Profession Legal secretary

Legal secretaries perform secretarial and administrative duties in law offices, legal departments of large firms, real estate companies, public courts and government. Prepare legal papers and correspondence, such as summonses, complaints, motions and subpoenas. May also assist with legal research.

Personality Type

• Conventional / Enterprising

Tasks legal secretary

• Prepare and process, often from dictated notes, legal documents and papers, such as deeds, wills, affidavits, contracts, leases, summonses, subpoenas, complaints, appeals, motions and pretrial agreements.
• Mail, fax or arrange for delivery of legal correspondence to clients, witnesses, court officials and other parties.
• Receive and place telephone calls, answer enquiries and direct clients to appropriate experts.
• Schedule and make appointments.
• Draft and type office memos.
• Make photocopies of correspondence, documents and other printed matter.
• Attend court, legal meetings or negotiations, such as client interviews, hearings or depositions, and take notes or minutes.
• Review and proofread outgoing documents and correspondence to make sure that the documents agree with legal procedures and grammatical usage.
• Organize and maintain law libraries, documents and case files.
• Assist lawyers in collecting information for cases and in preparing first drafts of legal documents.
• Review legal publications and perform database searches to identify laws and court decisions relevant to pending cases, and to find out about changes in legislation, High Court verdicts and interpretations, etc.

Related professions secretary

• Administrative secretary
• Executive secretary
• Medical secretary or receptionist
• Minutes secretary
• Office manager
• Personal assistant
• Project secretary
• Secretary
• Secretary, all other
• Team or department secretary

Source: Sisyphus ODB