Benefits of Using a Paralegal

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of people that require legal services. With this, there is a need for more affordable legal service providers. This means more and more people are looking towards paralegals to assist them with their legal needs.

Paralegals are licensed legal professionals that are able to provide legal representation to the Ontario public. Similar to a lawyer, a paralegal is licensed with the Law Society of Ontario and abides by the standard of learning, professional competence, and professional conduct guidelines as set out by the Law Society of Ontario.

One of the differences between a paralegal and a lawyer is their education and scope of practice. Since paralegals have a limited scope of practice, their education is fine-tuned to the areas they are allowed to practice. This means paralegals tend to be more specialized in their chosen fields of practice. Also, paralegals are required to complete annual continuing education courses similar to the requirements imposed for lawyers.

At De Palma & Associate Legal Services we specialize in providing legal representation for Small Claims Court cases, landlord and tenant disputes, traffic tickets, United States entry waivers, criminal pardons (record suspensions), and document commissioning. We can, within our permitted scope of practice, fully represent a client in court and because of this, our clients will not need a lawyer for any aspect of their case.

At De Palma & Associate we are proud of the referral relationship we have built within the legal community. Therefore, in the event that our client requires the services of a lawyer for an area of law that is outside of our scope of practice we will happily refer them to a lawyer that we trust can handle their case.

Here at De Palma & Associate Legal Services, we offer free initial consultations to discuss your legal matter and there is no obligation to retain our services at this consultation. As well, our fees are charged as a flat rate in an effort to be transparent about the cost of our services. We also do not ask our clients to provide us with retainer funds. We believe in building trust with our clients and that is why we invoice our clients as their case progresses and they see work being done as opposed to requesting money from them upfront. Also in an effort to ensure our clients feel comfortable reaching out to us for questions or an update on their case, we do not charge for phone calls/emails with our clients as well as not charging for follow up meetings at our offices.

With offices located in Barrie and Wasaga Beach, De Palma & Associate can provide legal representation for Small Claims Court cases, landlord & tenant disputes, traffic tickets, United States entry waivers, criminal pardons (record suspensions) and document commissioning throughout the Georgian Bay area and the GTA. If you have any questions or require legal representation, give us a call at De Palma & Associate - (705) 429-2401.