Paralegal Job Description Template

While lawyers are often the face of a law firm, paralegals play a critical role in the process of representing clients. From coordinating with clients to obtain information and documents, to helping attorneys draft legal documents and prepare for court appearances — and much more — paralegals keep a firm on time and on target.

With all of the many practice areas that exist, a law firm can be structured any number of ways. That’s why it’s important to clearly communicate your needs to potential candidates. For example, a corporate paralegal job description should seek candidates that have experience working with mergers and acquisitions or sophisticated contracts. Or maybe you want a candidate that you can train on the job, in which case may need a junior paralegal job description that is open to candidates with less experience.

Want to jumpstart the process? This paralegal job description sample was created to help your job postings perform and reach the candidates you need. Simply download the template and follow the drafting tips to tailor it to your specific needs. If you’re looking for more examples, feel free to review some of the paralegal job descriptions currently on Monster.

Paralegal

[Intro Paragraph] You will get a better response to your paralegal job posting if you provide a short introduction to your firm. Tell your job candidate what a great company you are and why they would want to work for you. This is your chance to talk about your value proposition your company offers new employees, to set your position apart from competing companies.

Paralegal Job Responsibilities:

  • Assisting with the preparation, filing and service of pleadings.
  • Acting as liaison among all parties including court or other neutrals for scheduling and sharing information
  • Organizing and managing documents, including the creation of spreadsheets and retrieval systems
  • Coordinating the collection, review and production of documents and responding to discovery requests
  • Assisting with trial preparation including the assembly of exhibits, witness binders and appendices for depositions and court filings
  • Summarizing deposition and trial transcripts and exhibits
  • Researching case-related factual issues using in-house files and outside reference sources
  • Compiling information and, preparing statistics, charts, graphs and other summaries to detail the findings

[Work Hours & Benefits] To keep your potential candidate interested so that they will read the rest of your job ad, you should add a paragraph in this location that discusses working hours and benefits. Tell your potential applicants about things like work from home opportunities, flexible hours, and travel requirements. Also, describe benefits that set you apart, like childcare reimbursements, commuter benefits, and tuition credits.

Paralegal Qualifications and Skills:

  • Participating in educational opportunities to keep up-to-date on job knowledge
  • Reading professional publications
  • Maintaining personal networks
  • Participating in professional organizations
  • Excellent organization skills
  • Attention to detail.
  • Legal research and investigation skills
  • Ability to follow direction and procedures
  • Strong written and oral communication skills
  • Ability to prioritize workload and assignments

Education and Experience Requirements:

  • Bachelor’s Degree
  • Paralegal certificate from an ABA accredited program preferred, or a combination of education and/or experience
  • 2-3 years of significant and substantive litigation experience as a paralegal/legal assistant in a law firm setting.
  • Experience drafting, cite-checking, and correcting legal briefs (trial and appellate).
  • Experience managing medium to large-scale document productions.
  • Proficiency with Document Review Software
  • Working knowledge and competency with case management software
  • Proficiency with word processing and spreadsheet software

[Call To Action] Now that you have retained your prospective job candidate’s all the way through your job post, you will want to include a call to action. This will let them know what they need to do to apply for your position. Your call to action might have them applying by “clicking on the apply button above” or by emailing an application. If you do this small step, you will get better responses from candidates.

Ready to Serve Your Paralegal Job Description to the Right Candidates?

It can be hard enough to find candidates with the work ethic and temperament needed to work in the legal field, let alone those with the right experience and background. But you don’t have to go it alone. Let Monster help you find them by setting up a free job post with us today.