How a Standout Legal Secretary Can Add Value to Your Firm
A Legal Secretary is a vital member of a legal practice. With the right person/s in the role, you’ll have someone who can not only efficiently juggle day-to-day secretarial and administrative duties but also stay on top of critical errands, tasks and projects that affect the practice and Partners that they represent, as well as clients and legal proceedings.
Beyond administrative & data entry work, managing schedules and directing phone calls seasoned Legal Secretaries are knowledgeable of and have experience in various legal procedures.
According to an authority in legal secretary recruitment in Australia, here’s how a standout Legal Secretary with the following skills can add value to any firm:
1. Technology savvy
Legal secretaries today perform several tech-heavy tasks, such as building spreadsheets, maintaining calendars, keeping track of deadlines, preparing and generating presentations, auditing timesheets, managing invoices and tracking file management.
This is why it’s essential for a Legal Secretary to have the technological know-how to efficiently make use of word processing, presentations, billing and invoicing, email management, transcription, desktop publishing, information management, digital file organisation, and data backup software, among other things.
A Legal Secretary that has strong IT skills will be able to pick up new systems with ease and will be pro-active in developing their knowledge and capabilities to ensure they are operating at an expert level.
2. Organisational skills
Suffice to say that a Legal Secretary is every lawyer’s right-hand person. With a Legal Secretary, a law practice or a corporate legal department has someone who’ll take charge of efficiently maintaining paper and electronic files, overseeing projects, keeping track of multiple deadlines, managing calendars, scheduling meetings, setting up and organising events, and keeping everything in place.
A Legal Secretary that has superior organisational skills is one that is able to complete their work efficiently and add value by being able to take on additional tasks. For others in the practice to know that the Legal Secretary is reliable in terms of meeting deadlines, it also provides great comfort that they can meet their own.
3. Attention to detail
There is a big difference between having good and exceptional attention to detail and a standout Legal Secretary definitely needs to possess an exceptional level of skill with this particular competency. Legal work is detailed and and precise, a Legal Secretary needs to have the ability to manage their work in a way that they have strong checking mechanisms in place to ensure that standards are met each and every day. And like organisation, if a practice group is confident that their Legal Secretary excels in this capacity, they have a level of comfort that they are being represented well themselves.
4. Interpersonal and communication skills
Since a Legal Secretary is immersed daily in interactions with many individuals, including attorneys, paralegals, clients, staff, vendors, opposing counsel, judicial personnel, and many others, they need to have impeccable interpersonal and communication skills.
They should be confident and always prepared for face-to-face contact, as well as communication through electronic means, such as telephone, email, and videoconferences.
Moreover, a Legal Secretary recruitment service says that an outstanding Legal Secretary possesses a high level of emotional intelligence, independence, initiative, and an air of formality that projects how professional they are.
Legal secretaries are also expected to have a high level of written communication skills as they routinely draft routine correspondence and file memos. They are also tasked to proofread legal documents for various purposes. It is without saying that if a legal practice has a confidently spoken Legal Secretary representing them they are leaps and bounds ahead with all of their key stakeholder relationships.
5. A master multitasker and more
Aside from the above skills, a Legal Secretary needs to have strong research, critical thinking, and multitasking skills. They also need to be familiar with legal documents and terminology.
This is why Legal Secretary recruitment agencies say that finding a well-rounded Legal Secretary is like finding a diamond in the rough, especially since law is a high-pressure profession.
Legal secretary recruitment and engagement can be quite challenging, so it’s good to have specialists who can help you find a standout Legal Secretary who’ll become a true asset to your firm.
Please reach out to MJD Recruitment so we can use our expertise to benefit your practice.
