While good legal assistants in any legal arena will need proofreading and research skills including electronic research using Westlaw, LexisNexis (
https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/law-firms/paralegals-and-legal-assistants.page), Bloomberg, SEC Edgar, PACER and/or CourtLink, and experience with e-discovery platforms such as Relativity, actual tasks will heavily depends on the type of legal work required from Personal Injury, Immigration law and Intellectual Property to Litigation or Criminal law firms to Private Fund specialists. For example, a paralegal at an immigration law firm could be tasked with jobs ranging from independently eFiling documents in accordance with the federal and states court rules to preparing US employment-based, NIV and IV visa filings to US Dept. of Labor, USCIS, DOS, and CBP and reviewing green card eligibility in the EB-1, EB-2 or EB-3 preference category and H-1B, L-1A, L-1B, E-3, TN qualifications to preparing U.S. nonimmigrant filings.
Legal assistants to criminal law firms may be organizing trial notebooks, drafting trial exhibit and witness lists, working with ADAs (Assistant District Attorneys) to ensure timely submission of court notes, and organizing information in the Court Event Entry Program (CEE) to update internal case tracking system with real time court adjournments, pleas, defense attorney changes, and sentencing information. Legal secretaries at litigation firms may be cite check, bluebooking and Shepardize / Keycite memoranda of law and briefs (
https://libguides.law.ucla.edu/citechecking) as well as assisting with all phrases of discovery including: collect, organize, and review client documents; prepare document productions; redact document productions; review and organize incoming document productions; summarize document productions; draft privilege logs; prepare deposition preparation binders; manage pre- and post-deposition logistics; and summarize deposition testimony.
Private fund firms may be assisting attorneys in all stages of private funds, from fund formation and the closing process to private fund portfolio investments and transactions; compliance and investment activities for private funds clients and their investors.