A corporate legal assistant provides support to attorneys in a company dealing with corporate law, including drafting contracts, legal research, and filing documents. They may also assist with business incorporation and compliance with regulatory agencies.
A corporate legal assistant works for a large company that deals with corporate law or for a private company within the department of internal counsel. A corporate legal assistant can perform many different roles, depending on the type of business, the responsibilities assigned to legal assistants in the corporation or company, the size of the business, and the extent of the assistant’s legal experience. In all cases, however, the job of a corporate legal assistant is to provide support to attorneys working for a particular corporation.
The field of corporate law is vast. It may involve drafting contracts, handling insurance disputes, handling employment discrimination cases, deciding on a business structure, assisting with business incorporation, or resolving disputes when two companies become involved in a dispute. or when a company and a customer become involved in a dispute. There are many other things that corporate attorneys do, and therefore many other specific tasks that a corporate legal assistant can help attorneys accomplish.
In some firms or companies, a paralegal will play a role similar to that normally played by a paralegal. In these cases, the paralegal will conduct legal research to help an attorney answer legal questions their client is facing. For example, the paralegal can use law books or online materials such as LexisNexis and Westlaw to research whether the law is likely to treat a contract similar to the one the client is writing as valid. This type of legal research involves generating keywords to find cases, codes, statutes, and other sources of law that help answer the question at hand.
Corporate paralegals can also assist attorneys in other ways besides providing legal research. A corporate legal assistant can type up summaries, motions, arguments, or other court documents and memos that an attorney or paralegal has handwritten or dictated to him. He may write letters to clients or prospective clients, informing them of the status of their cases, requesting information, or relaying a message from the attorney to the client.
A legal assistant in a corporate company or in-house legal department may also be responsible for filing information in appropriate case files or for submitting papers and documents to the court, the Department of Labor or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission upon request. There are numerous regulatory agencies that govern business behavior, and corporate lawyers – and therefore their assistants – must help companies meet reporting requirements and comply with the laws set forth by these agencies.
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