Legal Assistant Associate's Degree

A legal assistant associate's degree program will teach you to assist lawyers and legal professionals in providing legal services. This includes learning tasks, such as doing legal research and analyses or creating transcripts of spoken conversations, handwritten notes, and other media. You will also gain a familiarity with legal terminology and standard law firm and legal office practices. An internship at an actual legal office could give you important experience in the field.

he BLS predicts that the job climate for legal assistant positions in the coming years will be quite favorable. The demand for legal assistants should grow much faster than average until at least 2014. The employment of paralegals will also increase at a rate much faster than the national average, and the demand for legal secretaries will grow about as fast as average in the near future.

Typical Careers

The following are some careers that can be pursued by graduates of a legal assistant associate's degree program along with their annual incomes as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov) for May 2004:

Legal Assistant: $39,140

Paralegal: $39,140

Legal Secretary: $34,970

Courses

Coursework for this associate's degree program may include Intro to Legal Studies, Legal Research, Civil Litigation, Keyboarding, Legal Ethics, and other classes. You may also choose to pursue an internship in the legal studies field.

Skills You Will Learn

Upon completion of this legal assistant program, you should have outstanding typing skills, be able to conduct independent legal research, understand legal terminology, and take care of standard legal office administrative tasks.

Lawyers, or attorneys as they are sometimes called, are the backbone of the legal system. It will take you approximately seven years of study to become a Lawyer after you finish high school. You'll also need to pass a written examination.

Court Interpreters work to translate information from another language into English for the court systems. They work with lawyers, witnesses and defendants to relay information for depositions, hearings and other court cases. Court Interpreters must be fluent in more than one language in addition to having adequate knowledge of legal terminology.