Three Tips for Standing Out as a Legal Secretary

The legal profession can be a highly competitive space and if you want to stand out as a legal secretary, then you’re going to need to prove your skills. In a field like this one, being good simply isn’t good enough. You need to be the best and you need other people to recognise you as such.

So let’s talk about three ways that you can take your legal secretary duties to the next level and advance your career progression.

1. Refine The Legal Skills That Set You Apart

Play to your strengths while practising your weaknesses.

That might seem like obvious advice but it’s the kind of meticulous and dedicated approach that’s required for a really successful legal career. If you want to be constantly improving at what you do, then good self assessment is the key. You need to be able to identify what you’re good at and what you’re bad at.

If you want your boss to notice your hard work then make sure to take on tasks that will highlight your best skills. If there’s a job you find easy that others might struggle with, then gravitate towards it.

That said, be careful not to neglect your other skills. While it’s always good to have a few stand out skills, the real key to success in the legal profession is to be holistically dedicated. You need to approach every task with a learner’s mindset, always being prepared to improve, even when you think you’ve mastered something.

2. Stay Professional Under Pressure

The legal job can be stressful and those who make it in the legal profession tend to be able to keep a cool head under pressure. Maintaining your focus without allowing the stress to get to you isn’t just important for impressing your bosses either. If you find the pressure difficult to cope with, then you’re more likely to burn out early, losing the passion and drive that you’ll need to build a truly successful career.

If that sounds difficult then don’t panic. Keeping your cool under pressure is as much about mindset as it is about personality. Even if you’re someone who feels the stress right now, there’s a lot you can do to change that, learning to take difficult situations in your stride.

Perhaps the most crucial of these is task prioritisation and management. The reality is that sometimes there will be more work to do than time to do it. It’s your job to be able to triage that work and decide which jobs should come first and which can be shunted to the bottom of the pile.

It’s also important to learn good systems for organisation and communication. If someone asks you how long a task will take or where you’re up to on a job, you want to be able to give them a clear and authoritative answer.

Keep in mind that these are skills learned over time. You don’t have to become the best right away. Rather, you’re most likely to achieve your full potential when you take each day and each task as a learning exercise. Sustained incremental improvements are the key to long term career success.

3. Ask Questions and Learn Answers

Mentorship makes for better learning. If you’re working with experienced legal professionals, then don’t be afraid to take advantage of that fact. If there’s something you struggle with, ask questions.

Many people think that to be good at something, they have to memorise every method and learn every principle. If you want to really stand out and make progress in your legal career, the best skill you can showcase is your ability to problem solve and to grow.

In a good legal team there needs to be trust. There needs to be a general sense of shared respect. The best way for you to earn the respect of your peers is to show that you’re good at taking on feedback.

When all’s said and done, a less experienced legal secretary is far more likely to get a promotion than an experienced one if they can show that they have a real capacity for personal and professional growth. In a high stress environment like the legal profession, you need to be able to take criticism as a learning opportunity rather than a hit to the ego.

Because if you want to one day be a mentor, then you have to start by being a great mentee.