North Carolina real estate paralegals manage every party involved in closing a property, juggling messages from the lender to the realtor, from your attorney to the buyer. As the liaison between your attorney, the buyer, the realtors, and the lenders, we find ourselves facing multiple deadlines with rapid turnaround times and high stakes. At the end of the day, your goal is to facilitate a smooth, accurate transaction and get property keys your client’s hands.
There’s no question: A paralegal’s role is stressful and allows no margin for error.
Fortunately, modern advances in technology can help streamline messy communications between all parties, and even help save time on tedious daily processes. And the solution fits right in your pocket!
Here are 9 smartphone apps and online tools to help you stay organized, remain on-track, and become a superhero paralegal in your law office!
1. Easy Printable Title Forms
If you don’t already have this, the first thing every paralegal needs is a compiled list of all the forms you’ll need for a real estate closing. Just bookmark this page, and you’ll never have to go searching for all your forms again! We’ve organized the documents in the order you’ll need them. Especially if you’re new to the real estate paralegal industry, this is a nice website for simplifying your process.
2. Time Master + Billing
Legal billing is meticulous and can add many extra, tedious hours to a paralegal’s work. The Time Master + Billing app streamlines the scheduling and billing process by rolling it all into one, convenient app. It features time-tracking, billing, and the ability to export timesheets and schedules into email. For only $9.99, it can seriously simplify a paralegal’s daily tasks.
3. LogMeIn
If your job requires traveling to another city or county to look up real estate records at another court, or any kind of travel, you likely have to print all your paperwork and related documents to bring along. If you forget a vital document, you’re stuck calling the office to request a colleague to find it and email it — then waiting while they do.
The LogMeIn app works on mobile and laptop, and allows you to access files on your home or office computer and retrieve them. You’ll never have to worry about leaving a critical document on your office desk again — with this app, all your documents and research travel along with you!
4. SignMyPad (iOS and Android)
This simple little app allows you to collect an electronic signature on important legal documents. These digitally signed documents can then be emailed to your attorney, lender, or realtor with ease.
Instead of relying on antiquated processes like fax machines and scanners, SignMyPad will speed up and streamline a real estate paralegal’s workflow.
5. WhatsApp
WhatsApp is essentially a group chat smartphone app. Many companies use this mobile app to easily communicate with everyone on their team — in real-time. This is especially helpful for a real estate paralegal, who is constantly juggling communications between the attorney, lender, buyer, and realtor. You can set up different groups for each current project, and then communicate with everyone involved in a particular project all at once! This rapid, streamlined communication saves paralegals from constantly passing along messages between parties. Best of all, it’s free!
6. Fastcase
When you have an urgent deadline approaching, you don’t have time to dig through the National Union Catalog’s 200 volumes — let alone the thousands of other books and court cases in your law library. The Fastcase app is a digital version of crucial court cases, with a keyword search function to help speed up your research process. It allows paralegals to find particular cases quickly, and can even tell you how frequently certain cases have been cited in specific arguments, so you’ll know the most relevant cases to hone your research.
7. Court Days
When your schedule is packed, it’s easy for a meeting to slip between the cracks or forget a legal holiday. For just $0.99, the Court Days app will help a paralegal to quickly calculate the date between the current day and a scheduled closing, or the time between two appointments. So you’ll know exactly how much time you have left to work on a document, title insurance, and research before the next scheduled appointment with a lender. You can set this up for each current client, so you can see which appointments are coming up more quickly or have more urgency.
8. PocketJustice
Not only does this app have a cool name, it puts the entire Supreme Court in your pocket! PocketJustice allows paralegals to keep up with all recent Supreme Court rulings, and even provides visual data for the votes and details of the current Top 100 cases.
PocketJustice is a free app, so it’s a handy little resource to have in your pocket if you need a quick bit of data or research for a document.
9. Black’s Law Dictionary
This is a pocket reference app containing over 43,000 legal terms. Whether you’re a new paralegal, a student, or have been industry for decades – this app will help you learn new terms, and keep up with updated terminology.
Black’s Law Dictionary has been used for over a century as a print reference book, and now it’s been digitalized for a new generation of paralegals!
10. Burton’s Legal Thesaurus
To be a great paralegal, you must also be a great communicator. Paralegals spend a lot of the day writing — a simple memo, a long email explaining a complex subject to a client, an important legal document. Burton’s Legal Thesaurus will improve the accuracy and efficiency of your writing, with over 8,000 legal terms, definitions, and synonyms. At $39.99, it’s an expensive app, but it’s added value to your overall communication is well-worth the cost.
11. Moleskine Notebook
Every now-and-then, even a high tech paralegal needs a simple analog solution. With environmentally-friendly and acid-free paper, a pocket-sized, durable Moleskine notebook will be your best friend for years.
12. Tryon Express: A Tool for Real Estate Paralegals
For North Carolina real estate paralegals, Tryon Title created an online platform called Tryon Express to streamline a paralegal’s workload. Signing into Tryon Express allows you to manage all your cases from one central hub. Instead of typing repetitive information into several locations, just input information into Tryon Express once, and it’s saved permanently. From there, all documents can be easily accessed and emailed to your attorney, lender, buyer, or realtor. Our team of title insurance professionals have worked with paralegals for decades (some have even been real estate paralegals themselves!) so we know how tedious your work can be. We created this tool to remove the monotony and create a more efficient, time-saving experience for everyone in the North Carolina real estate industry!
Streamline Your North Carolina Title Insurance Process with Tryon Express
Our title insurance professionals are passionate about helping North Carolina’s real estate paralegals and attorneys find a faster, simpler way to manage all elements of the closing process. If you’d like to learn more about Tryon Express, our automated online title insurance tool, give one of our agents a call at 919-277-0123 or learn more here.