How do you onboard a new paralegal or legal assistant?

Comment [2] to ABA Model Rule 5.3 expects lawyers to instruct the assistants they employ — secretaries, investigators, law student interns, paraprofessionals, whether employees or independent contractors — on the ethics rules, with confidentiality the concern the comment singles out.

That instruction is the first session of onboarding for a paralegal or legal assistant — it comes before the first client document the hire touches.

The same comment tells supervision to take account of the fact that nonlawyers do not have legal training and are not subject to professional discipline — which is an argument for concreteness.

A briefing the hire can actually follow says what counts as client information at your firm: documents and drafts, matter names, calendars and deadlines, voicemail, billing records.

It says what may leave the office, through which channel, and who reviews what before it goes out.

Specifics give a new staffer something to comply with; a slogan does not.

Run the conflicts process the same way.

Before the hire touches a client matter, walk through how the firm checks for conflicts, who runs the check and where the results are recorded.

Where staff handle prospective-client intake, ABA Formal Opinion 506 describes a lawyer training and supervising a nonlawyer to gather initial facts, run an initial conflict check and obtain the signature on the fee agreement — with the prospective client always offered the chance to talk to the lawyer.

That opinion is the shape a conflicts training session can be built from.

All of it is the practical arm of the ABA's Rule 5.3, which sets out a firm's duties toward its nonlawyer staff.

What the rule asks of a specific firm is a question about your state's adopted version, not the model text — confirm the training you owe with your state bar's ethics counsel.

A new paralegal brings capability but no law license and — as Comment [2] to Rule 5.3 notes — is not subject to professional discipline.

The rule that makes the boundary a hiring issue is Model Rule 5.5, which bars lawyers from assisting the unauthorized practice of law — so what a nonlawyer may do is not only the hire's question; the prohibition reaches the supervising lawyer too.

ABA Formal Opinion 506 shows why the line resists a blanket answer: whether an intake nonlawyer may answer a prospective client's specific question depends on the question.

The tasks the opinion does describe — initial facts, the initial conflict check, the fee-agreement signature, with the lawyer always on offer — form a lane, and everything outside the lane is a decision someone at the firm makes before the question comes up, not after.

Writing is what turns that from a judgment call into a firm measure.

Before client work starts, hand the new hire a boundary statement: the tasks the role performs without sign-off, the work that goes to the supervising attorney, and what to do when a client or caller asks something in the gray zone — who it routes to and how fast.

Put it in the handbook or the offer packet, review it aloud in the first weeks, and revise it when the 90-day review shows where it was unclear.

Where the practice of law begins is defined by your state's adopted rules, not by this page — review the boundary statement with your state bar's ethics counsel before anyone relies on it.

The exposure when the line slips is its own hiring topic: our guide to paralegal UPL risks covers what firms face.

Before the first template comes the employment paperwork.

Under USCIS's rules, every employer must complete and retain Form I-9 for each person hired after Nov.

6, 1986 to work in the U.S. for pay.

Section 2 — the employer's document review and attestation — must be completed and signed within 3 business days of the employee's first day of work for pay; USCIS's own example is a Monday start finished by Thursday.

Put that deadline on the first week's calendar when the offer is accepted, not on day one.

E-Verify is a separate, internet-based system that compares the information from an employee's Form I-9 against Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records.

Federally, participation is voluntary — the statute (8 U.S.C.

1324a) says DHS may not require it except as specifically provided.

The exception our research verified is the federal-contractor rule: contractors with contracts awarded on or after September 8, 2009 that include the FAR E-Verify clause (48 CFR Subpart 22.18) must use the system.

Some states impose E-Verify mandates of their own; that state list was not verified in our research, so confirm your state's rules with employment counsel.

Then the working systems: the document management folder structure, the docketing calendar, timekeeping, and the matter-file conventions that keep client information where the confidentiality briefing said it stays.

Grant access by role, walk the hire through each system under their own login, and pair every system with the templates that live in it — which versions are current, which are retired, and who approves a change.

If that access includes generative AI tools, ABA Formal Opinion 512 reads supervision as including training subordinate lawyers and nonlawyers on the ethical and practical use of the relevant tools and their risks.

In onboarding terms: the AI login and its training session travel together, and the training sits alongside the confidentiality briefing rather than after it.

Shadowing converts the policies into habits.

The progression is watch, then co-work, then own with review: the hire observes a task done the firm's way, does the next one alongside the supervising attorney, then takes it over with the work reviewed before it leaves the building.

How long each stage runs is the firm's call.

What is not a call is the gate — nothing goes out unreviewed until the supervisor says so.

Write the checklists for the audience Comment [2] to Rule 5.3 describes: people without legal training whom professional discipline does not reach.

A litigation checklist names the document, the deadline's source and the person who signs off; an intake checklist scripts the first call, including the questions the hire may answer and the ones that route to a lawyer.

Plain steps, named owners, and the escalation path written in — who the hire asks when something is ambiguous, and what a reasonable wait looks like.

The onboarding checklist is also the last stage of a longer sequence.

Recruiting, screening, offers and the ethics rules around each are covered in our guide to hiring for your law firm.

ABA Model Rule 5.3(a) asks partners and lawyers with comparable managerial authority to make reasonable efforts to ensure the firm has measures giving reasonable assurance that nonlawyers' conduct is compatible with the lawyer's professional obligations.

The 90-day review is how a firm finds out whether the measures it built on day one give that assurance.

Treat it as a test of the program, not only of the person.

Put the same five subjects on the agenda that onboarding taught.

Confidentiality in practice: has client information moved the way the briefing said it does?

Boundaries: which questions came up that the written statement did not answer?

Systems: can the hire run the docketing calendar, the template library and the conflicts log without help?

Work quality: what did the review window show about drafts and deadlines?

Workload: is the role you described in the posting the role the firm actually needs?

Close the review in writing: update the boundary statement and the checklists with whatever the first 90 days exposed, and set the goals the next period is measured against.

The review doubles as the first retention conversation — a hire who watches the firm correct its own onboarding has a concrete reason to stay.

Employer information, not legal advice. This page describes the ABA's model rule and formal opinions and USCIS's federal I-9 and E-Verify rules; your state's adopted ethics rules and any state verification mandate control. Confirm your onboarding requirements with your state bar's ethics counsel and employment counsel before you rely on them.