Remote Paralegal Services for Real Estate Professionals
Paralegal work is highly valuable but less specialized than the work attorneys do. Unlike licensed attorneys, they can’t give legal advice or perform duties that only licensed attorneys are given the legal right to perform. However, they can engage in a number of necessary and important activities that benefit clients. By delegating these tasks to paralegals, licensed attorneys on the team are granted more time to focus on the kind of work only they are permitted to do. As a result, paralegal services are billed at a lower hourly rate than the services of attorneys. This is another reason why so many law firms and businesses hire paralegals: They often do necessary, informed work while saving the business money and the lawyers on the team time to focus on their specialized work.
Paralegals assist lawyers in researching cases, reviewing files, and preparing legal documents. A real estate paralegal assists real estate lawyers. They work on cases that involve property sales, purchases, or construction. Paralegals may also be responsible for answering phone calls, scheduling appointments, conducting legal research, preparing for court sessions, and maintaining files.
When law firms and businesses are considering their paralegal needs, a host of factors must be weighed. Every company has different legal needs at different times. This is one of the reasons it can be difficult to figure out how many paralegals to have on staff. If a legal department hires too many paralegals, there may not be enough work available to justify the costs associated with their pay and benefits. Also, some legal work is largely seasonal. Casework and legal actions can lead to dramatic increases and decreases in staffing needs over the course of a year. Similarly, when lawyers and paralegals on staff take advantage of vacation time or need to take temporary leave for professional, medical or personal reasons, gaps in staffing can be difficult to fill on a temporary or semi-permanent basis. Fluctuations in a legal department’s staffing needs make it difficult to know just how many paralegals to hire at any given time. Therefore, outsourcing paralegal work is a trend that is transforming the ways legal departments operate.
Some companies find that outsourcing all of their paralegal needs better serves their staffing needs and bottom line. Especially when legal departments are small, it may not make sense to keep even a single paralegal on staff full time. Outsourcing paralegal services allows a team to remain flexibly staffed as needs ebb and flow while maintaining an informed, high-quality work product. By choosing to outsource paralegal services, businesses can meet their needs without incurring the costs associated with overstaffing.
Law firm partners are learning as they go through a pandemic, especially on how to dramatically cut costs. Even in this uncertain time, what has become clear is that the scope of paralegal work is changing with the growing need to provide remote legal services. These days, legal departments are finding that virtual teams can work just as well as teams that are all in the same place. Remote paralegals, in particular, bring advantages to legal teams, such as:
• Unlike attorneys, paralegals are generally not constrained to working only within certain jurisdictions.
• Depending on your local market, you may be able to find remote paralegals at a lower cost than local ones.
• Remote paralegals require no on-site office space, IT equipment or other overhead.
• Remote paralegals often work through outsourcing agencies or as independent contractors, eliminating the tax and benefit costs associated with in-house employees.
Considering that much of what most paralegals do involves sitting in front of a computer or talking on the phone, having a remote paralegal can be about the same as having one on-site.
If you’ve never hired a remote paralegal before, you can save yourself time by working with Real Assistance, Inc. Our paralegals are capable of tackling the paperwork, as well as performing any tasks related to casework.
We provide assistance to law firms and real estate professionals with the following:
Legal Research
Preparation of closing documents in the purchase/sale of residential or commercial property
Preparation of leases, notices, and documents in landlord/tenant proceedings
Title Review (title searches, preparation of title insurance reports and binders)
Preparation of closing statements, lease agreements, acquisition contracts, and all commercial space purchase/sales documents
Preparation of Real Estate Tax Opinion Letters
Draft Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions
Reviewing entity documents, including trusts, limited liability companies, limited partnerships and corporations for approval
Creation of custom mortgage closing and modification documents
Abstracting legal documents pertaining to real estate and construction
Construction contract drafting and review
Draft, review and facilitation of transactional ancillary loan documents to borrowers, lenders, and Escrow Agent
Filling out forms and applications to governmental agencies
Public record searches, including judgment, tax liens, and UCC filings
If you have any questions regarding our paralegal services or would like to discuss your project, please do not hesitate to contact Real Assistance, Inc.