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Volume XCI, Number 8	University of Southern California	Tuesday, June 22, 1982
Biller named vice provost of university
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Photo by Dan Canales
ICE CREAM — Chipwich man, Qhat Varol, a student in petroleum engineering, is spending a cool summer selling cool food. Sitting by him is his wife, Siyma.
Student transcripts to be computerized
By Teresa Pichay
Editor
Obtaining transcripts faster should be the result of the transferring of information from student’s Permanent Record Cards (PRCs) to an automated academic record system.
The transfer, which started in May, will take several months, reports Carole Jones, acting registrar.
"We hope to have the system up and operational by January,” Jones says.
The transfer process has two phases. The first phase is the transfer of all information on the PRCs from before 1980. This phase is taking place from now through mid-August.
The second phase will include the transfer of information from spring 1980 to the present. While the second transfer of information is being made, information transferred during the first phase will be audited.
Although the system may be operational by January 1983, grades will not be put directly into the system until the end of the spring 1983 semester.
The new automated system will cut down the time it takes to process a transcript request, according to Jones. Requests for transcripts, which now take two to three weeks to process, may take three to five days to process when the system is operational and all the bugs have been worked out, Jones mentions.
The time it takes to process a degree check, though, will remain the same.
Getting a degree check back to a student as soon as possible depends on two things: when the student turns it in and what his class standing is.
"For students who are turning in their degree checks now, the student who will graduate in December will have his done before the student who is graduating next May,” Jones says.
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In a little more than a decade, paralegals have become indispensable to the legal profession, a university expert says.
“Paralegals are part of every major law firm, and legal services often would not be affordable without them,” says Elizabeth Horowitz, director of the Paralegal Program at the university’s Law Center.
The program, now in its tenth year, was one of the first paralegal training programs in the country. It remains the only one that’s fully integrated into a major law school. More than 300 other programs train paralegals through community collees, university extension classes, four-year colleges and private institutes.
“When we began developing the program in 1971, no one was sure what paralegals were or what they might do. Today, paralegals write wills, research cases, handle probate, prepare contracts and perform just about any legal work other than advising clients or representing them in court,” Horowitz says.
The paralegal concept grew out of poverty law offices during the late 1960’s. The idea was to train community advocates for people who could not afford attorneys. The private bar was seeking ways to provide services to clients more economically, and to put a lid on the rising costs of practicing law.
The ensuing paralegal programs opened a new career path up the economic ladder of the law.
“During the early years, most of our students were legal secretaries who
Robert P. Biller, a noted authority on alternative forms of public organization, has been appointed vice provost.
He will report to Cornelius J. Pings, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, who announced the appointment.
Dr. Biller’s primary responsibilities will involve such academic matters as planning, budgetary policy, curriculum review and personnel policy.
Commenting on the appointment. Dr. Pings said, “He served the university well during his tenure as dean of the School of Public Administration, and I'm confident that he will continue to lead with distinction as vice provost. Bob Biller has a vision of greatness for USC.”
Biller was dean of the School of Public Administration from 1976 until this year. While he was dean, the school continued to develop a unique network of campuses in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. The faculty was strengthened, and research productivity grew at a rate that was matched by only one other school of public administration in the country.
During Biller's tenure. SPA placed more graduates than any other university in the prestigious Presidential Management Internship Program. With 10 members elected to the National Academy of Public Administration, the faculty won a larger representation than any other school of public administration.
Biller, a tenured professor of public administration, is president-elect of the National Association of Schools of Pub-
wanted to upgrade their knowledge, take on more responsibility and break out of a dead-end job,” Horowitz says.
As the role of the paralegal practitioner expanded, the profession appealed to whole new groups. Classes began to fill with nurses, teachers and other burned-out professionals seeking new careers. They were soon joined by liberal arts students in search of marketable training and by other students testing the waters of legal scholarship prior to law school.
To earn a paralegal certificate in the
‘Paralegal programs have expanded to keep pace with the rapidly growing demand. ’
program, students take a series of evening courses that can be completed in a year and a half.
Once they’ve earned their certificates, most paralegals find employment at law firms. But a few paralegals sell their services to attorneys on a free-lance basis. Some have set up agencies that contract to provide services to law firms, particularly in the fields of probate and litigation.
According to Horowitz, one major advantage to the use of paralegals is economic.
“If a client wants to form a corporation, for example, the task may take ten hours of legal work. A lawyer’s time could easily cost the client $150 an hour. If the lawyer does only the two hours of work that require his (or her)
lie Affairs and Administration -- the organization that unites the nation’s 250 schools and departments of public administration.
In 1979, he was appointed by President Carter to the President’s Management Improvement Council, a citizens group charged with improving federal management and program performance.
Biller has been active in university-community relations. He was founding chairman of the University Neighor-hood Relations Commission from 1977 to 1981, and he has chaired the University Environmental and External Affairs Committee since 1980.
Before joining the university faculty, Biller was an associate professor of public policy at the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he chaired the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Health and Medical Sciences and served as vice chairman of the department of political science.
Biller earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA, where he majored in sociology. Then, at USC, he earned two degrees in public administration -- a master’s in 1965 and a doctorate in
1969.	In earning his doctoral degree, Biller won the prestigious Henry Reining Award for outstanding dissertation of the year.
Biller’s research and publications have been in the fields of alternative forms of public organization, organization theory and behavior, and environmental consequences upon organizations.
level of sophistication, a paralegal can handle the rest at a rate of $35 an hour. If one firm uses paralegals, others have to follow suit in order to keep their fees competitive.” she says.
Paralegal training programs have expanded to keep pace with the rapidly growing demand. Alyce Wagner, coordinator of the program, reports, “On an average, twenty-five students graduate annually with Legal Assistant Certificates, but this is a small percentage of the number of students who take individual classes. Meanwhile, our placement service annually receives more than 200 requests from employers seeking paralegal graduates.”
Terry Mitchell, a recent university graduate in political science who earned a paralegal certificate, says, “Most liberal arts majors have to search long and hard to find a job. The placement office provided me with two interviews immediately, and I found a third on my ov/n. I was offered all three jobs and could take my pick”
Some students use their paralegal training to gain experience with the law and their paralegal jobs as a meal ticket through law school.
Linda Azzolina. an English major who also received a certificate from the Paralegal Program, has worked as a paralegal for seven years and is now completing a law degree at Loyola.
“Ninety percent of my fellow law students have no idea what goes on in the legal profession,” she say. “As a paralegal, I was trained on the job. I learned how the legal system works. Now I (Continued on page 4)
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PARALEGALS HELP REDUCE COSTS, LAWYER WORK LOADS
Program trains legal assistants