Episode 17 -Why Do I Have to Talk to a Paralegal First? Real Lawyers, Real Answers

[Music] [Applause] And good afternoon good good how are you I'm doing all right okay so welcome to the stand fight win live stream real lawyers and real paralegals real answers so today we have something little different so I'm Keith Davidson I'm Lisa Jones and I'm paralegal Kayla Wilkie so now we have these two out in front of the camera today because today what we want to talk about a little bit is what function does a paralegal serve in our law firm and especially to people who are trying to get the attention of a lawyer in trying to get a lawyer to take their case so if you have a trust and well case and you want to try and get through to a lawyer to talk about it a lot of times when you call a law firm the first thing you're gonna do is speak to a paralegal and sometimes people don't understand why that's speak to paralegal and they you know sometimes it's viewed as a negative thing and we want to shed some light on what the paralegals do and it's an important function and it's kind of like we were talking about this before the broadcast today it's a little bit like a translator right because lawyers I'm the only lawyer here today in this group but lawyers don't think like other people right we're a little weird like weaking we have our own language we have our own way of viewing things we have our own like what matters to us what doesn't matter to us and so sometimes people outside of the law firm don't understand that and this is really where paralegals come in handy cuz they can talk to somebody who's not a lawyer do their magic and translate it into a language that lawyers can understand and then we can hopefully connect and help so so we have some questions today and we're going to put Kayla under the under the pressure cooker on the hot seat normally Kayla's asking us questions and see how it goes so Manisha for those of you don't know is actually a client intake specialist so she helps bring clients into our firm and kayla is a person who talks to almost everybody who turns into a client she's kind of the first stop that people talk to so Manisha why don't you start by kind of what questions yeah absolutely so the first question I have that may be helpful for people who aren't really sure what a paralegal is is what is a paralegal yeah so a paralegal is a paraprofessional who assists an attorney in pretty much all aspects of case management so paralegals usually do a lot of things that lawyers do we can draft legal pleadings we can track deadlines and hearing dates we can draft discovery written discovery and subpoenas we can get deposition scheduled we file documents with the court and as far as clients go were often a liaison between the attorney and the client and also a liaison in between the court and the attorney and the funny thing about that is that a lot of people may not know this but if they're an experienced paralegal somebody like Kayla that has that experience they're actually more useful than a first-year lawyer because in law school they teach you all this like theory but they don't teach you anything practical like how to actually do stuff or as paralegals know especially experienced paralegals know how to do things get things done so it's a very useful function okay very good I'll just add to that Manisha what paralegals don't do is we don't give legal advice and we don't represent the client in court we don't negotiate settlements but we do a lot of stuff that lawyers do well I was gonna say it a natural reaction to being on the phone with a paralegal especially for the first time someone is calling to get assistance with their legal matter is tell me what to do Kayla you know should I do this should I do that so it's not being able to give advice but how what's your response what response would they expect well I usually say I'm not a lawyer I can't give you legal advice if I know the answer to a question I can point them in the right direction but my main job is to communicate information to the attorney and get them set up with the attorney so that they can get an opinion from an attorney very good so that is what a paralegal is so now what are we going to do with this person who has these skills so the next question would be why would I need to speak with a paralegal before speaking with an attorney I mean a lot of times people want to call in and they immediately want to talk to an attorney so why are what are some of the reasons why people need to speak with the paralegal first well Keith's attorneys as you know are really busy people attorneys go to court hearings and depositions they have client meetings they draft briefs they do a lot of different things and a lot of times they're out of the office they're in court so the the paralegals are here we talk to people we talk to the clients and particularly if you are a new client or a potential client we're the ones who are going to be communicating the information about your case to the attorney so we're going to take your information and we're going to give it to the attorney and let them know what your case is all about and if we think it's a good case we'll get you set up for a consultation with an attorney it's kind of interesting too because with as much as the attorneys are running around which we are always running around somewhere it seems like you have the ability to know when have a gap in my schedule when I can focus on something like a new client matter and so you actually came in a lot of ways become an advocate for this potential client and say let me take your information not only can you summarize that information but you can also know when I'm available and then you can say hey take a look at this real quick and of course when you come to me to say I've got something I want you to look at it you know I'm gonna take notice of it more so than if it's just random information coming in because we're getting bombarded by information all day every day these days so you know I get to see a lot of the behind the scenes work at aalverson and Davidson and I know that it's not always just cut and dry I know that we have circumstances where people insist on proceeding their way rather than our way so why is it important for us to go through our process and what happens when we're faced with a situation where we've got someone who insists on doing things that way well my first answer to that would be that the attorneys are really the experts they know what elements you need to have to make a legal claim each legal claim has a certain list of elements that you have to meet in order to bring that claim in court so our job is to when we talk to a person