Paralegals are legal assistants providing support tasks and legal services for lawyers working in private law firms and the public sector at the state and federal levels. Paralegals are not licensed as attorneys but instead organize law documents, draft legal briefs, research, and communicate with clients for meetings, depositions, hearings, and trials.
Corporate legal departments, governmental agencies, and law firms hire legal assistants to perform various duties. Often, the job entails various phases of the case, like reviewing internal legal material, conducting research, maintaining reference files, or organizing evidence.
The US Department of Labor reports that over 285,000 paralegals worked in the United States in 2018, where approximately three-fourths of legal assistants held jobs at private law firms. The Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed the median annual wage for professional paralegals at approximately $53,000 (May 2018 figures).