There are several skills you need to have when studying ILSPA’s Legal Secretaries Diploma course. Firstly, you do not need to have any previous experience in law to enrol. ILSPA’s Diploma will give you an understanding of the most important and most commonly practiced areas of law. Once qualified, you will be able to secure employment as a Legal Secretary and advance your knowledge on the job.
However, general admin/secretarial skills are required, such as good typing speed and knowledge of Microsoft Office. The Legal Secretaries Diploma course focuses on teaching you about law and legal procedures so we do not teach these skills on the course – it is important to have these skills already. If you don’t have basic secretarial skills, you can enrol on our Typing Skills or Microsoft Office courses, which are offered separately. The assessments for the Legal Secretaries Diploma will then help you advance your word processing skills through the production of legal forms, documents and letters. Please take a look at the training section of our website for more information here: https://www.institutelegalsecretaries.com/training/diploma/.
Computer literacy is extremely important because a large part of legal secretarial work involves word processing, sending emails and using the Internet. The Legal Secretaries Diploma course will teach you how to produce certain types of legal documents, but you will need to have a good understanding of Microsoft Office and be able to navigate your way around computers and the Internet to really benefit from the training. If you feel that your skills in this area could do with some improvement, it would be worth enrolling onto a course such as those provided by ECDL. You can find information about their courses here: http://www.ecdl.org/programmes/ecdl_icdl.
You also need to be a competent speaker of English and have excellent written communication skills – not only to complete the coursework but also to secure employment as a Legal Secretary. Legal Secretaries have to communicate with clients and colleagues face to face, over the telephone and via email on a daily basis. Legal documents and forms must be produced accurately and use very precise wording in order to state intentions, rights and responsibilities clearly. If your standard of English is not very high, it would be worth taking a language or business English course to improve it.
ILSPA’s Legal Secretaries Diploma will provide you with legal knowledge and practical skills, but it is essential that you have all the skills mentioned in this article to do well in the course and secure employment as a Legal Secretary.