initially we're kind of listening to their story but we're also picking out the elements of their legal claim so the paralegals job is to get the important information when a person calls up and then give that important information to the attorneys so that the attorneys can evaluate whether that's a case that can even be made because there are situations sometimes where a person will feel really like something bad has happened to them but they may not be able to make legal claim in court so our job is to evaluate whether it's a case that can be brought okay and there's some cases where they might have a very good legal claim but you wouldn't know that until you kind of sift through the information and find what we need to know and that's really where the translation comes into fact like lawyers think like lawyers right non lawyers don't think like lawyers nor should they there's no reason for you to do that it's not a pleasant experience anyway does it go around thinking like a lawyer so the the paralegal can bridge that gap taken on lawyers thoughts translate them into something the lawyer can understand and hopefully get the case moving okay so sometimes when people call I'm sure that they with wanting to speak with an attorney right away they can sometimes feel like they're not as important if they don't get to speak with the attorney right away and have to speak with a paralegal how do you I guess help them feel like they are important so that they don't feel like they're being just put aside because they can't talk to the attorney right away how do we how do we reinforce every client's importance to our firm well I first I let people know that I'm the person who's going to communicate your information to the attorney and I need these specific questions answered so that I can give that information to the attorney so they can evaluate your case and we do actually have a list of questions that we need to ask and those are the most important points in any case that we need to have those answers in order to evaluate the case so if a parent legal is taking potential clients information it's not that they're not important it's that they're the person who's going to be communicating that information to the attorney and letting the attorney know here are these important points that you need to know I really think you should look at this case excellent so it's really it's not just a one-time exchange that they're going to expect it's an ongoing relationship throughout their case yep absolutely and I would tell people that they shouldn't feel as though they're not important because they've talked to the paralegal just the opposite and actually is very important and I think it shows it should show them that we take their matter seriously that we're having them talk to somebody who understands what information needs to be garnered for the attorney and so you know Kayla for example is our right-hand person she's she knows what we want to see and even though we're not available she can talk to the potential client and get that information so it's it's a vitally important function and I would say that anybody who's talking to one of our paralegals about a case it's because we do respect you and we do respect your problem that we even have this person available to you because if we didn't value people calling in then we simply would say oh I don't have the time I'm a busy lawyer at a lot of the times I don't have anybody to talk to you sorry I get lost and so the fact that we do have people ready willing and able to speak with the potential client is shows just how much we value them the fact that the paralegal is not the point and it's actually a good thing because again paralegals they're just nicer people I mean it's just nicer to talk to just easier great I mean yeah we all know that and that's not a secret yep nothing against lawyers but we're just not pleasant people to be around all the time well and and with lawyers being very busy and speaking different languages than regular people like myself it's important that someone like Kayla is there to follow up and follow through and communicate you know handle scheduling so I'm sure just a smoother operation with you and has the patience and the tiny to listen yeah because you know with our busy schedule sometimes we tend to be a little bit short you are like I just need to know this isn't this you know it's so it really is a great function I think do you want to ask the next question sure so so why is the client and paralegal relationship important because when people call in is an interesting question in my mind so we're talking about the relationship that you end up developing both with potential clients and then with clients once they become clients of the firm and there is a relationship that develops in that communication and sharing of information there's a trust that's built up I think so what really is you know why is that an important relationship well if you've ever been through litigation before I think that you would know that you end up working if you become a client with the paralegal very closely a lot of times they'll call the office meaning to talk to the attorney and they're not available and so the paralegal is there as a liaison to communicate information and in the beginning of a case when you're first establishing that relationship with a law firm the paralegal is going to be the one that helps you get your case through to the attorney helps you communicate all the information that you have about your case to the attorney and in a way is an advocate for you and your case to the attorney so it's it's nice to be nice to the paralegal because they're there to help you I think the Advocate part is important too because if you have a trusting relationship with a paralegal they will become an advocate for your case which means that they'll make sure that the attorney get they don't make sure that they get the attorneys attention when the attorney needs to pay attention to something and so that's an important part yeah the other thing I would say is if you call in you're rude to a paralegal I guarantee you the lawyer is going to hear about it and there's nothing that I hate more the somebody who is rude to one of our support staff whether it's paralegal or even a non paralegal because I just I mean I know things are stressful and I get that and we never fault people for being stressed or upset or anxiety but rudeness that is kind of where we draw the line and you know for example when I'm in court I always make a point of being very courteous to the court clerk to the bailiff to the court reporter because I guarantee you if you go in there and you act like a jerk