Legal secretaries offer support to legal representatives with a variety of duties from administrative tasks to the formulation of legal documents. A legal secretary can function in law offices and government institutions. Legal secretaries specialise in particular areas of the law, such as real estate law, family law and criminal law.
Legal secretaries can also aid in producing legal documents such as wills, contracts and court papers and they deal with enquiries from clients. They also deliver and gather documents and attend court or police cells, usually with law advocates. Legal secretaries play a vital role in the law firm machinist.
They work full-time in an office setting but their jobs such as subpoenas, proposals, legal research and complaints are always supervised by lawers or solicitors. Legal secretaries should have a few key skills consisting of organisational skills, writing skills and the ability to work under pressure.
WHAT SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS DO I NEED TO BECOME A LEGAL SECRETARY?
It is not a prerequisite to earn university degree to become a Legal Secretary. Nevertheless, you’ll need an A to C in English and Maths in your GCSE exams. It is highly imperative to have some qualifications explicit to the industry. To become a certified legal secretary, you must acquire the right qualifications and skills to succeed in your chosen career.
- Get the proper training.
Even though secondary school training is basically all that is needed to become a legal secretary. Nonetheless, to be sought after by law firms, consider seeking extra training as required. You can register for a legal secretary certificate program, CILEx (Chartered Institute of Legal Executive) programs or enroll for CPD Accredited training.
- Gain work experience.
You can seek internships with solicitors and short-term employment as a secretary, or other opportunities in a law firm, then when placed in a legal office; ask to abet a legal executive to give you the perfect training to become a legal secretary. You can also seek for other opportunities to gain secretarial experience.
- Building Your Skill Set.
Legal secretaries are accountable for preparing, filing court forms. Therefore it is advisable that legal secretaries get accustomed to a variety of legal documents. Getting familiar with court filing fees are part of building your skill. As it is required by large law firms, legal secretary should be able to type 65-80 words per minute, so improve on your typing skills, learn how to navigate software programs like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
- Earn Certification.
There are several certifications for legal secretaries. We have mentioned the UK ones above, if you are in the US The National Association for Legal Secretaries offers various certification opportunities including the Accredited Legal Secretary and Professional Legal Secretary. This certification has specific admissibility and experience requirements. In order to attain this certification, you must sit for an exam which must be passed to get the certificate. Certified secretaries are advised to keep their certification up to date. It is a general requirement that certified legal secretaries meet steady education requirements to uphold their certification.
In summary, while a university degree is not technically needed to become a certified legal secretary, those who want to work in the field can profit from the experience of legal writing and research.
This post was written and supplied on behalf of Souters, www.legal-secretary-courses.co.uk training providers since 1988.