Criminal Law Paralegal LA | Legal Document Assistant | Los Angeles

The fastest growing area of my paralegal practice is contracting with criminal defense attorneys who really know their way around the Los Angeles County Court System.

Criminal law is one area where a dead guilty defendant really needs a lawyer who has been around and knows the cast of characters.  Deals get made by the connected attorneys and charges can get dropped or get reduced, or get a not guilty verdict at trial, but each step of that is really super expensive.  So unless the case goes to full blown trial, which is rarely, there really isn’t that much paralegal work except for canned, or boilerplate motions to continue trial, exclude evidence, and other common criminal motions.  This is where the freelance contract basis makes it all work out for me.  I suppose I could probably hang out with the criminal attorneys I know as they work the courts and get more work that way, but that would be counter productive to answering my cell phone in my home office and making a great day out of divorce, probate, answers to complaints and whatever consumers are in need of in the immediate moments of the day.  There is nothing for me to do as a criminal law paralegal LA, while the criminal attorney is hustling between courts making appearances, so I stay on the mobile waiting for my next paralegal emergency.  My SEO guru said it perfectly: “Dean, you are like the plumber or emergency electrician.  People need it and are going to buy it, you just have to service it properly.”  Right, so I need to be on-line looking at someone’s civil case where their attorney has milked them dry.  However I would love to be hanging out in the peanut gallery of high profile LA criminal trials, somehow making that pay would be great.

The most interesting criminal paralegal work I get to do is assembling documents for the attorney to review and interviewing witnesses.  I like to get out into the field as often as possible.  Being a freelance paralegal from home gets isolating.  I walk the three short blocks from my house to the bank and deposit my checks at the teller window just to get a little real time human social interaction going on.   Most of my criminal paralegal work is done from home on my laptop and involves transcribing my field notes, getting out the retainer agreement, getting the money up front, handling the client and whatever else needs to be done.  Being a film and video production assistant was good preparation for being a criminal paralegal because you have to learn to think on your feet and just get the job done fast no matter what.  

The criminal clients who find me are all very astute consumers of high end paralegal services and representation by counsel.  These clients usually always know exactly what they want and the value a paralegal brings to legal document assistance.  This is where it is really helpful that I am a paralegal with criminal attorneys who supervise my work, and a bonded and registered legal document assistant.  I can work for the consumer as the paralegal to his contract attorney, or I can work directly for the consumer as a legal document assistant.

A few years ago I used to do a lot of pre-sentencing reports and alternative sentencing work.  These involve getting your criminal client into a program that will rehabilitate rather than simply punish.  Pre-sentencing reports are the closest I get to discussing sexual assault, manslaughter, murder in the first or second degree, jail, prison, capital punishment, family history, substance abuse and the juicer aspects of crim law.  I am an expert in clearing criminal records through petitioning felonies down to misdemeanors and then expunging.  I am also experienced in doing Felony Certificates of Rehabilitation.

Okay so this is my Saturday Morning new style original content only blog dedicated to the changes Google just made in the algorithms during February 2011 to favor high quality original content.  From now on I will post everything here on Paralegal Los Angeles before posting it to my other blog and web sites.

Dean McAdams

Westchester, CA