News from lindsays Supporting our paralegals

This year, we once again sponsored the Scottish Paralegal Association conference. Find out why we have been supporting for six years and why paralegals are so important to what we do.

If you’re a regular reader of lindsays life, you’ll know that we have various sponsorship activities, including supporting the annual Scottish Cross Country Season and Eilish McColgan. One sponsorship you may not yet know about is our support for the Scottish Paralegal Association (SPA) annual conferences, which this year took place in Glasgow in April. The conference, which we have sponsored since 2018, is an opportunity for paralegals to network, do their continuing professional development (CPD), and share learning. In this way, it links into the Lindsays ethos of developing our team, investing in talent and delivering for our clients.

Core to what we do

Our own 38 paralegals are an indispensable part of life at Lindsays, supporting solicitors and clients on a range of different services, depending on their department.

talent and delivering for our clients.

In our Private Client department, they may work on executries; in Rural, they may be involved in the purchase or sale of farms, estates, crofts or even islands; in Litigation, they may offer support on debt recovery; and so on.

Paralegals play a valuable role in law firms. A good deal of client work goes through them, and they’re essential to helping ensure good service is delivered to clients.

Iona Kelly, HR Director

Iona Kelly, HR Director says: ‘Our paralegals work across our different offices and teams, but the common factor is how important they are to the smooth running of our work for clients.'

‘That’s why we believe so strongly in backing them and progressing their careers, from supporting the annual SPA conference, to sponsoring our

Routes into the profession

Our paralegals come to us via different routes. Some join in administration roles, and then decide to embark on paralegal qualifications; others are graduates who then go on to do paralegal training or traineeships; and others have law qualifications and decide to stay as a paralegal rather than train as a solicitor.

Lindsays can support people interested in taking the paralegal exams and also those keen to obtain the voluntary accreditation from the Law Society of Scotland.

Scotland has a variety of paralegal qualifications, from Modern Apprenticeships, to diplomas, to professional development awards in defined areas such as debt recovery, conveyancing or executries.

More recently, the Law Society of Scotland has offered further career progression with a voluntary accreditation scheme for paralegals, covering different areas of practice, and we’re very pleased to say that ten of our paralegals at Lindsays have already achieved this accreditation.

Other paralegals have used their experience to progress further in the profession.