There can be lots of very interesting and rewarding work on offer for paralegals, including loads of opportunities to gain exposure to what the career can involve longer term (which can be really helpful when deciding any next career steps). Of course, this varies between firms and teams, but don’t assume that as a paralegal you’ll only be carrying out administrative, repetitive tasks.
Where the work isn’t particularly intellectually engaging, it’s key that you still give your best effort, remembering that these tasks can still provide important learning opportunities, and that by doing a good job, you’re building trust and a positive personal brand. This can all give you the foundation you need to either become a better paralegal or make it easier to progress your career later on.
With this in mind, I’ll now provide examples of paralegal tasks in both a transactional and a contentious context. Note that these tasks will typically be completed under the supervision of a qualified solicitor.
Transactional tasks
Paralegals can work in a wide variety of transactional teams, including corporate, private equity, banking and real estate. Tasks can involve:
Defined term: to avoid repetition in contracts/legal documents, firms tend to use “defined terms”. A “defined term” is a capitalised word or short phrase used throughout a document that corresponds to a more detailed description contained elsewhere in the document (usually at the beginning or end of the document), for example the Buyer, the Seller, the Expert etc. The first time a defined term is introduced, it is typically referenced in a manner that makes it stand out, for instance in-between inverted commas or brackets and/or emboldened or italicised. By way of example, the start of a contract may state that the seller is “Company X, registered at Y address, with company number Z”. Referencing this long sentence each time you reference the seller would make the contract unnecessarily wordy, so firms tend to include a defined term at the end of the sentence, for example: “Company X, registered at Y address, with company number Z (the “Seller”)”. In this example, “Seller” is the defined term, meaning that whenever “Seller” with a capital “S” is used throughout the document, this indicates that the document is referring to “Company X, registered at Y address, with company number Z”. Using defined terms in this way helps to facilitate more precise/unambiguous drafting, without making documents too complex or wordy.
Automatic cross-references: clauses/paragraphs within legal documents tend to refer to other clauses/paragraphs. For instance, one clause may include an obligation (e.g. “Clause 14: one party must purchase a minimum of x number of products per year”), whilst another may include processes that must be followed when carrying out that obligation (e.g. “Clause 15: when making a purchase, the buyer must pay within y number of days using z method of payment”). The first clause may need to refer to the second clause, for instance “one party must purchase a minimum of x number of products per year, in accordance with clause 15”. Simply writing “clause 15” could be problematic, as the actual clause number may change if the position of that clause in the document later changes (e.g. if a new clause is inserted above it). To save you having to manually update all the references in your document each time the document changes, Microsoft Word has a function that lets you insert automatic cross-references. This function lets you input a special reference to a particular clause to which you want to refer (as opposed to simply a clause number), so that if that clause changes position in the document, references to that clause should automatically update to reflect its new position (e.g. an automatic cross-reference to “clause 15” would automatically change to “clause 16” if a new clause is inserted earlier in the document). For this reason, be sure to use automatic cross-references when working on documents!
Contentious tasks
Who do paralegal work for?
In general, paralegals tend to receive instructions from partners, associates, trainees, paralegal managers, and – in some firms – directly from clients. Day-to-day, paralegals then tend to work alongside trainees and other paralegals.
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