I know that North Carolina's State Bar is discussing licensing the paralegals. It has always been the NC Bar's opinion that all abstractors (employed or independent) have to be supervised by an attorney.

I am in South Carolina. Abstractors are supposed to be supervised by an attorney here too. The companies that I work for tell me that they have attorneys on staff that review my title work when I send it in. I know that they do because I sometimes have to call in and talk to the attorney. I try to be selective on the companies that I search for. As I said before, attorneys in this county only use the abstractors that were "birthed" here no matter the cost or turnaround time.

Today, there was a woman in the Registry trying to do a title search for a company. She lost her skilled industrial job and decided to work for a title company that sends her all over the state copying documents of certain book/pages they provide her with. They do not pay her mileage. She asked me for help. I read her order and I explained to her that this order wanted more than just a copy of the book/page they had provided. They were asking for a title search. She had never done one before. She had no clue where to begin. I helped her a little but I can't train someone instantaneously like that nor should I. We talked. I told her she needed training or to go to a technical school. She said that they were paying her $15.00. When I told her that the current owner search (and of course this order was not going to be a good current owner because of family ownership) that this company wanted would cost between $45.00 and $75.00 possibly more and they wanted to pay her $15.00. Her mouth dropped open. She had no clue. She had an emotional day which is sad because she had a 4 1/2 hour drive to get back home. She was led into this work to just get copies of the book/page numbers provided but on this order she was told to call them when she got there and they would "walk her through it". Opened my eyes--- I guess that some of these "new" abstractors really have no knowledge of the industry and are pawns being used by some title companies. I am adding this company to the "bad" list.

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