Career Advice

If you have been a Legal Secretary for some time, you may be wondering where to take your career next. Setting up your own Paralegal practice may be a venture worth considering, especially if it turns out you’ve been fulfilling the role of a Paralegal already without realising.

Your job title may not be Paralegal, but if your work involves any sort of legality, you are likely a paralegal. For example, are you involved in drafting or reviewing commercial contracts or employment contracts? Do you do legal research to assist someone in your department? Are you involved in compliance or regulation ensuring that statutory criteria are met and adhered to? Are you involved in reviewing documents in relation to childcare proceedings? This list of examples is not exhaustive.

Whatever your reason for leaving your current Legal Secretary role, whether it be moving firms, progression, looking to retire or relocate, writing a formal letter of resignation is essential.

Our partner, TotallyLegal, wants to help you leave your current role on a professional and positive note. This article will provide guidance on how to resign from your job smoothly. 

The Professional Etiquette

Legal Personal Assistants are a unique group of professionals, who not only possess great knowledge and skills but are often recognised as going above and beyond to support their bosses and teams. Legal PAs are often recognised for their knowledge and specialist skills within the law firm. But more than this, they are often also seen as the problem solver, the support and the fixer. Amid all of this demanding work, it’s easy to forget about oneself and eventually burn out.

That’s why setting boundaries is not just a nice-to-have, but an absolute must. It’s the key to preserving your well-being, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and ultimately thriving in your career.

Whether you are newly qualified and looking for your first role in the sector, or an experienced Legal Secretary on the hunt for your next position, creating a bespoke CV that matches the job advert, is the best route for advancing to the interview stage. In a competitive job market, it’s more important than ever to curate a stand-out CV to catch the recruiters’ eye. So, you may ask yourself, where’s the value in keeping this essential document updated?

If a child decides they want to pursue a career in the law, a frequent reaction is Wow! Or Wow! adjacent. And much of that Wow! is based on a well-worn trope – working in the legal profession is something for the “elite”. It is true that there has been a lot of snobbery around the practice of law – both real and perceived – and it is well documented that the traditional legal professions lacked diversity and did not reflect those they were representing.

One of the many advantages of being a Legal Secretary is that it’s not a dead-end job. Not only can you receive a higher salary when you gain experience, but you can also work your way up the legal ladder. Paralegals, Legal Executives and Solicitors have all been known to start their careers as Legal Secretaries. By being able to gain valuable experience on the job and having the option of taking some additional training, Legal Secretaries have incredible career prospects.

ILSPA believes that our Students have the potential to achieve ambitious career goals with enough confidence and determination. This belief has been supported through the many high-achieving Students who have graduated with us.

If you have been a legal secretary for some time, and you are wondering where to take your career next, setting up your own paralegal practice may be a journey worth making. As with most journeys, planning helps things go smoothly, and before you start delivering paralegal services direct to businesses and consumers, there are several issues to consider. These include (vitally) whether you have sufficient qualifications and/or experience, the demand for your new business, and awareness of the dos and don’ts.

Competency

If you are thinking about advancing your legal career, you have choices. It’s a good idea to review the different roles and which route you might take.

There are two traditional legal professionals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland: solicitors and barristers. Both are statutorily regulated professions, meaning both have membership bodies and regulatory bodies and the only people who can refer to themselves as ‘solicitors’ or ‘barristers’ are those who have been through the prescribed training process for either profession. Indeed, it is illegal to refer to oneself as a solicitor or barrister without formally being on the solicitors’ or barristers’ register.

Although resigning from a position can be a daunting prospect for most people, it’s actually very common, especially at the start of the year.

In fact, data from website ‘Statista’ found that ‘in the first quarter of 2022 approximately 354,000 job-to-job resignations took place in the United Kingdom, which was one of the highest number of resignations taking place in a single quarter during this provided time period.’

But even if the prospect is a welcome one, it’s important to follow the best practice when handing in your notice to ensure leave your position with appropriate courtesy and respect. Part of doing this correctly is by handing in a formal resignation letter that includes all the necessary information regarding your departure from the company.

After the pandemic reshaped the universal approach to working arrangements, many more of us have been reaping the benefits that remote work can offer. Between the 24 million people who were believed to be working from home during the pandemic, they saved an estimated £1 billion every week on costs related to going into the office. As such, it’s understandable that when moving jobs, you may want to hold on to the freedom and flexibility that comes with this more modern set up.

Whilst you could want these reassurances during the interview, it can be a potentially tricky subject to broach.