Legal Assistant
As a temporary
job, with a decent salary, until I go back to school I work as a legal
assistant. If you were not aware, there is a lot of “busy work” and preparation
that goes on in a law office that someone must complete. It certainly will not
be the lead attorney maxing out at $400 plus dollars per hour, so naturally it
is me: a young college student who will basically do anything to make a buck.
Legal Assistants are responsible for a variety of legal
tasks that help attorneys and other associate partners around the office. I
would describe a legal assistant as a “behind the scenes” worker who shows up
and does all the menial tasks to make the office, attorneys, and staff seem
like they have everything together, are organized, and can portray to the
public and client a professional, put together environment. Most legal
assistants, including myself, sit in small offices or cubicles to complete all
their tasks and unless working in a small firm, do not have much client
interaction.
There are a wide
variety of tasks that a legal assistant can be assigned to do, however I will
describe some of the most common day-to-day tasks that I have most commonly
carry out as well as some examples of why no one in the office really wants to
do any of the tasks I am given.
- Filing, faxing, photocopying, organizing
- Conducting legal research
- Preparing documents (client correspondence, court memos, etc.)
This specific
set of tasks that happen on an everyday basis in a law office are pretty
self-explanatory and are very boring, mindless, and repetitive. However, I have
had a few mishaps in the past as I’m sure most people have. One big case I was
assisting on made it necessary for me to organize all legal documents,
evidence, notes, call logs, and anything under the sun that had any relation to
this case. Therefore, I did unlimited amounts of filing, photocopying, faxing,
and organizing evidence into huge binders that then would be looked over by all
the lead attorneys on this particular case.
This seems easy
enough, however you must have great attention to detail when dealing with such
evidence as to file everything correctly and deem what is/what is not
important. So, after I created upwards of 10 huge binders containing all the
evidence that was most important to this case the lead attorneys reviewed it
and claimed that one face to face transcribed interaction with the client was
missing, but was absolutely essential to their defense. I immediately panic,
having put together this entire portfolio it could only be my fault that this
one piece of paper was missing. I had been working on this specific case for
months and start reviewing everything I did to see if I could remember where
that paper was or what I had done with it.
After about a
week, it turns out I had filed this one piece of paper incorrectly. This huge
client shared the last name “Anderson” with a few other clients as well. I had
placed the piece of paper for “Anderson, John” into the “Anderson, James” file.
The mistake was fixed, thankfully, and the whole office returned to work, but
that one mistake could have been detrimental to the case and the future of my job.
Even menial and
idiot proof tasks such as filing, faxing, photocopying, and organizing must be
handled with as much attention to detail and intensity as open-heart surgery
when it comes to a law office setting.
Conducting Legal Research
Legal research
is a very daunting task to young legal assistants such as myself. In my case,
my boss or whatever head attorney I am assisting will give me specific cases or
a general topic to look up and research. He then will ask me to read through
all the information that comes up and find any legal terms or situations that
have any relevance to the case he is representing and then report back to him
with my findings. Sometimes this can take days and weeks and sometimes this can
be done in a very fast manner. However, it takes a lot of skimming and reading
through tons of legal information, cases, and court hearings and looking up a
lot of words, terms, and legal lingo that you are not familiar with.
For me
personally, it sometimes is a very irritating and frustrating task especially
when it’s been days of reading, skimming, and sifting through heavy information
only to find you have made no progress and must report back to your boss
empty-handed. This, however, is precisely why the head attorneys delegate these
kinds of tasks to legal assistants. It does take a long time to do research and
can be very time consuming, but for someone like me hoping to pursue a career
in law it can be very informative and helpful reading through all the
information and learning more about the legal world.
Preparation of Legal Documents
Preparing legal
documents can include anything from client correspondence (letters, summons, etc.)
to filing court documents or legal billing. This also is not too hard of a task
when, like most offices, there is an already set template to use and unlimited
examples of previous letters, filings, templates, etc. to go off of. Such a
perceived simple task sometimes does not always go accordingly as I once
learned.
Lawyers are very
anal about their templates and about the formatting of all correspondence that
leaves the office and I learned this the hard way. Even the smallest alignment
or out of place heading, paragraph, or date really gets under their skin. And
don’t even start me on how big of grammar snobs lawyers really are.
To say the
least, there have been a few instances where my bosses have not been pleased
with me when they have noticed one of the above errors. But, for the most part
it has definitely taught me to really pay attention to what is sent is written
and sent out of the office since it represents the lawyers and their practice.
Most of the tasks I do as a legal assistant are not challenging, per say, but
they do require a lot of attention and thought.
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