A resume is more than just a summary of your work experience and skills—it’s your ticket to a transformative new career. If you’re looking to pursue a path where you can make a living doing something that you are passionate about, having a well-crafted resume will help propel you along on your journey.
To maximize your chances of becoming a legal assistant, your resume should be written to reflect your most relevant experience. You can do that by showcasing your legal assistant diploma and highlighting how it helped you become a qualified candidate. Here’s how.
Show How Legal Assistant School Helped You Understand Legal Terminology
An ability to understand basic legal terminology will help you immensely when trying to apply for legal assistant positions. For most people, the terminology used in law offices or in legal documents can seem complex and even baffling. However, lawyers don’t want to have to constantly explain to their legal assistants what a certain word means, especially since part of a legal assistant’s job is preparing correspondence and legal documents.
That’s why you should show on your resume how your legal administrative assistant diploma helped you gain an understanding of legal terminology. Mention, for example, how in legal assistant school you took Machine Transcription/Communication, where you got hands-on training in how to use and understand legal terminology and legal documentation. That way, future employers will be confident in your ability to understand the sort of language often used in law offices.
Understanding legal terminology will help you thrive in a law office environment
Software and Technical Skills Are Important for a Legal Assistant Career
Most law firms today expect anybody applying for a legal assistant position to have some experience with different types of software typically used in law offices. Having a skills section on your resume is a great place to emphasize these sorts of technical skills that you’ll have acquired during your training.
For example, legal assistants use software to schedule meetings and appointments, maintain filing systems, and read and send emails. They may even be responsible for training new hires in how to use office software. Fortunately, your legal assistant diploma will cover many of the fundamental software applications often used in law offices, including Windows, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Word. Since there’s a good chance most law offices will use these software applications, make sure you highlight your proficiency with them on your resume.
Highlight Legal Administration Assistant Courses Related to the Firm’s Field of Practice
Your resume should show a law firm why hiring you as their next legal assistant is in their best interest. Among the best ways of doing that is highlighting how what you learned in your legal administration assistant courses directly relates to their specific practice. So, draw attention to the specific fields of law that you studied during your diploma and show employers how that knowledge will make you a valuable addition to their team.
For example, if you are applying to work for a real estate law firm then you will want to stress how you learned about conveyancing—which is the transfer of real estate ownership—in your courses. Remember to also be as specific as possible about the knowledge you attained. For instance, if you are applying to work at a firm that specializes in corporate law, don’t just mention that you took a course in corporate law. Instead, tell the recruiter about how in that course you learned about how businesses are incorporated in Alberta, as well as how to maintain minute books.
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