Legal Secretaries Jobs – All You Would Want to Know About Them
Do you wish to take up legal secretaries jobs? This article will answer all your questions regarding legal secretary jobs. Executive assistants, administrative assistants, and legal assistants are the different names used to define legal secretaries.
They carry on all clerical work of the office to enable its smooth functioning. Their duties can be listed as below:
• Tracking legal filing deadlines by keeping docket systems up-to-date
• Typing legal documents including motions, pleadings, subpoenas, discovery documents and briefs for correspondence
• Scheduling site inspections, meetings, depositions, closings and hearings
• Indexing and updating discovery binders and pleadings
• Creating spreadsheets and assisting with legal research
• Communicating with opposing counsel, attorneys, vendors, experts and other staff
Education and skills required for legal secretaries jobs:
Community colleges, private career schools and technical centres offer one or two year legal secretarial programs. You can take up either of them to enhance your skills and opportunities in the field. While you will find legal secretaries with no formal training, most of the legal secretaries’ jobs exist for candidates who have completed a four-year college degree or some post-secondary training.
Legal secretaries need a whole lot of skills to help them perform their duties. Apart from having the knowledge of taking down dictation, typing, knowing telephone operations and filing, you need to have a passion for the job. You should have knowledge of state and federal court filing rules, law office protocol and basic legal procedures.
As a legal secretary you will be required to work under tight deadlines, missing even a single deadline can change the verdict on a case. Most of the offices today use latest technology for their day to day functioning, this necessitates you to be technology savvy and possess outstanding computer skills including proficiency with legal research, word processing, billing software and spreadsheet.
You can find legal secretaries jobs with law firms, the government, corporates, public interests as well as judiciaries. What will be your take home salary will depend on your education, experience and skill level. Entry level legal secretaries can earn $28000 and senior level candidates can make up to $65,500 depending on the legal setting they join.
Legal secretaries’ jobs will continue to increase in the years to come, thanks to the ever increasing demand for legal services. These jobs will proliferate even more in the corporate settings.