Legal Secretary Jobs - Common Mistakes Made By Legal Secretaries
Today there are even many dedicated job search engines for legal secretary job search. Take full advantage of the same and go for it. This Sarasota dui attorney indeed is one of the best career options available today.
Many a fresher in legal secretary careers live in the illusion that their prime task is to type letters and legal documents. Never live in this mistake coz the job involves much serious responsibilities like copy typing and audio typing. Other responsibilities in legal secretary jobs might include dealing with all sorts of incoming conversations like faxes, letters, telephone calls and emails. You will be the first to be contacted by your clients and hence need to be good at conversing with them. Except for this legal assistant jobs also include handling important appointments and all the accounts of office. They also have to accompany lawyers to prison cells and courts.
Legal jobs are ruling the job industry globally like never before. There is a sudden hype amongst one and all to study law. The handsome pay and various avenues offered by this industry only make it better. Law is no more just the boring profession of working in a court of law. The much more interesting job opportunities offered by it today interest most of the youths. One such avenue is that of a legal secretary. There is a big hype about this particular job in the legal scenario and it is very much worth it. However if you are looking forward to a legal secretary job be warned that life wont exactly be a bed of roses for you.
There are actually no fixed dos and donts for legal secretaries as it all depends on dui lawyers in Sarasota particular individuals. There is however a few common points that you might want to emphasize upon. Let me first tell you what the exact role of a legal secretary in an organization is. The prime focus of your job is to give dedicated and dependable administrative support to the lawyers and paralegals of the organization. Except for this you will also have dui lawyers in Sarasota to take care of the administration of your office in general.
Now that you must have got a hint the vast amount of job responsibilities you will be handling lets talk of the commonest mistakes legal secretaries tend to make. The one thing that is absolutely essential in a paralegal job is to keep the confidence of their clients. New recruits often lack this quality and make the mistake of giving out confidential information to the wrong people which might actually coz a big embarrassment to your client. With experience the will to keep secrets automatically dawns onto you. Another mistake in legal secretary jobs is in the conversation skills. You need to be very true and inform the real ground his case stands on. Never lie to your client and just keep them updated about everything. Remember you need to give them hope that you will try your best and not a fake assurance. Work with honesty and best dui lawyer in Sarasota determination and there will be no stopping for from reaching the top.
About the Author:
To learn more about finding legal secretary jobs, please visit http://www.lawcrossing.com/lcjobtypelisting.php for a list of ALL of the many jobs we offer in the law field. Silas Reed, Writer for LawCrossing, writes articles that inform and teach about different law job profiles and law job advice.
The “free” Forms Scam In Online Divorce
By: Ed West
What you get from Bait and Switchers (perhaps I should just say, "THE Bait and Switcher") is an enticing advertisement for "free divorce documents," a very good, low key, on-site call to action (you almost don't know that you've started), the disclosure of your personal data to a Google-company without any contractual relationship between you, the eventual provision of an actual free completed "divorce document" and no closer at all to getting your uncontested divorce case actually prepared or filed at court.
Because lawyers are not allowed to solicit business, the lawyer cannot email you directly, but the Kit Provider is not a lawyer. They know that there is virtually no way you will be able to figure out how to complete their kit of blank forms, and they've got your email address. They have generated you as a lead to be sold. They can solicit you all they want until such time as you get confused enough about the forms and give up. They will then "rescue" you. You and your case are assigned to the next law firm entitled to a lead in your zip code.
The other six so-called "divorce" documents include a change of address letter, a demand letter for alimony, a demand letter for child support, a letter to the court asking for existing divorce records and something called a divorce worksheet. None of these documents are "divorce documents" in any legal sense. These are all form letters that took 2 or 3 minutes each to write. None of these are divorce documents that ever get filed at any dui attorney Clearwater court. Yet you were promised "free divorce documents."
Yet after you have completed the online interview (I would guess at 15-20 minutes of your time in an average case with 2 children and a house and a few other normal issues), you have disclosed a large amount of personally identifiable information without the existence of any contract to protect you.
I have seen the quality of several sets of written instructions that come with downloadable forms. They are all only several pages of very thin, vague and sketchy instructions that will not help you in any practical sense to get your specific case filed or completed without great difficulty. Such instructions could not possibly contain enough specific personalized information to enable you to complete your case.
