Becoming a legal secretary can be exciting and lead to a wonderful career with progression opportunities, here’s everything you need to know.
What is a legal secretary?
A legal secretary generally has the role of providing administration and clerical support to lawyers, solicitors and other legal staff including legal executives. Legal secretaries play a vital role in helping legal staff and legal secretaries are generally tasked with making sure everything in the office is running smoothly so that the lawyers can focus on their clients and cases. For example, you may write and send letters to lawyers and organise important legal paperwork.
What will I be doing?
Some examples of tasks that a legal secretary does include filing legal documents and managing the office, as well as sometimes some HR work. Taking calls to the office and taking messages, processing legal documents and carrying out other office and administrative tasks including ordering stationery.
What qualifications and experience?
You’ll need outstanding organisational skills and be an excellent communicator, you must also be able to work under pressure. Computer skills are also required. There are training courses which are helpful and should help you progress quicker these include specific legal secretary foundation training courses. Please remember to take accredited ACLS training courses. It is advisable to work as an administrator at first and then progress to becoming a legal secretary. Most of the courses will be available online now.
What career progression opportunities are available?
Administration work experience is required to get started, after working as a legal secretary you can eventually progress to become a personal assistant or even an executive personal assistant.
So there you have it, should you decide this career is for you, good luck and remember to enjoy the experience.