Please explain whether a paralegal/legal assistant could be held personally liable for committing legal malpractice.
What will be an ideal response?
The short answer is yes—although rare, a paralegal/legal assistant could be liable for
malpractice. The unauthorized practice of law is the starting point. Because paralegals/legal
assistants are required to work under the supervision of attorneys, lawyers are generally
liable for the misconduct of their paralegals/legal assistants. However, if a paralegal/legal
assistant commits UPL, then he or she will be held to the standard of an attorney. Therefore,
if a paralegal/ legal assistant goes out of bounds and starts acting like a lawyer and then
compounds things by committing negligence in doing something incorrectly that causes the
client harm, a court will likely hold the paralegal/legal assistant liable. Paralegals/legal
assistants should not be too alarmed by the malpractice possibility because as long as they
are working for lawyers, either as employees or as independent contractors, then those
lawyers bear the professional liability burden. And some states, such as Ohio, have case law
that states that paralegals cannot be liable for malpractice because they are not attorneys.
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