Law Office Skills

This book is a survival kit for anyone new to the legal arena. It teaches students what it means to dress, act, and behave professionally. How to use the phone, voice mail, and e-mail effectively and professionally. It explains how to efficiently manage their time. Demonstrates common billing practices and the mechanics of timekeeping, the mechanics of opening and organizing files, the mechanics of organizing documents, and the mechanics of docket control systems. Teaches how to cope with the realities of office politics and how to work effectively with "challenging" clients, attorneys, and staff. Practicality is the cornerstone of this text. Students who use this text should be better prepared to work as paralegals and generally more useful to employers than those who do not.

Written as a survival guide for paralegal students, this text explains how to dress, act, and behave professionally in a law office and how to use the telephone, voice mail, and e-mail professionally. It demonstrates billing practices and the mechanics of opening and organizing files, and gives advice on coping with office politics and dealing with challenging clients, attorneys, and staff. Learning features include exercises on law office practice, summary and review questions, and protocol questions. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Dr. Linda L. Edwards is an attorney and author, having written or co-written seven textbooks in the legal assistant field. She was an instructor in the Justice and Legal Studies Department at Phoenix College for 24 years until her retirement in January 2001. During her tenure as program director, she was responsible for creating dozens of new classes in both legal assisting and criminal justice.