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It depends on the firm, but it’s not uncommon for paralegals to handle that. It’s GREAT practice if you can work on title/survey/zoning though. Definitely something associates should learn how to do.
At my old firm, paralegals handled. I was representing lenders for loans of fully-stabilized properties though. I’m representing developers in ground-up construction deals now, so stakes are a little higher and attorneys review.
Seems like a lot of shops have paralegals handle (with attorneys generally ignoring TSZ unless a paralegal flags something), but why exactly is that? It seems like a pretty material part of the transaction, at least more so than say… filling in blanks to various form agreements.
Interesting. I would have thought that buyer/borrower side is where it’s appropriate for associates to do the review. Very much agree with how difficult it is to find good help.
In some practices, title and survey review is one of the most important things the lawyers do.
My issue is I’m so bogged down with tsz and the paralegals have no idea how to do tsz. This is not normal is it?
Really depends on the firm. I was at a regional firm and I did all the T/S/Z on my deals. Our paralegals weren’t trained on it. When I interviewed at bigger firms it was a mixed bag. I’d say most had paralegals do a lot of T/S/Z, but not all.
Yes, my old firm did that too. We would spot title issues and management would say “emai l title” and it was one super passive aggressive dude in the florida office basically yelling at us lol. It always bothered me.
We can’t go strictly on what a paralegal says but they don’t have managing attorneys in those departments. No one cared about my opinion though lol.
Thank you all for your responses. I’m in biglaw and am definitely not a junior. I’m always baffled to see paralegals running deals as my counterpart on the other side. It sounds like at least the easier title reviews should be done by paralegals, especially for lender-side financing.
Depends on the firms policies and structure
At my firm, yes.
Definitely agreed..
Paralegals I work with need zoning request letters looked at, and would be inadequately prepared to do full title survey objection letters.
That’s how my office does it!
I feel like that’s 90% of what real estate paralegals do. Been at two biglaw firms and one midsize. Definitely valuable skills to develop as a junior associate but you don’t want that to be a significant portion of why you’re doing past years 2 or 3.
Jr. associated handle t/s/z at my firm. Sometimes I jump in if it’s complicated, but our paralegals never work on the substantive review itself.