Legal and Court Career Benefits

In legal and court-related careers, the training and benefits cover a wide spectrum. Outside of the easily apparent law school to juris doctor to bar exam pattern, multiple career options with excellent benefits are available if you can secure the appropriate legal or court training. In fact, these auxiliary law careers often provide more than enough excitement and income on their own. We have divided the possibilities into six groups to help show the benefits, features, and descriptions of each.

Court Reporting. Court reporting deals with creating verbatim transcripts, records, and archives of important legal settings. More often than not, those settings will be actual courtroom hearings, though court reporters may be called upon to document important meetings or conferences. Often, this is done with a stenotype machine. Training for such work usually can be accomplished at the vocational or associate's degree level; such jobs correlate with computer-aided transcription (CAT) for producing records and even real-time captioning of legal events.

Some court reporting may be accomplished through electronic means-recording the audio and typing the transcript later-or voice writing, in which the reporter wears a special mask and microphone to repeat and provide commentary on the proceedings. That also requires a transcript to be prepared later. Once a person has secured a court reporting job, the position remains relatively stable. Rarely are new courts opened or closed; sometimes, court reporting positions can actually allow for advancement into similar fields.

Criminal Justice. Education in criminal justice prepares an individual for a whole range of careers. Usually at least an associate's degree is required for most entry-level work, though a solid career requires at least a bachelor's degree, if not a master's. Jobs in criminal justice include private investigators, detectives, police officers, probation officers, and correctional treatment specialists. In each career, workers have a chance to use principles of psychology and sociology in dealing with inmates, suspects, and civilians to facilitate justice, rehabilitation, and law enforcement. From desk jobs to actual hands-on field work, criminal justice education prepares for a variety of careers.

Homeland Security. Training that leads to employment in homeland security can come from any number of degrees, as most federal departments and related agencies need specialists in many fields. Training specifically to deal with security can be as minimal as high school or include vocational, associate's, bachelor's, or master's degree training. Higher education prepares for higher-level positions and can often be postponed and instead be accomplished during the course of employment, rather than being preparatory thereto. Homeland security education and careers encompass work with immigration, border patrol, customs, and even the Secret Service. As with criminal justice, homeland security careers can be either desk- or field-based.

Legal Assistant and Paralegal. Short of representing a client in court, paralegals-also called legal assistants-can shoulder much of the work that a lawyer would. A paralegal deals with paperwork, research, recordkeeping, and investigation, usually under the direction of a lawyer or law firm, helping prepare for hearings, cases, briefings, and other situations. In a similar vein, patent agents can work with patent attorneys to write and interpret patents. In all cases, the work of a paralegal or legal assistant is essentially desk work, but involves the excitement of considering, reasoning about, and interpreting the law to benefit a certain legal point of view.

Security. Careers and training in security can begin right out of high school. Generally, such a career involves more on-the-job training, requiring the applicant to maintain a certain level of physical fitness-depending on the assignment-while learning the tasks necessary to securing a building, facility, or other location. Higher-security premises require more physically and mentally taxing skills from those who work them. Also, college degrees in related fields may permit entry into the administrative or leadership side of a security organization.

Legal Secretary. Sometimes used to refer to paralegals or legal assistants, legal secretaries are also those administrative assistants who deal specifically in legal settings, assisting lawyers, corporate law departments, and other divisions in the public and private sectors with administrative and office tasks. Under the supervision of an attorney or paralegal, legal secretaries prepare subpoenas, summonses, and other legal correspondence. They need an understanding of legal terminology and procedure and as such usually need vocational training or an associate's degree. Some associate's or bachelor's degree programs may also apply at the entry level of higher-profile legal offices, but such programs usually gear more toward the work accomplished by paralegals. Perhaps most interesting is that legal secretaries help continue the education of recently admitted lawyers. While a new lawyer may have extensive skill in legal procedure, the formatting of legal documents often becomes a team effort.