What would I do all day in a career with a program in Legal Secretary?

Question

If I get a degree in it (associates), what will my responsibilities be in this career?

Answer 1

I work in a law firm and most legal assistant spend most of the day cordinating schedule for the attorney they are working for, typing letters, doing research with paralegals, on the phone with court reporter and judges, sending out important information to client or the litigating side, making sure invoices are up to date, scheduling client deposition, and working in an assigned project with her attorney. The list goes on, because it depends what the firm does and what type of lawyer are you working for. The position can be rewarding and you might be able to learn intereting stuff in there. They usually work full time in normal business hours. There's always a lot work to get done but usually legal assitant work by deadlines. Good Luck!!

Answer 2

Depending on what type of a firm you join, and how large the firm is, your job duties will be different..

For example, if you work in a large firm, you may perform secretarial duties such as calendering, answering phones, and writing correspondences / dictations, etc and that's it. They will have other people to take care of the filing, motion drafting, research, etc. I worked as a case assistant in a large corporation and I was doing a good portion of research but that was it. I was never able to see the final product for which the research was required. When I talked with legal secretaries there, all they did was calender dates and answer phone calls. If I remember correctly, although they were qualified as legal secreatries, their job title was a secretary and the firm had no one hired as a legal secretary. In fact, one person was a qualified paralegal but was unable to obtain a position as a paralegal so she accepted a secretarial position just to get her "foot in the door".

If you work in a smaller firm, they may have you do more things. A few examples are creating caption pages, drafting motions, drafting discovery responses from dictations, calendering future hearings / dates, logging mail, answering phone calls, logging time, drafting correspondences to clients as well as counsel, filing various documents with the courts, etc.

One thing to note is that in my experience, legal secretaries do little or no research at all. This may be different if you work for a sole practitioner but from my past two experiences, legal secretaries did no research at all. These were left to the paralegals and associates.

On a closing note, the size of the firm is directly related to how much the attorney will depend on you. The larger the firm, the less dependence and the smaller the firm, the greater dependence. If you have any further questions, feel free to add additional details and I'll try to get back to you as best as I can.


***** I'd like to point out that there is a difference between a legal secretary and a legal assistant *****

Answer 3

Typing, typing, typing, typing, and more typing. Legal secs get to type up all the of legal letters, forms, filings, etc. If you don't like to type, I would find something else to do, maybe paralegal, then you can give your work to a legal secretary to type for you.

Answer 4

It depends what kind of law you are interested in--litigation, corporate, family, etc...

Answer 5

typing & research