Paralegals and Legal Assistant Assist lawyers by investigating facts, preparing legal documents, or researching legal precedent. Conduct research to support a legal proceeding, to formulate a defense, or to initiate legal action.
Paralegals and Legal Assistant is Also Know as
In different settings, Paralegals and Legal Assistant is titled as
- Certified Paralegal
- Corporate Law Assistant
- Law Associate
- Legal Analyst
- Legal Assistant
- Litigation Paralegal
- Paralegal
- Paralegal Assistant
- Paralegal Specialist
- Real Estate Paralegal
Education and Training of Paralegals and Legal Assistant
Paralegals and Legal Assistant is categorized in Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Paralegals and Legal Assistant
Previous work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is required for these occupations. For example, an electrician must have completed three or four years of apprenticeship or several years of vocational training, and often must have passed a licensing exam, in order to perform the job.
Education Required for Paralegals and Legal Assistant
Most occupations in this zone require training in vocational schools, related on-the-job experience, or an associate's degree.
Degrees Related to Paralegals and Legal Assistant
- Bachelor in Legal Studies
- Associate Degree Courses in Legal Studies
- Masters Degree Courses in Legal Studies
- Bachelor in Legal Assistant/Paralegal
- Associate Degree Courses in Legal Assistant/Paralegal
- Masters Degree Courses in Legal Assistant/Paralegal
Training Required for Paralegals and Legal Assistant
Employees in these occupations usually need one or two years of training involving both on-the-job experience and informal training with experienced workers. A recognized apprenticeship program may be associated with these occupations.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Paralegals and Legal Assistant in different industries are
- Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
- Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
- Court, Municipal, and License Clerks
- Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners
- Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs
- Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants
- Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive
- Office Clerks, General
- Correspondence Clerks
- Medical Records Specialists
- Lawyers
- Judicial Law Clerks
- Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers
- Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators
- Private Detectives and Investigators
- Compliance Officers
- Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates
- Claims Adjusters, Examiners, and Investigators
- Human Resources Assistants, Except Payroll and Timekeeping
- Social Science Research Assistants
What Do Paralegals and Legal Assistant do?
- Prepare legal documents, including briefs, pleadings, appeals, wills, contracts, and real estate closing statements.
- Gather and analyze research data, such as statutes, decisions, and legal articles, codes, and documents.
- Call upon witnesses to testify at hearing.
- Direct and coordinate law office activity, including delivery of subpoenas.
- Keep and monitor legal volumes to ensure that law library is up-to-date.
- Appraise and inventory real and personal property for estate planning.
- Prepare affidavits or other documents, such as legal correspondence, and organize and maintain documents in paper or electronic filing system.
- Prepare for trial by performing tasks such as organizing exhibits.
- Meet with clients and other professionals to discuss details of case.
- File pleadings with court clerk.
- Arbitrate disputes between parties and assist in the real estate closing process, such as by reviewing title searches.
- Investigate facts and law of cases and search pertinent sources, such as public records and internet sources, to determine causes of action and to prepare cases.
Qualities of Good Paralegals and Legal Assistant
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
Tools Used by Paralegals and Legal Assistant
- Desktop computers
- Image scanners
- Laser facsimile machines
- Notebook computers
- Optical character recognition equipment
- Personal computers
- Photocopiers
- Scanners
Technology Skills required for Paralegals and Legal Assistant
- a la mode WinTOTAL
- AbacusNext HotDocs
- Adobe Acrobat
- American LegalNet USCourtForms
- Appligent Citation FDFMerge
- Blumbeg Drafting Libraries
- Bowne JFS Litigator's Notebook
- Bridgeway eCounsel
- Case analysis software
- CaseSoft DepPrep
- CaseSoft TextMap
- CaseSoft TimeMap
- Computer access catalog software
- Corel WordPerfect Office Suite
- Corporate Focus Solium Shareworks
- Database software
- Dataflight Opticon
- Digital contract software
- Document management system software
- Dropbox
- dtSearch
- Electronic discovery software
- Electronic transcription management software
- Fastcase legal software
- FindForms
- FindLaw Code of Federal Regulations CFR
- Fund Software ATIDS
- Google Docs
- Google Drive
- Google Workspace software
- IBM Notes
- iManage document management software
- Inmagic DB/TextWorks
- IntelliPDF CURVES
- Intuit QuickBooks
- Iron Mountain Accutrac records management software
- LawManager
- Legal document software
- LexisNexis
- LexisNexis Applied Discovery
- LexisNexis CaseMap
- LexisNexis CheckCite
- LexisNexis CodeMaster
- LexisNexis Company Analyzer
- LexisNexis Concordance
- LexisNexis CourtLink Strategic Profiles
- LexisNexis File and Serve
- LexisNexis SmartLinx
- LexisNexis Time Matters
- LexisNexis Total Search
- Litigation support software
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server MOSS
- Microsoft Office software
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Project
- Microsoft Publisher
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Microsoft Word
- MicroStrategy
- NetDocuments
- Nuance Power PDF
- OmniRIM Records Management Suite
- Online database search and retrieval software
- Online public records search software
- Online title search and property report software
- Optical character recognition OCR software
- Orion Law Management Systems Orion
- Ovid SilverPlatter WebSPIRS
- PDF Snake Easy Bates
- Practice management software PMS
- ProForce Paralegal Pro-Pack
- Records management software
- Relational database software
- Relativity e-Discovery
- Saga Practice Manager
- Software Technology PracticeMaster
- Spreadsheet software
- Summation Blaze
- Sure Will Writer
- Tax software
- The Sackett Group MacPac for Legal
- THOMAS Global Register
- Thomson CompuMark SAEGIS
- Thomson Reuters LiveNote Stream
- Thomson Reuters Westlaw
- Thomson Reuters Westlaw Edge
- Thomson West FindLaw
- Thomson West ProLaw
- TrialWorks
- Tumbleweed SecureTransport
- Uniscribe
- Web browser software
- Wilson's Computer Applications RealEasy Appraisals
- Word processing software
- Zoom
- Zylab ZyImage