The legal definition of "competence" includes appropriate training, experience, and the "tools" requisite to accomplish the professional task.
To that end, licensed nurses who have attended and graduated from ABA accredited paralegal schools and who have successfuly passed paralegal accrediting exams such as the Certified Legal Assistant Exam (a two day exam which includes objective questions and writing both a legal brief and a memorandum of law) have demonstrably significantly more competence than Legal Nurse Consultants whose training consists of informal training and testing which last several days to less than two weeks.
The wide spread useage of the "Legal Nurse Consultant" certificate and the wide spread useage of nurses within the legal and related professions who have not demonstrated true "competence" as delineated above clearly disserves the public's interest to competent legal representation, advice, and care.
Given the aforementioned, I believe that it is both ethical and practical, that all paralegals should be licensed, whether nurses or not, such that competent and ethical legal representation, as a nurse paralegal or simply as a paralegal, should be maintained.
I am a Registered Nurse and a Certified Legal Assistant.
