Paralegal job description sample, including tasks, skills, and responsibilities to edit to attract top candidates for your business.
Paralegals are employed by law firms or legal teams in a corporate organization. The occupation has developed in recent times, but so far it has not been regulated to a certain extent. This means that there are no special qualifications or other eligibility criteria for entry at this time.
Basically, a paralegal is a legal expert without the formal qualifications needed to practice a lawyer’s profession. These people perform administrative and clerical tasks, such as filing, answering phone calls, and making appointments with clients.
Paralegals also conduct investigations and collect documents relevant to the legal issues assigned to them. They prepare informative notes and point out valid decisions and presences to a lawyer dealing with the subject.
These individuals also prepare case files, such as court applications, as well as transcripts of legal opinions, statements and testimonies, and preparation of files with detailed indexes and checklists.
Paralegals can also participate in court proceedings, establish contacts within the judicial system and legal fraternity and remain in the course of legislative, regulatory and industrial events, changes and trends. Then they will compile related circulatory guidelines among other legal assistants and legal experts.
Main Duties and Responsibilities of the Paralegals
- Conducting legal and factual investigations
- Perform records research
- Determining court decisions, statutes, legal articles, codes and other relevant documents
- Organize and analyze information
- Cross-checking and data verification
- Prepare written reports
- Proposal of legal documents, including submissions, appeals, pleadings, agreements, contracts, and legal notices
- Help prepare legal arguments, requests, statements, and suggestions
- Prepare correspondence
- Check and modify forms and legal documents for greater accuracy
- Create and maintain databases and files
- Organize and track records
- Review and observe new and updated laws and regulations
- Maintaining the law library
- Coordinate attorney’s office activities, such as subpoena delivery and interviewing the witnesses
- Help prepare trial, including witness lists, trial, and exhibit records
- Help the attorney in the courtroom
Education and Experience
- Bachelor degree, associate degree or certification program in paralegal studies
- Parallel certification may be required
- Full knowledge of legal principles and practices
- In-depth understanding of forensic investigative techniques
- Thorough knowledge of legal terminology
- Comprehensive understanding of the policies and practices of legal communication
- In-depth knowledge of local, state and federal laws and regulations
- Relevant knowledge and experience of computer software
Skills
You will need to have the following:
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to handle multiple tasks or cases
- Good attention to detail so you can carefully analyze the files and data
- Legal research skills and the desire to develop your understanding of the law
- Ability to perform well under pressure and within tight deadlines
- Office administrative skills for jobs such as filing, typing and writing letters
- Good teamwork skills, especially when working with other departments to perform their tasks
- Flexibility and adaptability in your attitude and approach to work
- Business attention and understanding customer needs
- Professionalism in working with colleagues, key partners, experts and clients
- Legal databases certifications such as LexisNexis or Westlaw are very useful
- Additional language skills: This is not necessary but it would be an advantage if you work for high street law firms in areas with a high percentage of ethnic minorities, such as Bengali, Hindi and Chinese.
