Legal Assistant Career Opportunities: E-Discovery Specialist
Becoming a legal assistant can open a number of career doors for you. This is true with any industry. Once you are an active part of a field, opportunities will often present themselves. As a legal assistant, one niche or specialized field that can offer the potential for growth and advancement is that of an e-discovery specialist. As a legal assistant, you will be performing many of the duties involved with e-discovery already. If it is something you find interesting, you may want to consider moving into this up and coming field full time.
What is E-Discovery?
E-discovery, also known as electronic discovery, is the process in which electronic data, such as emails, social networking posts, instant messages, and data stored on a computer is located and retrieved for the purpose of using it as evidence in a court case. E-discovery can involve both offline and online work, since a computer can be legally seized for the purpose of e-discovery. Hacking into a computer and retrieving saved or unsaved files would be the offline portion of e-discovery while searching social networking sites and following internet trails, posts, blogs, and other forms of online communication would make up the online portion of e-discovery.
Many individuals don’t realize it, but digital data is almost impossible to completely destroy. If the information or evidence needed for a court case went through a corporate network, it will remain on the hard drive even if it was deleted from the individual’s personal computer.
Other forms of e-discovery include texts, phone messages, calendar files, spread sheets, and more.
How Can a Legal Assistant Enter the Field of E-Discovery?
Depending on the type of firm you are currently employed with as a legal assistant, you may be doing quite a bit of e-discovery work already. Certain attorneys, such as divorce lawyers or corporate lawyers, use electronic data in their cases quite frequently. If e-discovery is something you are already involved with and it is something you enjoy, you may have found a specialized niche that can offer great advancement potential to your career.
Currently, there is a certification process held through the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists, or ACEDS, but it is not required in order to enter into the field. At some time in the future, there are projections about making e-discovery training mandatory, but for now you can enter into the field with just the experience you currently have.
E-discovery specialists that are hired by corporations and legal firms have excellent growth and income potential. The average e-discovery specialist can earn anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000 annually.
Becoming certified through a corporation such as ACEDS will help to further your career, but as with any other career, the proof is in what you are able to bring to the table. If you are computer savvy to the point where you know how to find, secure, and retrieve valuable information that can be used in a court case, your reputation and your skills will speak for itself.
E-discovery is a solid option for the legal assistant. We hope this article has helped you decide if this is a possible career opportunity for you.