the hybrid orientation framework would have assisted the attorney early on to recognize the importance of the impending deadline and to take the necessary steps to plan for and deliver the required documents well before the deadline.

If you find yourself operating in the constant “crisis mode” outlined in the foregoing example, you are most likely operating within a legal services delivery team that is oriented either to the attorney, or to the support staff. Either orientation can lead to frustration and a less than optimum delivery of legal services on behalf of the client.

MICHAEL J. FORD is a partner with the St. Cloud law firm, Quinlivan & Hughes, P.A. He concentrates his practice in the areas of civil and appellate litigation.

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