Legal Assistant Overview
Supporting legal professionals in virtually every aspect of their practice, a legal assistant is often referred to as a paralegal, though there’s a slight difference between the two positions. A paralegal is more directly involved with the work of the legal team and typically possesses a degree of higher education in the various fields of law, whereas a legal assistant is an integral part of a law office who possesses the practical skills used by legal professionals.
A legal assistant in a law office provides clerical, legal and administrative support to attorneys, paralegals and other legal professionals. They may conduct legal research, file legal documents with the courts, draft legal forms and general correspondence, gather and organize evidence, keep track of progress and deadlines and monitor progress in cases or transactions. While they’re not allowed to provide legal counsel or advice, in many countries they may communicate with clients either in writing or verbally.
In addition to working in law offices, legal assistants are often employed in real estate, corporate legal departments and governmental legal agencies . They may also work for non-profit organizations and in the legal departments of banks, insurance companies and hospitals.
A legal assistant is responsible for managing the everyday administrative concerns of a particular case and is often the first point of contact for a client. Their day-to-day responsibilities may include interviewing clients, maintaining records and detailed notes, scheduling appointments and appearances, client billing and organizing documents. In a typical day, a legal assistant will conduct research, prepare documents and follow up on projects.
Depending on the type of law handled by the firm, legal assistants may also spend a significant amount of time conducting legal research. They’re typically tasked with finding precedents for attorneys to follow in their cases, and their research may include reviewing previous trials, appeals and legal precedents in the areas of intellectual property, bankruptcy, tax law, criminal law or family law. Once they’ve reviewed the applicable laws, the legal assistant will then prepare reports on their findings and may draft documents and contracts or prepare a case timeline.
Critical Skills of a Legal Assistant
The realm of legal assistant skills has expanded over the past few decades. No longer are the tasks limited strictly to administrative responsibilities like keeping files and answering phones. All legal assistants should understand, or be prepared to learn, how the following skills apply to their job functions:
Word processing
Electronic case management
Document management
Case calendaring
Dictation
Reporting
Research (including legal and insurance searches)
Legal assistant skills are also of primary interest to prospective employers. Candidates should include the following information in their resume so that the hiring organization can get an accurate picture of both their experience and comfort level with the tasks that they would be expected to know:
Technical skills, such as
Database use
Electronic filing
Word processing
Software proficiency
Familiarity with specific research tools, including
Common software programs
Legal research services
Online public records databases
Common computer usage
Adobe Acrobat
Let’s break it down a bit more and take a closer look at how your own professional skills can be showcased on your resume:
The common word processing programs are frequently used in the legal field. Candidates applying for legal assistant positions should have some level of familiarity with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Most employers are not overly concerned with how deep those skills are; what they want to see is that you are familiar with all of the common versions and iterations of the software. They are also interested in seeing whether you are comfortable and competent with word processing systems in general.
Some employers are more concerned with your specific familiarity with specific word processing programs. They may ask you to take a computerized skills test or present you with a series of tasks to determine your level of proficiency. Candidates should be prepared for this possibility, as well as having a general level of familiarity with the major word processing systems.
Formatting Your Legal Assistant Resume
A well-structured resume is your first opportunity to make a lasting impression on your potential employers. In order for your resume to stand out, it must follow a standard format with clearly defined sections. Below are some of the best practices in structuring your legal assistant resume. Experience: The experience section should get proper priority as it will give prospective law firms the insight into exactly what your qualifications are. This section should include not only your previous legal experience, but also any legal internships and any other legal training you might have received. This section also allows you to explain your skills even further using examples of how you used your skills in your previous jobs. Similarly, if you are currently still in training or you have not had a lot of legal experience, you can highlight any valuable experience you do have. Education: This section includes the name of the college or university you attended for your legal training. You should also include the date of when you graduated from that college/university. If your GPA is above 3.0, you can include that as well. It is not required, but you can include any honors or awards you might have received while you were in training. This will only help to further emphasize the value you may have to offer. Skills: This section can be a little more vague, but it should include all of the skills that you feel qualify you to be a legal assistant. For example, take the time to include any specialties you have, what type of cases you have experience handling, any office equipment or computer software you are proficient in, professional organizations you are a member of or workshops or conferences you might have attended.
Describing Responsibilities on Your Resume
Highlighting Specific Responsibilities on Your Resume
A stronger and more effective resume is one that cites specific duties and responsibilities, as these can give you a competitive edge over other job applicants. Even more important than listing your responsibilities is how you describe them — instead of writing "Responsible for intake files of new clients," write "Intake procedures streamlined to promote client accessibility and communication." Other ways to make your resume more powerful is with measurable achievements—"Reorganized research department, resulting in increased efficiency and saving the firm $20,000 per year."
