Relationships
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Legal people (not an interesting question)
I like posting today. What?
In your world, what is a legal assistant? Secretary or paralegal? Just curious to find out if my pet peeve is warranted or not.
Re: Legal people (not an interesting question)
Secretary = a secretary.
Assistant = a secretary. Word used by people who think "secretary" is an inappropriate word.
Project Assistant (PA) = staff member who helps with more time-consuming administrative tasks.
Paralegal = non-lawyer who assists with legal work (doesn't do any task that must be performed by an attorney).
Lurker chiming in...
In my opinion, a legal assistant and paralegal do the same exact job duties. If they have a certificate/degree in paralegal studies, they're a paralegal. If they don't, they're a legal assistant/legal secretary. Although I must say, I use the terms interchangeably. I know a lot of paralegals are offended if that term is used for someone who does not have a paralegal certificate or degree.A secretary is someone who answers phones and does administrative work (this is totally different from a legal assistant/legal secretary).
Wheeee! The site is working again! (I probably just jinxed it)
Legal Assistant seems to be interchangeable with both positions in Denver (I view it as a regional thing). It seriously bugs me. What you said, HT, seems to ring true - people seem to take offense to the term secretary. I don't really get that. It also bugs me when people refer to paralegals as Legal Assistants. I guess my point is, I don't like the use of Legal Assistant.
On a related note, I'm a little eye roll-y at the use of office admin and office manager for secretarial work. To me admin/manager actually means a supervisory role of some sort.
We have legal assistants here. They are basically secretaries - they process timesheets and make copies.
We also have paralegals, but they are called analysts. Their work seems to be more substantive (some of them write orders or summaries).
I used to be a legal secretary, but it became a "legal assistant" title when I applied for OCI jobs and didn't want to be overlooked by all the "good old boy" firms.