Paralegals have a lot on their plate from communicating with clients, drafting briefs, appearing in court, and more. Help them help you by doing these five things every time you work with them. Keep in mind that anything that requires extra time on their part—whether that be reformatting documents, trying to contact you, or organizing last-minute files—can and will increase your bill!
1. Send photos and text messages as separate PDFs attached to an email.
When you embed them in an email it takes time and costs you money to copy and paste and save them into a new document for your electronic file. Also, please make sure the date and time of each text and email are visible on the message. Please also provide the dates that photos were taken if no time stamp.
2. Please send complete statements.
This means all pages in any statement. Please scan all pages of a statement into one pdf file. Please do not send partial statements or a separate pdf for each page of a statement as we have to print them all out and rescan them as one document for your electronic file. If you send a partial statement, the paralegal will have to follow up with you to obtain the whole statement which will only increase your bill.
3. Cooperate promptly with providing documents requested by your paralegal.
Providing documents in a case can a big task and become overwhelming, but you can do it. Help us help you and reduce billing by simply providing what is asked for when it is requested. Please make sure you respond to the paralegal promptly otherwise you will be billed for repeated efforts to contact you to obtain your documents.
4. Don’t wait to provide documents until the day before your court date or the day they are due.
This will only detract from the vital time the paralegal and attorney need to effectively be prepared for your court case.
5. Be courteous to the paralegal assigned to your case.
Often times paralegals are the go-between and link with your attorney and are in a position to expedite addressing your questions and concerns. Be patient, our paralegals are working on many files at the same time and have to prioritize their time to effectively and efficiently serve many clients.
At Potts, Shoemaker, and Grossman, LLC, our paralegals and attorneys are prepared to assist you in finding the best solutions for your individual situation. To schedule a confidential consultation, contact us at (610) 840-2626.