You Can Be Anything › All careers › Law, Government & Public Policy
Paralegal
Supports lawyers by preparing legal documents, researching cases, and organizing files.
Did you know?
6 August is National Paralegal Day in the US. The American Bar Association set up its first committee for legal assistants in 1968.
How subjects help
- Law: Prepare court forms and legal documents in the correct format and on time.
- Literature: Summarise long witness statements into short notes a lawyer can read quickly.
- Research Methods: Search through records and past cases to find facts that help the lawyer.
- Computer Science: Organise thousands of case files in databases so any page can be found fast.
A famous name
Erin Brockovich: As a paralegal she helped build a big water-pollution case against PG&E in the 1990s.
Try it yourself: Weigh up a case like a judge
- Read the made-up case card slowly, like a judge reading the facts.
- For each fact, decide whether it makes things more serious (an aggravating factor) or less serious (a mitigating factor), and sort them into two lists.
- Choose one outcome from the options on the card, and write one sentence explaining which facts mattered most.
- Ask someone at home to do the same without seeing yours, then compare. Did you weigh the same facts differently?
Judges and magistrates weigh the aggravating and mitigating factors of each case, following sentencing guidelines, before deciding; lawyers argue about which factors should count.
Adapted from Sentencing Council for England and Wales: You be the Judge.
Also try: Write down every word exactly.
Known for it in
USA, UK, Canada, Australia, India