Run it on live matters. For two weeks the paralegal reviews everything a legal agent holds, from drafted chronologies to conflict-check results and documents queued for service, while a supervising lawyer marks each decision. Pass at 95 correct decisions in every 100, with no missed red line such as a privileged document released or a deadline left unflagged.
What is the practicum for, and who owns it?
Legal agents draft, sort and check. They build chronologies from disclosure, summarise contracts, run conflict searches and prepare bundles. The paralegal's job changes from producing that work to checking it, and checking is a different skill. A paralegal who could build a perfect bundle by hand may still approve an agent's bundle without noticing a missing exhibit.
The practicum proves the checking skill on real matters. A supervising solicitor or the legal operations lead owns it, because professional responsibility for the work sits with qualified lawyers. The paralegal is assessed; the lawyer remains answerable for what leaves the firm. The guide to AI literacy and certification for people who work with agents sets out where this sits in a wider training plan.
What are the steps?
- Person (supervising lawyer): choose two or three active matters. Pick matters with live deadlines and real documents, ideally one contentious and one transactional.
- Person: list the red lines. Releasing a document marked or likely privileged; clearing a conflict search with an unresolved potential match; failing to flag an approaching court or limitation deadline; sending anything to a court or counterparty without a lawyer's approval.
- Agent, depth 2: drafts the work product. Chronologies, document summaries, first-draft correspondence, bundle indexes. Each item shows the sources it drew on and their provenance.
- Agent, depth 3: files and organises within bounds. Saving documents to the matter, renaming to convention, updating the matter index.
- Person (paralegal): reviews every held item. Approve, edit or return, with a reason. For a chronology, that means checking dates against the source documents, not against the agent's summary of them.
- Agent: holds anything going outside the firm. Service, filing and correspondence to the other side are hard to undo and wait for a lawyer.
- Person (supervising lawyer): marks each decision the same day. Correct, incorrect, or correct with a weak reason.
- Person: midpoint review on day five, sign-off on day ten. Extend if the record shows a pattern the lawyer would not accept from a qualified colleague.
| Step | The agent does | Depth | Stays with a person |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draft work product | Chronologies, summaries, bundle indexes | 2 | Checking against source documents |
| File and organise | Saves, renames, updates the index | 3 | Sampling for misfiled documents |
| Conflict search | Runs the search, holds possible matches | 2 | Clearing or escalating each match |
| Privilege | Flags likely privileged material | 2 | The privilege call, with a lawyer |
| External sending | Prepares, then holds | 4 | Approval by a qualified lawyer |
| Marking | Files every verdict | 1 | Assessment and sign-off |
Which controls matter, and what do they leave behind?
Privilege flags cannot be cleared by the paralegal alone. The agent flags; the paralegal recommends; a lawyer decides. The evidence is two names on the verdict.
Deadlines come from sealed sources. Court dates should come from the court's own notice or the firm's docketing system, not from a date mentioned in an email. The agent stamps each date with its provenance, and a paralegal who accepts an external date without checking it is marked down.
Every chronology entry cites a document. An entry without a source reference is returned. The record shows which entries the paralegal checked and which they edited.
The supervising lawyer is named on every mark. Firms that run several practicums at once should log which lawyer assessed which paralegal.
What should be measured?
- Accuracy against the 95 in 100 bar.
- Red-line misses: zero.
- Source checks: how often the paralegal opened the underlying document before approving. The record shows this; a paralegal who never does is approving on trust.
- Return quality: when the paralegal returns an item, is the reason specific enough for the agent's brief or the next reviewer to act on?
- Deadline handling: every deadline in the matters flagged, with the source checked.
Record each in the practicum log template for paralegals.
Where does a paralegal practicum go wrong?
Matters too quiet. A transactional matter in its drafting phase may produce nothing but summaries. Make sure at least one matter has disclosure or a filing during the fortnight, or replay past disclosure in a training workspace and label it.
Lawyers mark by spot-check. A supervising lawyer pressed for time may mark only the items that look odd. That misses the plausible errors, which are the dangerous ones.
The paralegal is treated as the safeguard. Paralegals sometimes feel the whole weight of an agent's mistake sits with them. It does not, and the practicum should say so plainly. The question is covered in whether paralegals are accountable for an AI agent's mistakes. The paralegal answers for their review; the firm answers for the system and the lawyer for the advice.
Teams outside legal use the same structure with their own red lines; the playbooks for underwriters and payments operations staff are useful comparisons for a legal operations lead designing a first practicum. The practicum in the Academy's Operator certificate follows the same shape, signed off by a Pryme assessor rather than an in-house lawyer.
Questions people ask
Can a paralegal approve documents for filing during the practicum?
Not on their own. Filing and service stay with a qualified lawyer during and after the practicum. What the paralegal proves is that the documents reaching the lawyer are right.
What if the matters produce few held items?
Add a matter, or replay past work in a training workspace and label it as replayed in the record. Lowering the bar because the work was quiet defeats the purpose.
Does the supervising lawyer need training too?
They need to read an agent's record and understand what the verdicts mean, or their marking will miss what matters. A short foundations course is usually enough for that.