A legal assistant is a crucial part of any law practice. If you’re looking to hire a legal assistant in the future, there are a number of qualities you should be looking for that go beyond legal knowledge. Here are six skills your legal assistant should possess, and how you can ensure your future hire has them all. 1. Communication Skills It’s a legal assistant’s job to be the main point of contact between the lawyers and the clients. As such, they need to possess excellent communication skills in order to relay messages effectively, promptly, and without error. Your legal assistant needs to not only be able to liaison face to face, but it takes excellent phone communication skills and email writing skills to excel in this position. When …show more content…
This can include word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, billing software, and an online calendar. They may even need to know their way around video conferencing systems, or at the very least be eager to learn. 3. Research Skills From finding legal documents to locating an expert witness, legal assistants need to be able to conduct research to succeed. This also goes hand in hand with technology skills. Much of today’s research is conducted via internet and requires analysis abilities as well. When so much misinformation permeates the online world, finding credible sources is more important now than ever before. 4. Confidentiality Confidentiality and professionalism are of the utmost importance in a legal assistant. They have to work with sensitive personal and business information on a daily basis, and it will be expected of them to keep this information private. It can be difficult to determine how trustworthy a candidate is in this area during your typical interview process, so it may be best to first test how much they know about confidentiality agreements and what would be required of them. Knowledge and practice go hand in hand. 5. Writing