7.5 Para-Legal Services

The concept: the trained non-lawyer assisting — the paralegal as the lawyer's delegate (the routine tasks performed under supervision: the fact-gathering, the document preparation, the client- liaison, the form-filling); the paralegal's license line (the no-independent-legal-advice rule — the paralegal assists, never substitutes); the community-based paralegals (the village-level first aid of law — the disputes mediated, the referrals made, the rights information given); the Nepali faces (the local-government and CSO paralegal programmes; the campus-trained paralegals in the aid clinics). The rationale: the access pyramid (the paralegal the wide base, the lawyer the apex — the scarce professional time reserved for the tasks only the professional can do).