to these people the judge is gonna hear about it you know it's not as if they're never gonna tell the judge that hey this guy's a jerk yeah so it pays a little kindness goes a long way and you know the people are there the support people are there to help not to hurt so I think that's part of it too very important and we know that everybody's situation is important to them we deal with a lot of interesting cases involving families all types so you're not alone with whatever you're going through just understand that we you know our desire is to help people and yes I'm involved with some client intake as well as getting the content out to you folks so that it is something that you'll be able to understand so that's another area that I'm involved but what I do get to see is attorneys that deeply care about everyone's cases and unfortunately they only have two hands and you know we only work a certain number of hours in the day so engineers and two eyes and again so much improvement only taken so much information but we definitely are passionate about it and and these attorneys definitely care so just bear with us and we you know we'll do our best that being said sometimes we do have cases that we can't take so if I'm a client and I spoke with you I may have had a consultation with one of the attorneys and they've decided they can't take my case what do I do now well we will try to help you even if we can't take your case we will give you a referral to another law firm that practices in our field of law trust in a state litigation and if we don't have a referral in your County we will give you a phone number maybe to the California State Bar Association attorney referral line so even if we can't take your case we still care about what happens and we definitely want you to continue to seek legal assistance good another wonderful resource we have is the content that we put out through our various media channels so through social media Facebook and YouTube through our website that has lots of useful information both in text and in video format so even if we can't help you directly with your case we do provide a lot of resources for you to be able to take advantage of that right oh yeah that's what it's there for I mean our whole you know if you go on our website we have a form vault series where we actually have videos walking through various forms and how to fill them out and all that and so even if we can't help you know make use of those resources they're there to help the intent of all of that is to help people and sometimes we help people by representing them and sometimes we can't represent them it could be that sometimes it's because the legal claims aren't good enough sometimes it's because we're just too busy to intake a case we if we can't if we don't feel like we can give somebody the proper service because we've in taked a bunch of cases and we're particularly busy we won't intake another case just to intake a case if we don't feel like we can handle it we won't take it and sometimes there's any a variety of reasons it's never personal and I know it's hard to be turned down but it's never personal it's always there's either a legal reason or a business reason why we're not able to take a particular case but we definitely do want to get people on to resources if we can to the extent we can yes definitely so another question about what about so we talked about the attorney the client paralegal relationship being important but what about the attorney paralegal relationship why is that important yes so if you are lucky enough to have an attorney and a paralegal or a team that's working for you you've got a great team behind you you've got multiple people supporting you and advocating for your case and the attorney-client relationship is really important when we start to work the case because paralegals do a lot we do a lot of the kind of groundwork so filing documents with the court keeping track of all the deadlines all that is really important and attorneys need help with that kind of stuff so it's really yeah it's really important that the attorney and the paralegal work well together because if you've got a good team then you you know you're in good hands yeah I agree with that wholeheartedly you know a good team makes all the difference yes yes all right so some clients and I'm talking to you about my situation and you're going to go and relay that to one of the attorneys how can I be assured that something important or at least a detail that's important to me is not going to get missed yeah so my first suggestion would be to let us ask the questions because we are trained to kind of pick out the legal elements of your case and there's some very specific pieces of in formation that we need in order to evaluate whether you have a legal claim that we can bring so when you call a law firm a lot of times the attorney or the paralegal who you speak to is going to ask you some very pointed specific questions and it's best for you to have all that information to give to the paralegal so for example in trust in a state litigation there's some really specific pieces of information that we need from you right away so in our field of law those pieces of information are going to be when did the decedent's passed away when were their will and trust created how many beneficiaries are there how many people are named or anybody disinherited those kind of things and also are there any statute of limitations so those are pieces of information that we're going to look at when you first contact us and it would be best if you had your documents ready because we're most likely going to ask you for those if we're discussing a will or a trust but we've never seen it it can be really hard for the attorneys to advise you on what you're entitled to if they've never seen the will or the trust so the attorneys are going to want to review the trust document or the will document and so we're probably going to ask you to send that to us either email it to us or fax it to us or mail it to us so it's best to have that information ready and try to answer those questions okay so let me give you a scenario let's say I'm a potential client and I'm 60 years old and let's say my parent just died last month and there was an amendment where I was disinherited that was done in December of 2018 but before that I was gonna get 50% of the estate and now I'm disinherited so if I call in to talk to you about my case I and the first thing I say is what you see I'm 60 years old and the trust was changed in December of 2018 but when I was 18 I was given a car and my sister she didn't get a car see he gets nice of a car and she always held that against me she was always