One major California Kit Provider will sell you a 250-page book for $22 that purports to tell you how to fill in their "free" forms and what to do with them. You might think that is not a bad deal and could save you some money.
If you think that either a $20 or $50 per month pre-paid legal services plan on credit card auto-billing is a good deal, sign up for one. If you decide to hire a lawyer to handle your uncontested divorce, look around, talk to people you trust, get referrals and pick a lawyer yourself. Don't get Baited and Switched into a lawyer that someone else selects for you.
But the reason you were promised "free divorce documents "in the first place is that in the mind of any reasonable person, that promise refers to multiple legal state divorce forms that get filed at court to begin your case. The Bait and Switcher knows that is what you will think.
You could have exercised your own judgment, talked to people you trust and picked your own local lawyer yourself for about $800 for an uncontested case. And you could have done so without the extra confusion, delay, difficulty and trickery. Don't get hooked by a "free" Kit Provider or a $22 divorce book. The true cost will be the loss of your control over your own case.
The $22 book (which also comes with a CD) tells you itself that it doesn't work. On page 18, they tell you that you will need to hire a lawyer (or one of the 100 Legal Document Assistants who pay to get listed in the book) if your division of property and debt is not equal (so that's about 90% of uncontested divorce cases right there) or if either of you earns over $30,000 a year, if you have joint credit cards or have been married more than 5 years (so that's the other 10% of uncontested divorces). You just paid a Kit Provider $22 for the best set of instructions available for a kit and the instructions tell you not to use them!
Anything more than one phone call will be billed to you at 40% of the lawyer's standard rate or $125 per hour, whichever is greater. Remember the, "Free divorce documents - no credit card required?" Since then, they've tried to sell you a pre-paid legal services plan that doesn't cover divorce. Finally, you discover that the Bait and Switchers, like so many Kit Providers, are nothing more than lead generators dwi attorney austin for lawyers. Once again, the next lawyer up in your zip code gets your case.
Unless you pick one of those non-divorce demand letters, the document you would receive is called a Divorce Settlement Agreement. It is the written agreement between you and your spouse that covers all aspects of your agreement with your spouse on all issues of your divorce. There is no doubt that it is the single most important document in your case. Yet it will not get your case filed or finalized without many other legal documents being prepared and filed. None of those legal documents are available at any price from the Bait and Switcher website.
Kit Providers: Kit Providers offer blank downloadable divorce forms, i.e. forms not completed with your personal information. Divorce forms need to be completed before they can be filed at court to begin your divorce.
In fact, the dominant Bait and defense attorneys Switcher does not offer ANY divorce forms preparation service, other than the single free document. Despite advertising which promises, "Print the forms you need free," "Customizable divorce documents" and "Free divorce documents -no credit card required," you cannot get your divorce case prepared, filed or completed on the Bait and Switch site!
You are then offered three options to proceed. Those are: (1) a free one-week membership; (2) a personal legal services plan for $20 per month on credit card auto-billing; or (3) a personal/business legal services plan for $50 per month on credit card auto-billing. If you select the free week, you are required to provide credit card data, and then unless you terminate during that week, you begin credit card auto-billing for one of the other two options.
Ed West is the pseudonym of the founder of California Legal Assistance Centers (1981) and NetDivorce, LLC (2001). Ed wrote the world's first divorce software in 1982-3 and the world's best divorce software in 2008-2010. Ed's divorce companies have been hired an average of 6 times per day for every day since June 1, 1981. Netdivorce is the lowest cost California online divorce forms preparer.
That's right. There's a hook. Kit Providers are either fronts for law firms or are lead generators for law firms. Lead generators are like lawyer referral services without the referral. They will have sold your zip code to one or more lawyers or law firms.
I should point out that my research for this article revealed one dominant Google-partially owned company. I found three websites that fit the description of this group, but minimal clicking brought me back always to the one dominant site. Just search for "free divorce documents." One of this company's three (that I found) affiliated websites will be listed first and second in the paid ads. The third website and the Kit Providers fill out the rest of the paid results.
Blank forms are provided by Kit Providers on the basis that you will be able to complete them using their provided instructions and then, again using their written instructions, to file your case at court and then complete your divorce free of charge (other than any court filing fee, which can be waived if you have low income).
You will still need to figure out how to complete which forms in the circumstances of your case and what to do with them and when.
