What is a Litigation Legal Assistant or a Litigation Paralegal?
Career Opportunities for the Legal Assistant
During legal assistant training, you will have the opportunity to specialize your skills. If you wish, you may become a litigation legal assistant and provide an invaluable service to the lawyers you work with by helping in the litigation process. Before you decide to become specialize in litigation during legal assistant training, though, you need to understand exactly what these legal assistants are and what they do.
What is a Litigation Legal Assistant and What Do They Do?
While there are many types of legal assistants, the litigation legal assistant is perhaps one of the most important. Litigation legal assistants are the backbone of a legal team. They are responsible for obtaining and organizing thousand of items before, during, and after a trial. Without them, a legal team does not run as smoothly or efficiently.
The work a litigation paralegal does save the attorney a massive amount of time, because his main duty is discovery and disclosure. This is typically a time-consuming task because it involves processing and presenting every bit of information a lawyer and the court may need for a trial. If you decide to undergo legal assistant training and specialize in litigation, you will be required to perform these time-consuming tasks. Before you decide that this career is right for you, though, let’s take a look at each type of task you will need to perform.
- Investigation- After legal assistant training, you will often be in charge of pre-claim investigations. This often involves finding and interviewing witnesses on a case, taking statements, finding evidence and important documents, organizing documents, creating files for the case investigation, and listing facts in chronological order. If you are working for the plaintiff, you may also need to interview clients and assess the case.
- Pleadings- If you are working on the plaintiff’s side after legal assistant training, you may need to draft pleadings such as affidavits, complaints, and summons. When working on the side of the defense, you may need to investigate allegations, create pleading indexes, file pleading, determine filing deadlines, and keep track of hearing dates.
- Discovery- Much of your time after legal assistant training will be spent in discovery. You will be required to draft interrogatories, requests for admissions, and requests for productions. You may also need to find expert witnesses to testify, analyze issues, create research memos, and gather relevant information to the case through resources like the police, fire departments, the media, newspapers, and libraries.
- Pre-Trial- Before each trial, you will need to use every bit of your legal assistant training to organize of the information needed for a case. You will manage documents, prepare binders for the trial, and index exhibits. You will also be responsible for carrying message from the trial team to witnesses, vendors, experts, the court, and clients. If the trial destination is in another location, you will be expected to reserve hotel rooms, reserve office space, find needed equipment, and set up a war room for your legal team.
- Trial- During every trial after legal assistant training, you will need to arrange for all of your documented discovery to be transported to the court room and set it up so that the rest of the legal team can easily find and locate any information they need. You will also be responsible for ensuring all of the jurors are researched and evaluated and all subpoenas are prepared and issued. While the trial is going on, you will need to be present so you can take notes, observe the jury, prepare files, prep witnesses, review transcripts, and located needed documents.
During your legal assistant training, you may want to consider specializing in litigation. As a litigation legal assistant, you will play an important, and much needed, role on your legal team.