Top tips for getting along with colleagues in your law firm
Getting along with colleagues can sometimes be easier said than done. While everyone’s job is focused on the practice of law, personal differences sometimes outnumber similarities, and disparities in temperament, work ethic, efficiency, and general work habits can cause friction among colleagues and undermine the success of the law firm. Although you can’t – and […]
Tips for improving memory that are backed by science
Don’t you hate it when you forget the name of a long time client? Or worse, you forget to have your attorney sign a court pleading, or come dangerously close to missing a statute of limitations? Unfortunately, the area of the brain responsible for memory loses five percent of its nerve cells every 10 years. […]
6 legal support skills to be proud of wherever you go
As a paralegal or legal secretary, you have highly specialized experience in submitting court filings, managing case files, planning presentations for trial, and other tasks that usually happen only in a law firm or legal department. But working in legal support gives you skills beyond the day to day technical duties. In fact, the work […]
Persuasive literary phrases to use in your next legal brief
Legal briefs are written for one reason and one reason only: to persuade a court to agree with your client’s position. To accomplish this goal, legal professionals might use strong verbs or add in compelling metaphors. Especially creative attorneys could consider pumping up their arguments by including a few of the following snippets from famous […]
Finding a loophole: Workarounds by creative people
Are you sick of frequent flier offers that never materialize? Done with bonuses that turn out to have more exclusions than rewards? Have you been trying to find a workaround for pesky things known as ‘laws’? Check out the creative people who beat the system, discovered the exception, and got inventive when finding a loophole […]
Should paralegals have a specialty? Finding your niche
In the legal industry, niche specialization can enable professionals to distinguish themselves as leading experts and make it easier for clients to decide who to work with. This is why some of the most successful law firms in the country are the ones that practice in a specific area of law. But it’s not just the attorneys who can specialize. How can a paralegal or legal secretary find and hone their specialty, […]
A summer reading list for 2017: One Legal recommends
Happy summer! Today is the longest day of the year, and the official beginning of the summer season. Whether you’ve got vacations, beach days, or just better weather to look forward to for the next few months, we wanted to make sure you had a stack of great books to go along with your plans. […]
Maximizing the power of your legal support staff
According to the American Bar Association (ABA), “Rare is the law firm that fully leverages its paralegal team.” While law schools may provide attorneys with a solid legal education, many successful lawyers don’t have the faintest idea how to best utilize their support staff. When attorneys don’t consider their staff a part of the legal […]
Starting your law firm off with a professional email account: when AOL won’t cut it
Your law firm has a comprehensive website with its own domain name and a solid online presence. But if you’re still relying on third-party email services instead of starting a professional email account, you aren’t making the most of your brand presentation. While email accounts provided by your Internet service provider or free accounts through […]
Networking for paralegals and legal support staff: How and why
We may think of ‘networking’ as a very modern concept, but according to a Harvard Business Review article, networking has existed for the past 2000 years and is essential to our survival. But for many people, including legal professionals, networking doesn’t come easy and trying to connect with others in the industry can push them […]
The best free/low-cost CLE for legal support professionals
For legal professionals, part of the job is to keep up with changes in the industry, and education doesn’t stop after you get your first job. Continuing legal education (CLE) — which could cover anything from regulatory mandates, legal technology, practice management, and the law itself — will help you stay on top of new […]
Shorthand is not dead: The power of effective note taking for legal professionals
In this age of computers, smartphones, digital voice recorders, and so on is note taking even a necessary skill for legal professionals anymore? Legal professionals attend numerous meetings and rarely show up in the conference room without a notebook (a paper or electronic one), but do they actually take notes, and more importantly, do they […]
5 key skills attorneys look for when hiring a paralegal
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Outlook Handbook, the employment of paralegals is expected to grow about eight percent from 2014 to 2024. That means competition for jobs is expected to be strong, with experienced, formally trained paralegals having the best prospects for employment. To stand out in a crowded market like this, […]
[Updated ebook] The top reasons court filings get rejected
Receiving notification that your court filing has been rejected by the clerks can be seriously frustrating. In terms of time, cost, and risk to your professional reputation we’re sure it’s an annoyance you could do without. It happens, though. And, as the courts in more and more states move to implement electronic filing — with […]
How to use Word’s readability stats to improve your legal writing
It’s generally accepted that good legal writing is concise writing. It’s not always easy, though. It’s especially difficult in the legal field, where simplicity can get lost in an ocean of impenetrable jargon, superfluous triplicate phrases, and never-ending sentences. The result is often writing that’s hard work to read or even completely unreadable, even by […]
[New ebook] How to produce a court-friendly PDF
With more and more courts requiring that court documents to be filed electronically, most papers are being created, delivered, and read as PDFs. In order to aid the management and readability of electronic documents, the courts have put in place several rules and requirements for the formatting and structure of PDF filings. If you’re filing […]