mad at me about that is that a good place to start if I'm trying to describe my case to you well you have to remember that the paralegal or the attorney you're talking to doesn't have the information that you have and so we don't know about the previous version of the trust at that point and so we're probably going to be a little confused when you start talking about something that happened when you're 18 so we're gonna probably have to bring you back and say wait a minute when was the trust or what first drafted and did you have equal shares under that trust or well and then we're gonna say okay what was the next amendment and we're gonna go through and get that background information on the trust or will and we have to extract that information out of you so bear with us because we're we may have to redirect you to get our questions answered so maybe what happened 40 years ago may not be relevant as as relevant as what happened in December of 2018 when the trust was actually changed right and so that's one of the things that people really have to keep in mind is there might be come a time when what happened long ago could be relevant but not right now the beginning of the conversation has helped us help you by getting some understanding of what we're dealing with here and so many of the rights derive from the documents and so until we understand the series of documents we won't really understand your rights the we do use a case overview sheet we have brought a copy with us we and we will attach a link to this case overview sheet to the recording of this broadcasts that people can take a look at it as a PDF and if you are interested in communicating with the law firm such as ours on a case wouldn't be a bad idea to take a look at the sheet and think about what information would apply to you and fill it in before you call so that you understand what information were ultimately going to be asking for but one of the nice things that we do is we take that information once Kayla gets it we put it on a sheet a case over every sheet sheet which goes to the lawyer and that's how we ensure that no information is going to be missed between what was said to the paralegal and what was said to the lawyer and I love this system because it allows me to look at something before I even get on the phone with the potential client I also can briefly look at the documents that they send them in and now I'm prepared to have a conversation and give hopefully some meaningful advice versus if I don't see any documents before I talk to a client I'm just spitting in the wind and saying well it could be this it could be that but until I see the documents how do I know right and you know they always say that free advice is worth what you paid for it but you can make that free advice a little bit more valuable if you give us the right information in the documents ahead of time and then it will be a more meaningful conversation what if I'm calling and I don't have all of the answers what if I don't know everything that you may potentially ask about should I still reach out yes and that's a great question and I'm gonna I'm sorry Kayla I know this piece you have your answer to it too but the one cabinet thing the thing I'm gonna say is especially when it comes to beneficiaries no beneficiary ever has all the information they're in the dark to some extent and that's normal I think and most of our cases with yeah I agree with that so also I was gonna say that you should still call we get a lot of calls from people who don't have any information in fact most of our calls a majority of them at least the person doesn't even have a copy of the trust or the well so they don't know what they're entitled to so if you call us we can give you some information that we have on how to obtain a copy of the trust or the well also one of the things that we usually ask potential clients is what are the assets what exactly are you fighting for here and what would we be fighting for we need to know if there's real property what kind of assets are in the trust and a lot of times people don't have that information but if you call us and give us the information that you do have we also have resources to help you figure that out so you should still call even if you don't have all of that information yeah cuz we can get either help you get the information give you some good resources to get in the information or we might be able to proceed with what you do have depending on circumstances but it's not abnormal for people to be in the dark that's that's I mean if you've been disinherited something's wrong you know something went wrong in the process so naturally somebody's probably hiding something from you also some of our cases it's the very nature for people to be in the dark so cases against the trustee where people have a copy of the trust but they know that the trustee is hiding something hiding assets or not giving them accounting information that's a very nature of the case that's what the case is all about so a lot of times they don't have all the information and that's the problem right right but don't tend to steal out in the open all right so we have another question here question so what is it just to kind of wrap this up so when you're talking to people what are kind of what are the best scenarios that you have when you're talking to people so the information you're getting or what makes for a positive interaction from your perspective as the paralegal yeah so my favorite people to talk to our people who are friendly and willing to answer our questions it can be difficult because we do get some people that call us and say well why do you need this information so when somebody will just go through the questions with us and give us the information that we ask for that's the best scenario and when we're able to get a copy of the documents the trust or the will that makes it really easy to get you set up with the attorneys so I particularly like when people are able to answer our questions and they're friendly what do you do when people say well why are you asking me these questions so I really have to answer I usually say we need this information in order to evaluate your legal claims and that's the truth we're not asking random questions we're trying to figure out what happened with the estate plan and what are your claims what type of case do you need to bring and the questions that we ask I'll help us figure out what type of case you need a file so you don't you don't typically ask questions that you don't really need the answer to do you ever asked anybody for their social security number yeah give her asking buddy for any other personal information besides what's