I used to work at a firm in Virginia that was one of the largest employers in the city. Most of the labor that was used on the administrative side of the firm came from out of state or from Mexico under the H-1B Visa program. A large number of legal documents were being produced by these employees. The firm produced close to one thousand legal documents per year. It is amazing what can be produced on a daily basis in the legal industry under the best of conditions, but this did not translate into high performance legal documents being produced.
The company president stated that the company had cut over two thousand legal documents from their production pipeline in the last two years because of the cost. He also stated that many of these documents were not new and that there were no legal issues with them. He assured me that all the work was being done under the H-1B Visa program and that the legal professionals that would be doing the work in the U.S. would all have a valid H-1B Visa card. I asked why those professionals who would be performing the work in the U.S. would not be required to have a valid visa to work in their own country if they had produced legal documents under the H-1B Visa program and he indicated that they would not be able to produce a work visa if they did not have one.
Under the current regulations a legal professional may have their salary capped by a government authority. The salary cap does vary from one jurisdiction to the next. It could be anywhere from twenty to thirty-five percent lower than their counterparts in other countries. In Canada, the salaries of legal professionals are paid according to a points system and their salary is dependent on the number of points that their employer has.
One can only wonder why the salary for legal documents’ examiners is so low. Many people may point fingers at the U.S. labor force, which may have also played a large role in the hiring of legal immigrants into the country. However, one would think that if the U.S. economy was doing as badly as it has that there would be more job opportunities for the native-born population than immigrants. Yet this is not the case. Many of the new jobs that have been created due to the current economic downturn have gone to immigrants instead of native-born citizens. This means that the pool of potential legal workers is getting smaller every day.
The low salary that legal professionals receive could be tied into the fact that these individuals are not highly trained in the legal field. Many legal professionals do not have a bachelor’s degree in law or legal research and do not go to specialized law schools that can help hone their skills. This could mean that many of these individuals could end up working in a lower level job such as an attorney or paralegal without obtaining the knowledge needed to do well in their jobs.
The legal documents’ examiner’s salary is often tied to the amount of experience that an individual has. The more experience that a person has in legal documents the more likely they will be able to get better paying positions and even advancement within their firm. Experience also carries with it the ability to grow and move to a new position. This means that a person who has just a few years of experience may find that they are not able to move up to a supervisory position.
The legal documents examiners’ salary is one that is set by state and locality. Each state has their own minimum and maximum salaries. While the legal papers examiner’s salary will not vary much from place to place, the amount of experience that an individual has will play a large part in determining how much they will earn. Some states will allow a paralegal with five years of experience to earn up to seventy thousand dollars a year, but this is an extreme case.
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