Career Day in the Life: Legal Assistant
In this blog post, we walk you through a typical day in the role of legal assistant. We’ll highlight key responsibilities, look at the top challenges, and explore opportunities for growth in the role. Whether you’re considering a career as a legal assistant or looking to enhance your skills, get an inside look at the vital role legal assistants play in the field.
Key Responsibilities of Legal Assistants
Legal assistants provide support to attorneys and other law firms or legal department staff. While the specific demands of each position vary, legal assistants are often called upon for tasks like:
- Legal research: Legal assistants must identify relevant laws and precedent cases, gather evidence and research, and keep it all organized.
- Document preparation and management: Filing and organizing documents is a large part of legal assistant work. Excellent organization skills are essential.
- Scheduling and communications: Legal assistants keep schedules for attorneys or firms, answer phones, communicate with clients, and serve as intermediaries between clients and attorneys.
- Case management and support: From organizing case files to taking notes, legal assistants do much of the behind-the-scenes work that allows attorneys to focus on providing quality legal representation.
Top Skills Legal Assistants Need
Tight deadlines, heavy workloads, and handling sensitive or confidential information are top challenges for any legal assistant. To meet these challenges, legal assistants rely on strong skills in several key areas.
- Time management: Legal assistants are responsible for tracking and meeting several deadlines at a time. Being able to manage time effectively is essential to success in the role.
- Confidentiality: Keeping client information confidential is a top priority for legal assistants. Protecting client privacy must become second nature.
- Organization: Heavy workloads, typically involving effort on several cases at once, are common for legal assistants. Having strong organizational skills is a must.
- Problem-solving: New problems arise daily in the legal field. Legal assistants who enjoy problem-solving and have strong skills in this area tend to thrive in their work.
Growth Opportunities for Legal Assistants
Legal assistants have several opportunities to expand their careers. Some opportunities are available in the workplace; others may require a transition to a new employer to exercise fully. Many legal assistants grow in their careers by:
- Specializing in a specific area of law. Specializing in one or more practice areas makes a legal assistant more effective and more valuable to other team members.
- Pursuing certifications. Several professional certifications are available to help legal assistants expand their abilities and knowledge.
- Growing into new roles. Some legal assistants become paralegals, legal researchers, or attorneys. These roles often require additional education along with experience in the field.
Take your legal career to the next level with help from our team at Avata Partners.
