How to be an excellent paralegal

As the saying goes, everything is difficult at the beginning, and the lawyer profession is no exception. Many outstanding young legal talents will encounter the confusion of unclear career orientation and difficult business practice at the beginning of buying the legal profession. In order to solve this problem, Jiangsu Shili Law Firm organized young talents to exchange and discuss, and formed a number of thoughtful and insightful articles. Now choose one and have a look with my legal colleagues who are interested in practicing lawyers. Yuan Yuan, Jiangsu Shili Law Firm, I am a paralegal. I have just entered the legal profession for a few months, but I am very interested in legal work as my life goal. As a newcomer, I used to worry about how to accurately find the vast number of laws and regulations; I have always been confused about what to do in my spare time to charge myself; I have also struggled with how to complete the task assigned by the guidance lawyer more efficiently and with better quality; I have also thought about how to work actively with accurate goals and correct ideas. As the saying goes, learning without thinking is useless, and thinking without learning is dangerous. I would like to share it with all paralegals and communicate with each other through the platform of Shili Lecture Hall. First, understand the importance of paralegal position. paralegal position is the initial stage of legal profession, and it is also an important stage. Literally, a paralegal is a person who helps guide the work of a lawyer. Personally, paralegals are not only helpful to guide lawyers' work, but also the only way to improve their professional skills, professional level and self-quality and become an excellent lawyer under the guidance and teaching of guiding lawyers. Throughout those successful lawyers, they all started from paralegals, bit by bit. As the saying goes, a good beginning is half the battle. You can be a good paralegal and lay a solid foundation for your future lawyer career. Therefore, it is necessary and important for a new lawyer to work as a paralegal. This stage is a process of learning, accumulation and precipitation. Just like the college entrance examination, it takes six years of continuous study, accumulation and summary in primary school, three years in junior high school and three years in senior high school to hand in a perfect college entrance examination paper, while the good study habits and strict logical thinking developed in primary school for six years are the foundation for high-intensity and difficult learning in junior high school and senior high school. The importance of paralegals is particularly similar to that of primary schools, so there is no need to deliberately compare whether the salary is low or the work is too much, too tired, too boring and too complicated. These are only temporary, and the process is more important than the result. Second, the understanding of paralegal work I have been working as a paralegal for less than three months, and my level and experience are still very lacking. Therefore, I will briefly talk about paralegal work based on what I have seen and heard during my work. In my opinion, the work of paralegals can be divided into three aspects: job preparation, business development and case summary. Work preparation mainly includes: (1) preparation of relevant laws and regulations. For cases handed over by guidance lawyers, we should first assist guidance lawyers in collecting, researching and analyzing relevant laws and regulations, and it is best to collect existing relevant cases at the same time in order to better understand relevant laws and regulations; (2) Preparation before receiving customers or cases. Assist lawyers to prepare relevant materials before receiving clients or cases. Business work mainly includes: (1) assisting lawyers to make work plans and work arrangements; (2) Assist lawyers to send and receive relevant legal documents, documents and letters; (3) Assist lawyers to participate in legal investigations, such as checking files by industrial and commercial departments, marking papers by courts, and conducting investigations according to reasonable requirements of customers; (4) Assist lawyers to prepare relevant legal documents, such as drafting power of attorney, complaint, defense and execution for litigation cases, and drafting contracts, legal opinions and memorandums for non-litigation business; (5) Assist lawyers to participate in the trial of cases and sort out proxy words. The summary of case sorting mainly includes: (1) file sorting. Responsible for sorting out the relevant materials after closing the case and summarizing them into files in chronological order; (2) Drafting case summary and customer feedback. The above work is not isolated, but complementary, and each link is very important. No matter which link goes wrong, it may affect the whole case. I remember when I was working in a law firm, the director gave me a written complaint and asked me to check the contents, especially my personal information. Although I checked it carefully several times, I still couldn't find the correct address, Changjiang Road, which was mistakenly written as Great Wall Road. The next day, the director found out and pointed out the problem to me. A small typo may lead to the document not being delivered, which will seriously lead to missing the court session and bearing the risk of losing the case. I feel embarrassed. As a paralegal, being serious and rigorous in work should be the most basic requirement. It's all my own carelessness that almost caused serious consequences. This incident is also a useful lesson for me, and it also reminds me to be serious and rigorous in my work, no matter big or small. (A) cultivate interest, correct goals, correct attitude and interest is the best teacher. Since you have chosen the career of lawyer, you should firmly believe that lawyer is your ideal career and you are suitable for this bowl of rice. If you work hard under the subconscious, you will gradually find that the working hours are not enough, and you will gradually find and enjoy the fun brought by work. In this way, no matter what the specific result is, you will develop towards the goal you pursue every day and gain confidence and hope every day. Of course, we can't deny that in the past few years when we just became paralegals, the hardships of life, lack of social experience, financial constraints and setbacks in reality will devour the hot spot of hope in our hearts bit by bit, and those vigorous hearts, like the popular saying, are full of ideals, but the reality is very skinny, and there is a gap between ideals and reality, otherwise it will not be called ideals. This requires us to have a correct attitude, not to be blindly optimistic and not to sell ourselves short. We should not only have the determination and perseverance to take practicing as a life goal, but also foresee all kinds of difficulties that will arise and focus on continuous progress, not difficulties and bumps. (2) Work hard and assist in coordination. As mentioned above, the paralegal stage is very important to us, but we should not forget that another position of paralegal is to help guide lawyers to handle work affairs and complete the tasks assigned to them. I think we should combine the two to improve our own quality in the serious and excellent completion of work tasks. It's not easy to work in a good law firm. It's even luckier to meet a guidance lawyer who can be a teacher and teach us for a long time. Therefore, as paralegals, it is the most basic requirement for us to complete the assigned work as well as possible. (3) Study hard, think hard, sum up in time and reflect more. Whether you are a paralegal or do other work, you should study hard, think hard, sum up in time and reflect more. Concentrate on learning professional knowledge, be familiar with laws and regulations, master lawyers' professional thinking mode and business skills, explore more at work, learn from others, and learn how others handle this matter and why. Why didn't I think of my own shortcomings and how to improve them in the future? For example, some time ago, the director gave me a list of properties that applied for litigation preservation, and asked me to make it into an electronic version, which contained multiple bank accounts of the same bank branch. I did as required, but I listed several bank accounts in the same bank outlet with the name of the bank outlet and the name of the bank account. In this way, it seems that there are many properties and places that apply for litigation preservation, which will cause a very troublesome illusion for court personnel. I didn't consider this, only the details, so I typed it mechanically. After the production was finished, the director woke me up with a word. He said, you should think more about what you do. First of all, you have to figure out what you are doing this thing for and who to show it to, and then you can do it. Later, I rewrote a copy and listed multiple bank accounts in one bank name, which I always kept in mind. So I didn't think much. (d) More communication, more communication and more respect for teamwork in today's society. In some first-tier cities, some law firms also handle business in the form of a team of lawyers, which is more efficient, more professional and faster. One of my graduate students, who works in Guangdong Jinghai Law Firm, conducts legal business in the mode of a team of lawyers. Everyone has his own strengths, maximize his own advantages and achieve overall optimization. Therefore, we need to improve our communication skills and interpersonal skills, communicate with people with a sincere and grateful heart, consult experienced lawyers modestly, and learn from each other among assistants. I think this is also a necessary condition to become an excellent paralegal.