Many legal assistants create resumes that go through the same work history and list each job by company. Then they simply list their responsibilities by the job title. This approach does not allow you to showcase the full range of your work, intelligence and value to an employer. A better approach is to divide your information into three sections – experience, skills and education – and list each section chronologically with the most recent listed first.
Try to write your resume with the following questions in mind – what did I do, when, why was it important, and how was my performance? Your former employer will be impressed with your ability to quantify your successes and value to previous employers, and will be far more likely to bring you in for an interview.
Personalizing Your Resume for the Position
A vital step in creating your resume is customizing it for each position. For a legal assistant, this means analyzing job descriptions to see if there are particular tasks that need to be highlighted. As you write your resume, keep coming back to the employer’s job description and look for relevant duties and responsibilities. If you mention these on your resume, you are showing that you have the required skills to do that job. A thorough matching of your resume with the job description will show that you are a perfect fit.
For example, if one position involves a lot of drafting legal documents, you want to make sure your resume mentions relevant experience . This could include classes you’ve taken in law schools, additional certifications and training or experience in drafting legal documents. If you worked in a family law setting and the position you are applying for requires drafting pleadings, you will want to emphasize your experience in this area.
When analyzing job descriptions, it is important to also review your resume for redundancies and cut out any unnecessary information. There is no need to include information that is not relevant to the position. A potential employer will appreciate your ability to focus on the most relevant experience.
Serious Mistakes to Avoid
There are several common mistakes that can make your resume not only ineffective, but also downright off-putting to a potential employer. Your resume is your first introduction with your prospective boss, don’t blow it with these resume faux pas.
Being too generic
Generic resumes are easy to identify as they have simply filled in the blanks without a lot of thought given to the position at hand. This includes such phrases as "I am skilled at multi-tasking" or "Detail-oriented" and "Proficient with MS Word". Hiring managers know that every job listing includes a list of general skills so including them in your resume without underlining the specific experience and successes that you have had with these skills shows a lack of effort.
You should always tailor your resume specifically to the targeted job description.
Making it too long
The old adage, "less is more", absolutely applies to legal assistant resumes. Short and sweet is the name of the game. If your resume is more than one page you are losing your prospective employer’s interest faster than if you had tossed them a book. Your resume should highlight your most recent and relevant accomplishments and experiences and leave out anything that is not pertinent to the position that you are applying for. If you have been working for ten years, but have been in the same job for the last seven years, then your objective statement and experience should reflect your current position and the previous position that you held. You should also list the years that you have worked in the job, but need to leave off the month unless you are including years’ of experience for a specific skill, such as Court Filing.
Lack of proofreading
Resume typos are unforgivable and often signals lack of attention to detail or even oozing, bad confidence which could be detrimental to your interview. Spend a few extra hours proofreading and spell checking or enlist the help of an editor or mentor to review your resume before submitting. Also, you should never use contract short codes such as "UR OP" or other texting language as this screams that you have little to no professionalism.
Putting Cover Letters to Work
In conjunction with a professional legal assistant resume (you can learn about that by clicking through the previous link) you can use a cover letter to help a prospective legal employer see how your abilities dovetail into his/her requirements.
While a resume is only a summary of what you have done, a cover letter transfuses your resume into a more dynamic document by way of providing a baseline for your abilities. In doing so, you lead your prospective employer through your resume, helping him/her understand what contributions you can make to his/her legal practice.
In a cover letter you can control the line of thought as you provide a narrative of everything presented in your resume. For instance, you can provide an introduction and then detail your work experience, summary of qualifications and education. You want to make it easy for a prospective employee to imagine the work you would conduct on a daily basis.
You can also expand more on relevant activities. When you’re responding to a specific job opening (which you should always do to maximize your chances of finding a legal job), then you can take the descriptions of the job you’re targeting and merge them with your own legal assistant experiences . This way you’re able to articulate how you can contribute to the firm’s success.
Your legal assistant resume may contain a list of tasks you have conducted in the past, but a cover letter can draw out how those tasks were not only performed, but how they are relevant to an employer.
Any successes or accomplishments can be illustrated in a cover letter as well. Resumes are only a few pages, which means you can’t provide a lot of detail about everything you have done. Your cover letter gives you this opportunity to help your prospective employer make a clear connection between your background and the position he/she is trying to fill.
The tone of a cover letter is also important. Since the legal field is heavily tied to professional communication, you need to be careful to keep your cover letter and resume formal. Using slang, abbreviations and emoticons, as you would with a friend or family member, may show you as uneducated and careless (even if that is not the case at all).
With a cover letter you can also better illustrate your people skills – dealing with people is one of the largest aspects of being a legal assistant. In general, you want to be conversational in a cover letter, while engaging the reader in a way that makes s/he want to learn more.