The Namati Team are looking to create a document of tips, advice and guidance around community paralegal recruitment. There are so many programs operating in different contexts and places that we are hoping to gather examples from a variety of places to put together a guidance & reference document.
If you have recruited community paralegals in your programming, please post here with some of your advice, suggestions or some specifics about the process you used to do so.
We are looking for information on some of the following general areas:
- Do you use a specified recruitment process? Do you advertise the position? Do you hold interviews or give written exercises?
- Do you recruit from within a given community? There are a lot of advantages as the paralegals have a strong background of relationships, trust and local context, but we would like to hear of any other approaches to location too.
- Differences in recruitment between Generalist and specialist paralegals programs.
- Do you look for any previous legal or community work background? Do you find this important or not?
- Does your program have a positive gender balance and do you use any tips to encourage more women paralegals?
- Have you had success in retaining the paralegals you have recruited?
This list is not complete, but just a starting point to discuss the matter of recruitment. We are looking forward to hearing your stories and examples!