relevant for the case know the personal information I would ask for would be a phone number and email address so we can contact you and that's about it you ever talk about ask questions about their love life no but I do get information about people's love life some cases where when you have multiple marriages and kids from different marriages sometimes you get mixed up in that but I guess the point I'm trying to make is we're not going to ask for your social security number we're not gonna ask for any private information that it's really just we're asking questions with that we need to know too decays not questions just to be nosy because you want to find out information because we really don't want there is a there are times when you get you know too much information right you're like okay I didn't need to know about that yeah there are a lot of times which is fine I mean if you want to share you certainly welcome to share but we are not looking to do that necessarily right so we want we want the good we want this stuff that we need to know so that you can pass along to the attorney yeah and another thing is that people sometimes want to know that their information is confidential and so I answer that question a lot if you contact us yes your information is confidential you are protected by the attorney-client privilege even if you haven't retained our firm so everything that you provide us if you provide us with documents everything is kept confidential yeah and I think we do like when people send it in contact forms we have a disclosure that we don't have to maintain that as confidential although we do but we just we want to make the point that we're not necessarily agreeing to represent somebody but certainly after the contact form comes in once somebody is contacted by us or if we talk to them on the phone and we're trying to get more information it's all confidential so a paralegal working under a lawyer has the same attorney-client privilege as if you were talking directly to the lawyer in fact you could talk to Manisha you could talk to Kayla you can talk to me we're all covered under the attorneys attorney-client privilege and so all of that will remain confidential and we don't tend to it's not that we don't tend to we don't share information that people give us without their prior permission but even though we don't really even ask for that because we don't share it so it's it is important I think that people know that this is confidential information it's gonna remain confidential and even if we don't take your case that remains confidential and there are rare occasions when you've talked to somebody you've gotten all this information and you know a little bit later either the same day or the next day their brother calls it on the other side of the case right yeah what are you doing those situations well that is what we call in the legal field a conflict of interest so if I hear a name that I have heard of the case before it's it's a wall that goes up I immediately stop listening to that person and I say one second I need to do a conflict check and so if we know that we've talked to someone else about your case we will tell you I'm sorry I can't get any information about your case because we may have a conflict of interest so if we already have inside information from a different party in your case we may just have to tell you sorry we can't represent you so we not only do we not disclose what we learn from the first party they're called in but we also tell the second person I called in whoa stop we can't talk about this there's a conflict you know we we can't help you sorry go away but that's only if the two parties aren't on opposite side correct right yeah so if it's if they're on the same side of the case it's different although even then we'll be careful and we'll call the first person if they don't know now a lot of times the first person will say hey my brother wants to talk to you too can they call you yeah go ahead yeah yeah or we'll set up a conference call with everybody that works out well - if there's multiple siblings that are all in the same position which happens a lot yeah but we don't take it for granted that the person calling us is automatically friendly we're gonna check it out first though we take that confidentiality very seriously because it's obviously important it's important the people out there it's important to us and we do respect that so is there anything else that you'd like to share with us Canada no I don't think so could you please provide us with your social security number I'm not going to do that okay well I want to thank Manisha and Kayla for joining us today so that we can see a little bit inside of how the sausage is made they say there's two things you shouldn't watch that's how sausage is made and how politics is made you would say that two vegetarian yeah right well you don't want to see you don't want to see how the sausage at least we had a little bit of a chance today to show how the sausage is made and how important it is I think to really use the resources that our firm provides to potential clients if you're calling in use those resources they're there for a reason we have a whole group of people who we've set up to help talk to you about your potential case and they're going to help become your advocate to get the attorneys ear and then be able hopefully to get your case to move on or even if we can't take your case these are the people who are going to be particularly helpful on giving you a referral or other resources so take advantage of the help that we're providing by providing people like Kayla and Manisha to you and I certainly would never view it as being less important than in fact it's just the opposite I think it's you you are more important because we have these resources here so thank you so much for joining us thank you I just want to add one final remark and that's the reason why we're here to help you is because we've got active attorneys that are busy fighting for your inheritance so you can be assured that you're going to be well taken care of and you're going to have their passionate attorneys working for you they're busy and that's why we're here to help you so you can find a recorded version of this broadcast on YouTube and Facebook you can also listen to an audio only version of it on pod beam being said of wrong the last time anything anything yeah I guess any uh nautical yeah maybe oh well we always get it on but anyway it's on anyway you don't want that you want the video you want to see all this video and hope we will most likely be returning next week into another live Sam five went live stream with myself and Stuart Allison all right.