Two years ago this blog started with a single question — the one careful attorneys ask before ever sending a file to a contract paralegal: can I do this ethically? Twenty-three posts later, that question and most of its siblings have been answered in detail. This final post of the series assembles the answers into the thing a busy practice can actually use: one playbook, organized the way you'd use it, with every deep-dive linked where it belongs.
Bookmark this page; it's the index to everything. (And the standing footer applies one last time: educational content for legal professionals, not legal advice — your jurisdiction and your judgment control throughout.)
Part 1: The foundations (read once, rely on forever)
Four posts answer the threshold questions, and their conclusions compress to four sentences. Ethics: substantive work delegates; advice, appearances, relationships, and judgment never do — supervision and attorney responsibility make the rest legitimate (the ethics post). Billing: supervised paralegal time is billable support work, and on contingency the real math is what your hour is worth (the billing post). Confidentiality and conflicts: the answer should sound like a system — log, intake order, secure mechanics — never a promise (the confidentiality post). Geography: supervision is review, review is written, and remote work documents itself (the remote post).
Part 2: What to delegate, by case stage
The operational heart of the playbook — the case lifecycle, with the delegation split at each stage and the deep-dive linked.
Records and workup. The request pipeline runs on a tracking log with a follow-up cadence (records-request system); review hours follow knowable benchmarks (how long records review takes); the deliverable choice is a vocabulary question — summary for the money, chronology for the fight (chronology vs. summary) — and a good chronology surfaces the gaps, prior history, and missing providers that decide cases (what a chronology surfaces). Costs are publishable math, not mystery (what records review should cost).
Demands. Anatomy first (what moves an adjuster), checklist before sending (the demand package checklist — printable version still available via the newsletter), the diagnostic when silence follows (why demands stall), and the audit-proof standard when the demand is time-limited (policy-limits demands).
Discovery and depositions. Triage by deadline and exposure, split every item into assembly and judgment layers (the discovery triage system); sworn answers get drafted against the file, never from memory (interrogatory answers); summaries come in three formats matched to three jobs (deposition summary formats); expert depositions are won records-versus-report (expert prep with a chronology).
Trial. The last sixty days run on a reverse calendar with a ruthless delegate/keep split (the 60-day countdown), and transcripts become courtroom tools — designation charts, impeachment references, the consistency sweep — through digesting (deposition digesting).
Part 3: The practice-level decisions
Three posts for the standing questions above any single case. When the caseload is the problem: the ceiling is made of misallocated hours — and of delegable work (the caseload ceiling); five patterns tell you it's already costing settlements (the warning signs). Contract vs. hire: under ~25 sustained paralegal-hours a week, contract wins; over ~30, hire — sincerely; in between, let six months of invoices measure it (the real math). Making delegation cheap: thirty minutes installs the system — standing instructions, five-line assignments, a calibrating first engagement (delegating without creating more work).
Part 4: Where to start (three doors)
Two years of material can paralyze; the entry points are simple. If one case is burning: start there — a records audit, a demand assembly, a triage of the discovery stack. Self-contained, immediate relief, and the first engagement doubles as calibration. If the practice is the problem: run the five-signs diagnostic, then the two-pile audit from the ceiling post, and delegate whichever pile-two category scored worst. If you're just measuring: the standing-instructions template and a small first assignment cost thirty minutes and produce the data the staffing decision needs.
Whichever door: the engagement mechanics are on the services and pricing pages, the first conversation is a contact form away, and — as this series has said from the start — if the right answer for your practice is an in-house hire or a smaller caseload instead of me, you'll hear that too. Twenty-four posts of telling you the truth would be a strange thing to stop now.
The last word
In a PI practice, judgment is the scarcest resource — and most of what consumes it isn't judgment work.The playbook, stripped to one principle
Everything above — every checklist, system, format, and split — is a way of returning attorney hours to the only work that needed them. That's what litigation support is for. It's been a pleasure writing it down.
Put the playbook to work
Pick a door — the burning case, the strained practice, or the measurement — and start there.
Contact →Educational content for legal professionals — not legal advice. Thank you for two years of reading.