The CBA Paralegal Committee has spent over two years attempting to revise its “Guidelines for the Utilization of Paralegals” which were approved by the CBA Board of Governors over 10 years ago. This project seems to be languishing and is in danger of being dropped. It would be a travesty to see so much hard work so far be for nothing. The CBA Law Practice Management Department frequently refers its members to these Guidelines (posted on the CBA website) because of their incredible usefulness for guiding attorneys and paralegals alike in the billable tasks that a paralegal can perform in a law firm. But, they have become outdated and are in need of a revision. The revisions cannot be made by CBA staff, and so we must rely on volunteer paralegals and attorneys to complete the revisions. The Colorado Bar Association feels strongly that these Guidelines are extremely useful to the entire legal community and a very worthwhile project for which to volunteer. The CBA will offer a free associate membership for the upcoming fiscal year – July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2008 – to all non-members who submit revised Guidelines.

The purpose of the Guidelines is to provide a general framework of potential tasks that can or should be performed by a paralegal in an effort to assist with work flow. Paralegals write or revise the Guidelines, and then an attorney reviews and signs off on them. Attrition and authorship is given to both the paralegal and the attorney. Once all of the Guidelines are written or revised, they will be submitted to the CBA Board of Governors for approval. Once approved, an article about the Guidelines will be published in The Colorado Lawyer, all paralegals and attorneys who worked on them will be listed in the article, and the Guidelines will be posted on the website. We also plan to submit an article about the project to Legal Assistant Today with the hope that this project will garner national attention. The Guidelines in their current state can be found on the CBA website at:

http://www.cobar.org/group/index.cfm?category=106&EntityID=CLAS

Please, if you are interested in volunteering for this project, or know someone who is, get in touch with Michelle Gersic, Assistant Director of Law Practice Management/Risk Management at the Colorado Bar Association. Michelle can be reached at (303) 824-5342 or mgersic@cobar.org. We would like to have the Guidelines Project completed by the end of June. The following practice areas still require a paralegal and attorney volunteer:

Administrative (new)

Bankruptcy (new)

Commercial

Communications (new)

Criminal

Health (new)

International (new)

Juvenile (new)

Labor and Employment

Immigration

Natural Resources and Energy (separate from Environmental, which is already complete)