The Empowered Paralegal

Every day many paralegals and legal assistants leave their offices feeling frustrated, overworked, and underutilized. As an attorney and professor, author Robert E. Mongue often hears from paralegals who, despite their education and professional training, feel poorly equipped to meet the real challenges of today's law office. Too often, paralegals are taught law and procedure, but not how to effectively manage their time, workloads, clients, and relationships with their attorneys.

Having employed, trained, and taught paralegals for more than forty years as a litigator and a decade as a professor of legal studies, Professor Mongue has developed clear, concise, and easy-to-use techniques to show paralegals how to become a critical component of an effective legal team. He used these techniques in his own law practice and in classrooms, seminars, and workshops. The Empowered Paralegal provides step-by-step, easy to understand and implement techniques, written in a friendly, accessible, and sometimes humorous way, for managing time, docket calendars, files, clients, and litigation, as well as providing sound guidance on managing the work relationship with attorneys and paralegal professionalism.

This second edition includes new chapters on the history of the paralegal profession, managing social media, and managing alternative dispute resolution, along with expanded coverage of client management focusing on managing difficult clients and accommodating elder clients.

The Empowered Paralegal provides important practical office strategies while giving paralegals the empowerment, recognition, and respect they and their profession deserve. A useful addition to any course, especially "Introduction to Paralegalism," this book is designed for the student in an internship seminar, the established paralegal, or those entering this fast-growing field.

A set of 141 PowerPoint slides is available upon adoption of this book. Click here to view a sample presentation. If you are a professsor using this book for a class, please contact Beth at bhall@cap-press.com to request your slides.

Praise for the first edition:

What many paralegal students need is a friendly, matter-of-fact coach — and that's what Robert Mongue supplies. In simple terms, he walks students through the basics in managing time, managing calendars and files, and even managing clients and supervising attorneys. These themes bring to light what is so often unspoken, and are contained in succinct and easy-to-read chapters. We use the book in our internship and clinic courses, and the students like it!" — Margaret Phillips, Daemen College

— Margaret Phillips, Daemen College

Read this practical, easy-to-read guide even if you have a couple of years of experience. It's the stuff of superstars who somehow innately know how to make their job seem effortless and smooth, much to amazement of others mired down in chaos."

— Estrin Report

Mongue's book, The Empowered Paralegal, is an informative read, especially for individuals new to the paralegal profession… So add The Empowered Paralegal, the book and the blog, to your professional reading list. Mongue is a real fan of the paralegal profession and promotes paralegals as a valued and essential part of the legal team. With his daily updates at his blog, he provides a welcome attorney perspective in the paralegal blogosphere."

— Lynne DeVenney, Practical Paralegalism