Paralegal professionals are individuals who assist lawyers with most of their legal work. Most of the activities that paralegal professionals take care of relate to secondary legal issues that do not exactly require expert legal knowledge. Most of the transactional and administrative duties of the lawyer are taken care of by his paralegal assistant. These paralegal professionals are also called as legal assistants, and as per law, they are not allowed to foray into activities that comes under the purview of the law of the land. Some of the legal activities that a paralegal cannot get into are offering legal advice to clients, fighting a case in the court, determining the legal fees of the lawyer, etc. We would talk about paralegal job description and salary in the remainder of this article.
Most of the legal documents that are prepared by legal companies are documented by these paralegal professionals. There is a specific format that needs to be followed while documenting contracts, briefs, wills, appeals, pleadings, etc. Paralegal professionals are well aware of this and are trained to prepare such documents. Once the paralegal professional prepares the documents as per the specific format or structure, he presents the document to the attorney for his approval. If the attorney is happy with the document, it would be handed over to the client; otherwise, it would have to be corrected as per the lawyer’s instructions. Apart from this, a paralegal professional also studies and analyses the various case documents handled by his employer.
A paralegal professional’s job might sound easy; but in reality, it is not so. Most of the research work that is primarily the lawyer’s responsibility is taken care of by the paralegal professional. Most of the information or data that would come handy in determining the direction of a court case is accumulated by the paralegal professional. Most of this information is found after careful research of several legal journals, magazines, reports, and other documents.
Most of the paralegal professionals that assist a full-fledged lawyer do not require a specific degree behind their name. These professionals gather their knowledge and skills during their on-the-job training provided by the legal firms. Even though, there is no formal education required, there are several four-year degree and two-year diploma courses for paralegals. CLA and AACP are some of the courses offered in America for paralegal studies. A professional with a four-year degree in paralegal and with relevant work experience for at least two years can register himself for the RP or the Registered Paralegal credential.
As far as paralegal job description and salary is concerned, they pretty much complement each other. A paralegal gets paid nicely for his job and that is quite obvious by the salaries that these professionals take home. When one looks at the BLS reports for the year 2008, paralegal professionals made something close to $46,000 annually on an average. The salary would vary for a paralegal professional and factors like experience, employer, location, etc. has an impact on the final sum drawn in by the professional. If a paralegal professional works for Federal government, then his salary would be more in comparison to what paralegals working in private law firms take home.
Not many people are aware of this field and there is still not enough number of students showing keen interest or inclination towards this profession. However, if one looks at the past few years’ statistics, there is a constant improvement and more people are getting some awareness about this course. This is a perfect course for people who want to enter the legal profession without doing a full-fledged course for lawyers. The demand for paralegals is growing and many opportunities are out there to be taken, as a result.
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