Being a legal secretary is a very good career, since it is interesting, varied and you get to experience all kinds of cases and issues, that certainly help you to see different sides of life.
It is not easy to be a legal secretary. You will need to have excellent typing skills, something like 65 words per minute and you will also need to have some kind of professional qualification such as the ILEX qualification. Many solicitors will use digital dictation devices, so you also need to be able to do audio typing.
But the rewards are pretty good, once you have taken your exam and found a position. Often bigger firms will have different levels of legal secretaries, so you could well go on to lead a team and be quite well rewarded within the company. A good legal secretary is in demand and as such is able to secure an excellent salary and benefits. Many companies are very keen to retain good legal secretaries and show this through rewarding people who stay with the company over the longer term, so career prospects are good.
Once qualified many legal secretaries temp as a way of finding out what kind of firm they want to work in, what cases or fields they would like to specialise in etc. So if this sounds like the kind of career you are interested in, why not try it out before you commit to training to secure the qualification? A good way of doing this is through getting a temping job with a firm of solicitors, through a recruitment agency. Then you can see how the whole practice works in reality and it gives you a really good feel for whether or not it appeals to you.
Tags: Career Prospects, Company Secretary, Dictation Devices, Different Sides, Digital Dictation, First Steps, Job, Legal Secretaries, Legal Secretary, Professional Qualification, recruitment, Recruitment Agency, Rewards, Salary, secretary, Solicitors, Temp, temping, Words Per Minute
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