Paralegal Job Description

What is a Paralegal?

According to the American Bar Association (ABA) that was adopted by the House of Delegates in 1997 is this:

“A legal assistant or paralegal is a person, qualified by education, training or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible.”

The Nature of the Work

If you want to understand one thing about this position, it’s that lawyers need paralegals. Paralegals are the backbone, or the workhorse, of the law firm. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t carry the most responsibility when it comes to clients and law, but they carry the load of many lawyers. As time goes on, paralegals, also known as legal assistants, will be gaining ground in carrying similar responsibilities as lawyers themselves. What is key is that these legal assistants are legally prohibited from carrying out any duties considered to be within the scope of law. Some of these duties include:

• Fixing legal fees
• Providing legal advice
• Presenting cases in court

These specific responsibilities are for lawyers alone. The paralegal job description doesn’t consist of anything pertaining to providing these services to the clients of the law firm or agency.

Helping lawyers prep for closings, hearings, corporate meetings, and trials is one of the most important tasks that a paralegal does. Some of the necessary requirements to preparing for a case can be:

• Investigating facts and data of a case
• Researching other cases similar to present trials and hearings
• Identifying appropriate laws, judicial decisions, legal articles, and other information that is relevant to the case
• Writing concise reports of anything that was researched and investigated for lawyers to better use in court
• Preparing draft pleadings and legal arguments for lawsuits
• Obtaining affidavits
• Taking notes during trials for attorney’s use
• Helping to draft contracts, divorce agreements, business acquisitions, etc.
• Preparing tax returns
• Establishing trust funds
• Assisting in last will and testament documents
• Maintaining financial office documents
• Coordinating other law office employee activities

Tools of the Paralegal

When preparing, researching and retrieving important information and documents for a trial, a paralegal will use many sophisticated computer programs to help sort out and retrieve the desired results for a hearing. The Internet and many software packages are available within the law office to help sort out data and organize legal literature that is stored in computer databases and on CD-ROM. Computer software also provides the ability for legal assistants to appropriately bill clients, scan imagery information into the computer’s database, and perform tax calculations and strategies.

Paralegal Jobs

The market for needing paralegals is growing at a rapid rate. Although legal assistants are employed mostly by law firms, there are many other organizations and arenas that paralegals work. Some of which are:

• Various government offices
• Corporate legal departments
• From home

Types of Paralegals’ Job Descriptions

If you desire to become a paralegal, you may want to really hunker down and decide what type of paralegal you’re interested in pursuing. Although the basic legal assistant degree will provide hundreds of opportunities for you, identifying a specific area may help you to stand out from the pack.

Corporate Paralegals assist attorneys in a variety of ways. From helping with employee contracts, pensions, shareholder agreements, stock-option plans, to employee benefits and healthcare opportunities. They also provide assistance with annual financial reports, corporate minute’s resolutions, and prepare forms for loans and company acquisitions.

Litigation Paralegals analyze and organize internal information and date for reference files and evidence hearings. They also provide researched documents to explain laws, agency regulations, and organizational policy for public use.

Conclusion

If this sounds interesting to you, or you’re looking for the next step into law, then becoming a paralegal may be the next step for your desired destination. This position isn’t easy, but it may well be worth it. Hopefully this paralegal job description will be a great start for you to fully understand what a legal assistant does on a daily basis.

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