Paralegal Job Description
Are you considering a paralegal career? It is best to find out what is a paralegal. Much of paralegal job responsibilities is from work passed down when lawyers get a new case. As the workload for lawyers increase, paralegals are assuming more and more tasks in law offices and many perform some of the work that lawyers do. However, job duties do not include offering legal advice, setting legal fees, and presenting a case.
Helping lawyers to prep for meetings, case closings, hearings, and trials is the most important part of paralegal duties. They may perform due diligence related to case facts and make sure all important information is taken into account. After the organization and analysis of data, paralegals will create reports that lawyers use in deciding how to approach a case. If the lawyer handles the case by filing a lawsuit on behalf of a client, paralegals may assist in the preparation of the legal arguments, drafts, get affidavits, and help lawyers during the trial. Paralegals are also in charge of maintaining and organizing important case files and documents, making them available when lawyers need to access them.
In addition preparing for cases, paralegals are responsible for many other tasks. For example, they assist in writing contracts, separation agreements, and mortgages. They may also help in tax returns, establishment of trust funds, and planning estates. Knowing how to use a computer and different software packages is important since a lot of work will involve finding legal information within databases and other computer storage. In litigation work that requires a lot of supporting documents, paralegals will need to use computer databases to query, analyze, and retrieve documents. In addition, computer scanners are used to turn hard copy documents into electronic copies and stored into a database. Also, paralegals will need to know how to use billing software to keep track of client billable hours.
Although most paralegals are hired by law firms and legal departments, they can also be found in a wide variety of organizations. Within an organization, paralegals can operate in a variety of areas within the law. These areas can include personal injury, litigation, corporate law, employee benefits, criminal law, intellectual property, bankruptcy, labor law, immigration, family law, and real estate. As the complexity of our laws increase, the paralegal profession has become more specialized. Each specialty has areas that are further broken down.
What Does a Paralegal Do
Paralegal work tasks may vary widely depending on the type of organization that they work for. Corporate paralegals will likely help lawyers with employee contracts, shareholder agreements, stock-option plans, and employee benefit plans. They also may assist in creating and filing yearly financial data, maintain corporate minutes’ record resolutions, and prepare forms to secure loans for the corporation. Corporate paralegals will also review and keep up to date with government regulations so that a company is up to date with new regulations and is operating within the law. Lastly, corporate paralegals that have more experience are taking on more supervisor duties including team project oversight.
For paralegals that work in the public sector, job responsibilities will differ depending on the agency that you work for. Generally, litigation paralegals do due diligence on legal documents for their own department, maintain files for reference, perform research for lawyers, and obtain and analyze evidence for case hearings. They may create reports and presentations going over agency regulations, laws, and agency policy for department use. Those that are hired by community projects assist those with low income, the elderly, and other people who are in need of legal aid. Again, they file forms, perform research, prep legal material, and may even represent clients at administrative hearings.
The work atmospheres for paralegals include many common tasks, especially when the paralegal does not have much experience. As these legal assistants learn how to do more tasks, they usually get assigned different jobs with more responsibilities. Most of the work is performed in law libraries and offices. On certain occasions, they may have to travel in order to obtain information to prepare documents for trial.
Work hours tend to be standard in the paralegal industry. Those that are hired by large companies and the government have forty hour work weeks. Most paralegals are full time employees. However, there are those that are temp workers, working only during busy season. There are also times when paralegals work very long hours in order to meet important deadlines. This is especially true of those that work in law offices.
Overall, paralegal careers are rewarding ones. The work can be challenging and changes daily. In addition, there is always new things to learn. Most importantly, there will be increasing demand and job safety.
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