How should law firms run background checks on attorneys and staff?

Start with what the law says about asking at all.

Under the joint guidance of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), it is generally not illegal for an employer to ask questions about an applicant's background or to require a background check — the restrictions the guidance calls out concern medical and genetic information.

That is the federal starting point, not the whole picture: the FCRA governs the procedure when a report comes from a background-check company, the guidance warns about how criminal history is used, and state and city laws can limit particular checks — criminal-history timing in the jurisdictions the fair-chance section names, and possibly credit reports, which this page's research did not compile.

Scoping by role keeps the package proportionate.

For attorneys, the first verification is not a consumer report at all: license status comes from the state agency that licenses lawyers, which our guide to bar status verification covers in detail.

For staff, the items to weigh are education, any claimed certification and criminal history — with the financial roles pulling in one more:

• Attorneys: license status confirmed with the state licensing agency, plus the same package you set for other hires where the seat warrants it.
• Paralegals and legal assistants: education, any certification the resume claims (decoded in a later section), and criminal history.
• Trust-accounting, billing and bookkeeping staff: the same items, plus a credit report if the firm decides the seat's access to client funds justifies one — after checking your state and city law first.

That last condition matters.

The research behind this page did not compile any state and city laws that restrict employment credit checks, so nothing here tells you where a credit report is permitted — confirm the rules where your firm hires with employment counsel before you order one.

Two more lines hold whatever package you settle on.

If education or credential verification runs through a background-report company, it is a consumer report and the FCRA sequence in the next section applies to it like any other.

And one line stays off the table until late in the process: the FTC/EEOC guidance says not to ask any medical questions before a conditional job offer has been made.

Screening is one stage inside the wider process our guide to hiring for your law firm covers — this page stays on the checks themselves.

When the information comes from a company that sells background reports — the guidance's term is a consumer reporting company — the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) sets the sequence, and the FTC and EEOC's joint guidance lays out the steps.

Four of them carry the process:

1. Stand-alone disclosure. Before you get a background report, give the person a written notice in a stand-alone format — it cannot sit inside the employment application.
2. Written permission. Get the applicant's or employee's written permission for the check. If you want the authorization to cover reports during employment, say so clearly and conspicuously in that document.
3. Pre-adverse notice. Before taking an adverse action based on the report, give the person a copy of the report and "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act" — the document you should have received from the company that sold you the report.
4. Adverse-action notice. After the decision, tell the person it was based on the report, give the reporting company's contact details, state that the company did not make the decision, and explain the right to dispute the report and to get a free copy from the reporting company within 60 days.

Two housekeeping rules sit around the sequence.

Records: private employers must keep personnel and hiring records — including applications from people not hired — for one year from when the records were made or from the personnel action, whichever is later; the guidance notes longer periods for some federal contractors and where a charge has been filed.

Disposal: when you are done with a report, the law requires you to dispose of it — and any information gathered from it — securely, with shredding paper reports and making electronic data unreadable as the guidance's examples.

Confirm the current notices with employment counsel before you send one.

The sequence above describes the FTC/EEOC guidance as this page's research read it; forms and interpretation change, and an out-of-date adverse-action letter is the kind of paperwork error that is cheapest to avoid in advance.

The federal layer first: asking is one thing, using the answer is another.

The FTC/EEOC guidance warns that a policy or practice that excludes people with certain criminal records can be unlawful disparate impact where it significantly disadvantages people of a particular race, national origin or another protected characteristic and does not predict job performance.

For a firm, that is the case for tying any criminal-history screen to the duties of the seat rather than running it as a blanket filter.

State and city fair-chance (ban-the-box) laws then move the question itself later in the sequence: where they apply, the criminal-history question waits until later in the process — a conditional offer in California and New York City, selection for an interview (or the offer, when there is no interview) in Illinois.

This page names the three jurisdictions its research covered — it is not a list of every fair-chance law, and your state, city or county may have one the research did not reach.

• California. The Fair Chance Act (Government Code 12952) bars employers with five or more employees from asking about conviction history on an application, or otherwise inquiring into or considering it, until after a conditional offer. Under Section 12952(c), an employer that plans to deny a job over conviction history must make an individualized assessment, notify the applicant in writing, and give at least five business days to respond before a final decision.
• New York City. The city's Fair Chance Act, part of the NYC Human Rights Law since October 27, 2015, makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider applicants' criminal history before a conditional offer of employment.
• Illinois. The Job Opportunities for Qualified Applicants Act (820 ILCS 75/15) bars covered employers from asking about criminal history until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview — or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer.

Two notes follow.

California's written notice and five-business-day response window (above) run alongside the FCRA steps, so a rejection touching conviction history there can require both sets of paperwork.

And the honest gap: the research behind this page did not compile the wider landscape of state and city fair-chance, credit-check and reference-immunity laws, so nothing here is a jurisdiction list — map the rules where your firm actually hires with employment counsel before you finalize the application form and the screening order.

The credential alphabet on a paralegal resume decodes cleanly once you know who issues what.

The American Bar Association approves paralegal education programs — it does not certify paralegals; the national bodies that certify individuals include NALA, NFPA, NALS and AAPI, and NFPA also lists state-level voluntary paralegal certifications.

NFPA offers two credentialing exams: the Paralegal CORE Competency Exam (PCCE), which earns the CRP designation for early-career and entry-level paralegals, and the Paralegal Advanced Competency Exam (PACE), which earns the RP (Registered Paralegal) designation for experienced paralegals.

NALS's current credentials are the ALP (Accredited Legal Professional), the CLP (Certified Legal Professional) and the PP (Professional Paralegal).

What a credential is and is not: voluntary certifications — the CP, RP, CRP and PP designations among them — are not licenses, and a paralegal can describe themselves as licensed only in a state with a formal paraprofessional license.

So a certification on a resume is a credential to verify with the body that issued it, not a license.

Ask the candidate which credential they hold and from which body, then confirm it directly with that body rather than reading the acronym as proof.

Degrees are simpler but not different in kind: confirm the degree a resume claims with the school or through a verification service.

When that verification runs through a consumer reporting company, it is a background report and the FCRA sequence applies to it — stand-alone disclosure, written permission, adverse-action steps and all.

And a note on the program name: ABA approval attaches to the paralegal education program, not to the person who completed it, so "ABA-approved program" on a resume describes the school side of the credential, not a certification of the candidate.

Ongoing checks start at the consent stage.

The written permission you collect has to cover what you plan to do: if you want authorization to extend to reports during employment, the FCRA guidance says that must be stated clearly and conspicuously in the permission itself.

That is why the decision about periodic re-checks belongs before the offer letter — it shapes what the consent document has to say.

The seats a firm would consider for it are the ones that combine financial access with client money: trust accounting, billing, bookkeeping.

Whether any seat actually gets a re-check, on what schedule, and what the re-check includes is firm policy — but whatever the package, a re-check is a report like any other under the FCRA: it needs the permission structure above, and a decision made on it triggers the same pre-adverse and adverse-action steps.

The records rules carry over too — the one-year retention rule covers personnel and hiring records, and reports you hold, including ones collected during employment, fall under the secure-disposal requirement.

Screening is also not the only control on those seats; supervision is another.

Our guide to supervising nonlawyer staff covers the ethics duties that come with overseeing staff who work on firm and client matters.

And for trust-accounting seats, confirm how your screening and oversight fit together with your state bar's ethics counsel.

Employer information, not legal advice. Background-check rules change and vary by state and city — confirm your screening process, notices and any adverse-action letter with employment counsel, and trust-accounting oversight questions with your state bar's ethics counsel.