PARALEGAL UTILIZATION

Paralegal Utilization

Table of Content

Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYIII

INTRODUCTION1

Background1

Problem2

Audience4

Topics to Investigate4

LITERATURE REVIEW5

A LOOMING PROBLEM8

Paralegal Today11

Mary Meinzinger Urisko, Law companies for Paralegal Services11

DISCUSSION15

CONCLUSION18

REFERENCE20

Executive Summary

In addition to the American people to defend territories and regions, paralegals defend the Constitution of the rule of law and civil freedoms awards. American Bar Association (ABA) defines a paralegal or legal assistant as a person's education, training or work experience who is employed or by the lawyers, law firms, corporations, government agencies or other entities who perform specifically designated substantive legal work to retain eligibility lawyer responsible. Professional associations, such as paralegals, legal assistants Association (Nora) and the National Federation of Paralegal Association (NFPA), which will be discussed later in this chapter, do not agree with some of the above definition, with the development of their own.

Paralegal Utilization in the Air Force

Introduction

Paralegal utilization has been a long standing contentious topic among Air Force legal professionals for years. It has been extremely frustrating for all parties involved because Air Force paralegals have not been fully utilized across the Air Force on a consistent applicable manner which can be repeated. There are legal offices that routinely have superb programs while the others have the average programs. This proposal will highlight those inadequacies so that we can implement change (Akins 2000).

Background

In the fall of 1970, The Judge Advocate General of the Air Force (TJAG) appointed Chief Master Sergeant Steven Swigonski as the first Senior Paralegal Manager to TJAG. Immediately afterwards Chief Swigonski worked relentlessly to establish a paralegal school at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama and he got the career identified as its separate career field from administrative support designations by the Air Force. These actions by Chief Swigonski laid the groundwork for many more changes that would impact the paralegal career field in the Air Force, namely the training environment of which paralegals and attorneys train together at the schoolhouse in Alabama (Greene 2003).

Problem

Since the creation of the Paralegal career field in 1955 (then known as Legal Services Specialist), the Judge Advocate Corp (JAG Corp) gone through many transitions to try and distinguish the paralegal career field from other administrative fields in the U.S. Air Force. Additionally, we have significant educational gaps between our officers and enlisted personnel. All of the military attorneys in the Air Force have a Juris Doctor Degrees from civilian law schools all over the country. The enlisted personnel on the other hand have a minimum High School Diploma. However, most enlisted personnel do posses an Associate in Applied Science degree in Paralegal Studies from the Community College of the Air Force which is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges. Additionally, there are a small number of paralegals who have obtained bachelor degrees in various fields of study not specifically pertaining to the paralegal career field.

The second major issue that is a looming problem is the way the Air Force goes about selecting individuals for paralegal enlistment (Greene 1993). The vast majority of the paralegal career field is retrained from other Air Force career ...