4 Tips to Finding and Hiring Your Ideal Contracted Virtual Paralegal

The employee hiring process can be an absolute nightmare for any law firm.  We are always stuck in those spots of having too much work to dedicate adequate time for candidate review, multi-step interviewing processes, and thorough on-boarding procedures that we know will result in a solid hire.   As a result, we often end up hiring the wrong people, or lose the right people due to the inefficiencies. 

Hiring a virtual paralegal intensifies those struggles.  As many of you have learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual management is a skill one doesn’t just develop overnight.  Because finding the right candidate is challenging enough when done face-to-face, attorneys tend to shy away from the idea of hiring someone they have never met in person.  However, hiring a contracted paralegal service comes with it a multitude of benefits.  Among countless other perks, firms can experience long term stability, uninterrupted workflows, and net profit predictabilities when hiring a virtual paralegal company.  These benefits shouldn’t be overlooked, but rather embraced when searching for the right virtual team:

 1.    Make a Clear Establishment of Expectations

 While expectations may be avoided in personal relationships, they should be immediately established in professional ones.  You may have consulted with a staffing agency in the past that has checked you back on your level of expectations in comparison to your salary offerings.  However,   it is absolutely vital that you establish your expectations as the first thing your virtual paralegal company sees.

On my website, my potential clients have the ability to schedule what I refer to as our initial “discovery call.”  Through utilizing the online scheduler, the attorney has the ability to describe in detail what services they are seeking.  This is an opportunity for you to take a breath and write down exactly what it is you are looking for in a paralegal.  I often wish my attorneys would be more detailed and blunt in their expectations from the start.  It is our mission to fulfill each and every need of our firms, but it often takes several months for an attorney to get clear with us. 

I believe this is because attorneys running small or solo practices are so programmed to not set expectations, as they have rarely been met in the past.  Regardless, expectations are what set the tone of our working relationship right from the start.  A great virtual paralegal will write down every word you say and reference back to it in everything they do for you going forward.  Virtual paralegals are different than your traditional in-house employee.  We are a business, and customer service is a huge part of what makes us successful. 

Be picky and express in detail what you are looking for and you will have greater success in the working relationship right from the start.   I invite you to take a quiet moment to imagine your ideal paralegal should you be able to waive a magic wand.  If you bring those wishes to the table on your first interaction, your chances are high of finding the right fit the first time. 

 2.    Seek Candidates With a Lengthy History of Remote Work

 As stated above, teamwork in a virtual environment is not an easy task and isn’t a skill we learn overnight.  It will take months or years of practice to find an efficient flow.  Many firms are having such difficulty in their efficiency with a fully present team, the thought of bringing someone that isn’t sitting in your brick and mortar can be frightening.

If you find a virtual paralegal that has a long history of working in virtual contracted capacity, not only will they make the transition seamless for you, they may also bring new efficiency to your practice you haven’t seen before.  We carry a forced familiarity with multitudes of Cloud based filing systems and practice management systems.  With this added experience, we are able to onboard with little to no technological struggles.

Further, I always say to my clients that hiring someone virtually will show every weakness in your law firm management procedures.  Gone are the days of being able to manage your caseload inside your head and delegate through means of verbal communication.  A paralegal with a strong background in this type of working relationship has the ability to help you transition through these changes and develop your practice into a more accessible, well-oiled machine. 

3.    Pay Attention to Communication Skills in the Beginning

 No relationship will be successful without effective communication.  When you hire a virtual paralegal, it is absolutely vital that they over communicate.  When we send emails or delegate work through a task manager in a virtual relationship, we don’t have the ability to nod our heads or give a quick “got it” in confirmation it has been received.  The paralegal doesn’t have the ability to catch you in the morning on your way back to your office to follow up on the revisions of Mr. Smith’s Will. 

Identifying someone’s communication skills right from the beginning is extraordinarily imperative during your virtual paralegal hiring process.  Simple things to pay attention to early on:

·        Do they send follow up emails to your conversations recapping what was discussed?

·        Do they send you a confirmation email that they received the calendar notification for your initial conversation?

·        Do they follow up with you if you haven’t responded within a day or two?

 4.    Make Sure They Carry Professional Liability Insurance

This is a highly controversial debate in the freelance paralegal community.  As a member of several freelance paralegal social media groups, I often see the question come up of whether or not we should be carrying Professional Liability Insurance.  Those that have the opinion it is unnecessary for us to carry this justify it with the reality that we are operating under the attorney’s insurance.

I carry Professional Liability Insurance not because it is legally required, but because it is my additional level of promise that I take my business seriously.  You aren’t hiring an employee that sleeps well at night knowing it’s all on your shoulders at the end of the day.  You’re hiring a professional company that takes their work as seriously as you do.  In my opinion, anyone that would not take that added safeguard measure does not have their mindset in business ownership and their professionalism may be on a different level closer to that of a traditional employee.