Professional Development

How can you advance in your chosen career as a Legal Secretary? I am retired now, but when I was practicing law, over a period of very many years I developed a habit with regard to my Legal Secretaries: I encouraged them to act as a team and to see themselves as part of the bigger picture.

What is the bigger picture that a Legal Secretary is part of? It’s obvious, of course: a successful legal practice, or a successful legal department of a commercial firm or public organisation. It does not matter how brilliant a partner or senior manager may be; success will come only if the firm as a whole, from top to bottom, is brilliant. This means that everyone should be singing from the same song sheet. If Legal Secretaries were not important, then firms wouldn’t need to employ them! In their own way, they are just as important as the partners or senior managers.

Excellence is about delivering work of quality and doing the best you can do at every moment. Success naturally follows for those who are prepared to go that extra mile in their job and are willing to devote their time and effort to bettering themselves. Excellence is brought about by doing things better than they have been done before, and only being satisfied with the very best from yourself.

Off the top of your head, what’s the best thing about the internet? Is it that you’re able to see as well as talk to friends and family members on the other side of the world? Is it that you can listen at any time of the day or night to practically any music track you can think of? Or is it simply that you’re never more than a minute away from a really cute cat video? 

All of these things are great. But I think that the best thing about the internet is the ability to connect with people you might otherwise never have come across, and to pool your knowledge and resources together: in other words, to network. 

September is the beginning of the new academic year, and you may have been helping relatives or friends prepare for it. Whether it’s the first day at reception class in a spick and span new uniform, or packing up the car to travel to a far-off university, there’s a feeling of excitement and anticipation in the air. Why not get some of that excitement and anticipation for yourself, by starting a new course that will help strengthen your CV and increase your earning potential? 

More than ever before, Legal Secretaries and PAs are not restricted by conventional job descriptions. The legal world is changing, and if you look around you, you should be able to see many opportunities to expand your role in the firm or simply to make your contributions more valuable – to the firm and to yourself!  

An Audio Typist is a professional who specialises in transcribing documents from an audio source which they listen to. Audio typing is a valued ability to gain for those wishing to improve their professional skills as a Legal Secretary. There are a number of jobs which list audio typing as a stipulation, and although it not a skill that is always required, it will enable you to welcome better job prospects. 

The key skills that a competent Audio Typist requires are the ability to type fast and accurately, the ability to touch type without referring to the keyboard, an excellent command of spelling and grammar, and a high level of concentration. An Audio Typist must also be flexible in regard to learning how to use his or her employer’s specific audio transcription system, as each firm and legal department varies. With practice, audio typing is an easily achievable and worthwhile skill to obtain.

Have you been inspired by any of the ideas in our article about useful training courses, but think that you can’t manage to fit another commitment into your life? Don’t be discouraged! Continuing professional development is worth it. Here are some practical tips and ideas that will help you study as well as work.

Taking on a course of study while you hold down a full-time job is a big commitment, but remember it’s a commitment that plenty of people before you have managed to make. First of all, therefore, don’t be daunted and don’t start out with the belief that it’s impossible. What’s required is some determination, some fairly ruthless organisation, and good communication with your family, your friends and your employer.

“Must be a good team player”. How often have you seen that in job descriptions and advertisements? And how often have you wondered what, exactly, the writer means? 

After all, there are all sorts of players in every team. Among others, there are the star strikers, and the motivators, and the organisers; there are the backroom boys and girls who make sure that the team’s task gets delivered. Which of these is the writer looking for – or is s/he looking for something else entirely? 

As you embark on your career within the legal industry as a Legal Secretary or PA, you will very soon realise just how tight-knit this community really is and how easy it can be for a “conflict of interest” to arise. This is especially the case within barrister chambers when you consider the fact that there aren’t actually that many such firms providing this type of service in some parts of the country.

If you’re the Secretary or PA of a litigation lawyer, you’ll know all about telephone hearings. Since the early 2000s, they’ve been the standard way of dealing with short applications in the courts – in fact, lawyers now have to give reasons why an application should not be heard by telephone, rather than the other way around. For others, though, the idea of having to fix a telephone hearing or conference can still be a bit daunting. Here’s a short summary of the things you need to know. 

This month we will be considering the Law Commission’s scoping paper ‘Getting Married’, a review of marriage law that was done at the request of the Government. The key conclusion of the Commission’s paper was that the law was badly in need of reform. Marriage law should provide a fair and coherent legal framework for people to marry, but sadly the Commission identified that the existing marriage law is unnecessarily restrictive and outdated. 

The current law can be divided into three stages: firstly, what people must do before marriage (the ‘preliminaries’); secondly, the rules as to how and where a marriage can take place; and finally, the rules on how a marriage must be registered with the state.