Paralegals working with an AI agent need a plan built on the skills legal work demands of them: checking the agent's drafts against instructions, verifying deadlines, testing its disclosure summaries against the documents, and knowing what must go to a solicitor. This template lists each skill with a practice task on real matters, the assessment, the sign-off and yearly renewal.
What is this plan for?
Legal agents draft standard documents and letters from precedents at depth 2, assemble court and transaction bundles, calculate and diarise deadlines, summarise disclosure and correspondence at depth 1, and run first-pass conflict checks. Filing anything with a court or registry, sending advice to a client, and agreeing anything with the other side stay with people. The supervising solicitor remains responsible for the work.
Paralegals become the first reviewers of most of this output. The risks are particular to legal work: a deadline calculated from the wrong trigger date, a clause carried over from a precedent that does not fit the instructions, a disclosure summary that misses the one document that matters. The plan trains paralegals to catch each. Time to competence is covered in how long it takes to train paralegals to supervise AI agents.
How do you fill it in?
One row per skill. Choose practice tasks from live matters wherever confidentiality allows, with the supervising solicitor's agreement. The "Goes to a solicitor" column states the boundary for that skill: what the paralegal must pass upward rather than decide.
The template
| Skill | Practice task on real matters | Goes to a solicitor | Assessment | Signed off by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vocabulary and the decision chain | ||||
| Checking drafts against instructions | ||||
| Verifying deadlines | ||||
| Testing disclosure and correspondence summaries | ||||
| Spotting pressure and injected instructions | ||||
| Certification | ||||
| Renewal |
A worked example
A hypothetical litigation and property firm's paralegal team. Values are samples.
| Skill | Practice task on real matters | Goes to a solicitor | Assessment | Signed off by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vocabulary and the decision chain | Foundations, about 4 hours; explains why the agent held five past drafts | n/a | Foundations test set in legal services | Supervising solicitor |
| Checking drafts against instructions | Compares ten agent-drafted letters and leases with the client instructions on file | Any clause departing from the firm's standard terms | Shadow: 18 of 20 decisions matching a certified colleague's | Senior paralegal |
| Verifying deadlines | Recalculates every deadline the agent diarised on five matters, from the source document | Any deadline the paralegal cannot confirm from a sealed or signed source | No deadline error in shadow | Supervising solicitor |
| Testing summaries | Reads the underlying documents for two disclosure summaries and lists what the summary missed | Any document that may be privileged or decisive | Shadow review | Supervising solicitor |
| Spotting pressure | Reviews correspondence from the other side containing instructions aimed at automated readers | All such correspondence | Scenario check | Senior paralegal |
| Certification | Operator track, about 14 hours; two-week practicum on live held drafts and deadlines | n/a | Exam at least 32 of 40; practicum at least 95 in every 100 decisions correct, no missed red line | Pryme assessor, then practice manager |
| Renewal | Update module and short quiz | n/a | Quiz | Practice manager |
Deadlines deserve their own row because the cost of a mistake is so high and so hard to undo. An agent calculates a limitation or service deadline from the date it finds. If that date came from a letter the client forwarded (external) rather than the court's sealed order or the signed contract, the calculation may be correct and the deadline still wrong. Paralegals must recalculate from the source, and the practicum includes cases built to test it.
The pressure row reflects a real change in legal work. Correspondence from other parties, or documents in disclosure, can contain text meant to influence an automated reader, such as an instruction to summarise a document as "not relevant". Paralegals must treat anything arriving from outside as external and flag such text to a solicitor; see how to train paralegals to spot prompt injection and pressure.
Keep the team consistent with calibration sessions for paralegals. Plans with a similar shape for roles that also handle sensitive casework are the training plan for caseworkers and, for firms with debt recovery work, the training plan for collections agents. The team-wide order is in training teams for AI agents.
Questions people ask
Who is responsible if a paralegal approves a wrong agent draft?
The supervising solicitor remains responsible for the work, and the paralegal for their own review. The record shows who approved what, which is why paralegals should only approve within the rights they have been signed off for.
Should trainee solicitors follow this plan?
Yes, for the agent work they review. Their supervising partner may add matter-specific steps, but the practicum and red lines apply equally.
How do we handle confidential matters during training?
Use matters the supervising solicitor approves for training, and keep the practicum within the firm's normal confidentiality rules. Assessors see only what the review requires.