Recently, Forbes Magazine published an article titled, “The Most Underrated Jobs,” listing paralegal as one of those jobs. The author claims that a paralegal position is “relatively low-stress, involves little contact with the public, and doesn’t require employees to breathe in toxic fumes or lift loads of 50 lbs. or more.”

I’m not sure what type of paralegal the author is referring to, but I can be certain it’s not a Corporate Paralegal working in a law firm or in-house legal department. Allow me to address each of the factors that landed paralegal in the number-one spot on CareerCast.com’s list of most underrated jobs, according to the Forbes article.

1. Relatively Low Stress – Corporate paralegals are often approached just before a closing with a minute book that hasn’t been touched in years. In order for the multimillion dollar deal to go through, the shareholder records must be updated, stock certificates must be printed, minutes must be generated, and cap tables must be created – all in a few short hours (no pressure, right?).
2. Little contact with the public – Paralegals are regularly in contact with officers, directors and shareholders of multiple business entities along with their accountants and consultants – all calling and emailing with endless questions about the status of their corporation or ownership status. And of course, they always need the information ASAP.
3. Don’t have to breathe toxic fumes – Working with old, dusty minute books of questionable origin in a small, enclosed room may not be toxic, but it sure can feel like it.
4. No need to lift loads of 50 lbs or more – Maybe they don’t quite reach the 50-lb mark, but lugging five or six minute books or a banker’s box full of corporate documents from room to room at midnight is no easy task.

But truth be told, there is a way to make the corporate paralegal’s job lower-stress. Law firms and legal departments should consider investing in online information management systems which would allow paralegals and attorneys – and their clients – immediate access to all the answers and documents they need on a daily basis. Paralegals would be able to spend less time fielding calls and emails, and more time on tasks that truly add value for their employer.

In fact, if more law firms and legal departments started using online systems, like Corporate Focus, more of the factors mentioned in the Forbes article could become true. Here’s what I mean:

4. No need to lift loads of 50 lbs. or more. Instead of working with boxes and books full of documents, an online system allows you to upload those documents and link them to all the company’s related entity and ownership data. When you need those documents for due diligence, a paralegal, attorney or client can access them with their laptop no matter where they are.
3. Don’t have to breathe toxic fumes. When all the relevant corporate documents and closing binders are uploaded to an online system, three-ring binders and minute book storage rooms can become a thing of the past. No more dusty, outdated books.
2. Little contact with the public. Paralegals will always be in close contact with clients, of course. But with an online system, the client can be given direct access to their corporate information and documents – so they can find what they need, when they need it.
1. Relatively low-stress. An online system like Corporate Focus gives law firms and legal departments peace of mind in knowing that all the information they need is accurate and up-to-date – not to mention the easy-to-generate reports, stock ledgers, stock certificates and cap tables that can be ready in minutes, instead of hours.

If you’re interested in making the corporate paralegal job a little less stressful, take a look at
Corporate Focus and see what an online system can do for you.

Think about the last time you needed to deliver a capitalization table to the board of directors, an investor, or an auditor – and realized all too late that the information was severely out of date. You’d been busy with your everyday work and had simply never gotten around to updating the pertinent info.

Whether you’re a CFO or attorney, cleaning up your records never seems to be a high enough priority – until the final hour. At that point, the pressure is on to deliver an accurate set of reports on who owns each class of stock, convertible securities and stock options with vesting to show you have control of your capitalization or so you can update your option expensing reports.

Recently, I was trying to explain to a colleague why companies of every type and flavor call Two Step on a regular basis for equity consulting services. And I realized it was primarily based on their desire to focus their time and limited resources on what they do best.

After all, why should a CFO or Controller with sophisticated finance and reporting know-how spend time managing their stock and option records – if this work can be transferred to an equity professional with the expertise and experience to do it faster, better and at a lower cost? Similarly, at law firms, why should lawyer and paralegal time be spent on tracking and reporting stockholder and stock option records – which requires little high-value legal analysis or advice?

The essence of why companies call on our Corporate Focus Services team for equity administration and accounting assistance was nicely explained in a blog post I read recently about outsourcing bookkeeping work for law firms. It said firms retain third parties for help with accounting work so they can get experience, expertise, and additional resources at a fraction of the cost of hiring someone to do the work. The article stated that outsourcing typically makes sense if the work is not an important part of a firm’s core business function – and requires a high level of expertise in a specialized area. As an extreme example, imagine if your regular physician was asked to do open heart surgery once a year. It just wouldn’t make sense.

Using the reasons stated in the article mentioned above, it’s clear why companies turn to our Corporate Focus Services team for equity administration and reporting:

1. Experience: Imagine if you could hire someone only for the hours needed to get the work done – and that person brought 10 years of experience using a consolidated equity administration and reporting system like Corporate Focus. Wouldn’t you feel confident in knowing they had already tracked every type of equity you can think of – and had already been through hundreds of audits?
2. Expertise: Imagine if the person doing your equity administration was a certified equity professional and understood the process, the difference between stock and stock options, vesting and fair market values, termination policies, forfeitures, and true-ups. Most people never have to even think about that jargon in a lifetime (lucky them).
3. Resources: Imagine if someone was readily available to do the work – and not distracted by a thousand other things on their to-do list. Rather, equity administration and accounting is their top – and only – priority. Remember, your staff already has a backlog of work – and those areas where they have the least comfort tend to get procrastinated the most.

As our customers approach 4th quarter crunch time, I’ve noticed the large number of companies that have turned to our Corporate Focus Services team and the diversity of the equity administration projects that we are handling for them. Let me share three examples that articulate some of these concepts:

1. One new customer recently purchased Corporate Focus – and brought with them a tangle of complex and confusing spreadsheets. They did not have the manpower to go through the spreadsheets to get them moved into a new system, but realized they needed a system other than Excel to report their year-end option expense. So, the customer turned to our experts to get the information imported in a timely manner.
2. One existing customer of ours has had Corporate Focus for several years. Recently, the workload for the main user has exploded – and she hasn’t had time in the last six months to update the system. This customer’s lack of resources made it impractical to continue to do the data entry and reporting work. Instead, they turned to our team to get them caught up with many months of data entry.
3. Another customer had a Corporate Focus user who has been entering information and keeping it up-to-date, but had actually used the wrong information. Lacking the time to correct all of the mistakes, the customer turned to our Services team to clean up their data so they can use it going forward.

In all three examples above, the company did not have the bandwidth to do what needed to be done (in today’s economic climate, aren’t we all asked to do more with fewer people?). These customers needed someone who was an expert, had experience doing the type of work they wanted, and most importantly, had the time and resources to get it done efficiently.

If you’re faced with equity administration or accounting challenges and don’t have the experience, expertise or resources to tackle them in-house, the good news is you’re not alone. The bad news is that when this kind of problem occurs, you may have little time or resources to fix it.

Let us know about your current equity adminstration and accounting challenges, and we’ll show you how the Corporate Focus Services team can make your problems go away. It’s that easy.