Yet the $22 book also fails the practical test, and they have been selling that book, updated every year, since 1972. There is no doubt that this book is well-written by well-intentioned experienced people who are sarasota dui lawyer trying to assist you - up to a certain point. But the last time that book actually worked to tell someone how to complete and file divorce forms from start to finish was around 1972. Divorce is just too complex these days - too many different forms, procedures and multiple complex life issues that inevitably bleed through into your specific case.
Is there any way to recover after you've been baited with "free divorce documents" and Switched to a single un-editable document that will not get your case filed or completed? Neither the $20 nor the $50 per month pre-paid legal services plans cover divorce, though each will enable you to talk to a local lawyer once free on the phone. Almost all divorce lawyers provide at least one free telephone consultation.
I regret to advise you to forget it. In divorce, strangely like everything else any of us has ever experienced in life, nothing of any value is free. There is always a cost hiding somewhere. Downloading free blank forms will never, with any amount of un-personalized written instruction, get you divorced in a clean smooth process, if at all. If you attempt it, I can virtually guarantee you that it will not go well. You will encounter the cost you tried to avoid - and then some!
What enables the Bait and Switcher to offer "free divorce documents," (note the plural) is that in a list of eight documents they call "divorce documents," the Divorce Settlement Agreement is listed twice by two different names and the other six documents are so unlikely to be of any practical value to the vast majority of people, it is clear that they are in the list only to enable the site to claim that they offer multiple divorce documents.
If you scroll down to the very bottom of the screen, even below the orange continue button, you will also see a button that says, "No thanks, I will take my read only version." "Read-only" means that you cannot edit or change your free document. It's a done deal. You're finished. The "read-only" document is the only option, after you've invested an average of 15-20 minutes and disclosed your private information to a Google-company that does not require disclosure of your credit card data.
This article is the fourth and final part of a series dealing with what new divorce consumers should consider and avoid when hiring an online divorce forms preparer to handle an uncontested divorce. The "free" forms scam deserved its own article.
The "free" forms scam falls into two distinct categories of websites. We'll call them Kit Providers and Bait and Switchers.
Therefore, what is offered by Kit Providers is a compelling possibility for those trying to save money in their uncontested divorce cases, i.e. everyone. They provide the free forms. You provide your personal data. All that is missing is the knowledge of how to complete whichever forms apply to your case, what to do with those completed forms and when to do it. It can't be too difficult to figure out that last part, can it?
And lo and behold, when you follow the links in the $22 book or on their Kit Provider site, you find that they are lawyers too. They'll do your whole uncontested case for $2000 or just get it filed for $400. So they're not even cheap lawyers.
There is no honest reason for a Kit Provider to offer "free" forms with instructions, whether literally free or for $22. All divorce forms are public documents. You can download all state and county blank divorce forms FREE from your state's judicial website, from the website of your county's local Superior or Circuit (or whatever your state's divorce courts are called) Court or sometimes from the local Legal Aid Society website.
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Bait and Switchers: This group is different and more insidious because you actually get something at the end, but it's not what you thought you would get and to get it, you have to disclose a lot of private data to someone you have not hired.
You might think, "So what's the problem with a website offering free what is also available free somewhere else?" Your clue to what is wrong is that the government and Legal Aid Society sites will not ask for your email address before you download.
The problem is that unlike after you have hired a lawyer ($600-$800 for an uncontested) or an experienced high-quality online divorce service ($100-$300), Kit Providers will not know anything about you, your case or your local court at the time you download their kit and instructions. Such instructions would literally need to be hundreds of pages long to instruct you on all reasonable possibilities. In fact, they would have to be so long and complex that no one would ever read them to try to find the few pages that apply to her case.
Law Offices Of Alg And Associates
First, is the firm legitimate? A law firm that specializes in Real Estate Law is your best option. Are they in good standing with the state bar? Do they have any complaints or disciplinary actions against them? If there was a complaint, how was it resolved?
Often, property owners will request a money-back guarantee for a successful modification. If the firm the property owner is considering offers a money-back guarantee, this should be a major cause for concern. The firm will act as the property owner's representative or agent in a negotiation with the lender. The lender itself or a third party, called the investor, may own the mortgage. The party that owns the mortgage will makes the final decision on what new mortgage terms they will accept, if
anything. It is impossible to guarantee exactly what the mortgage owner will do. For a firm to represent to a property owner otherwise should be a cause of great concern to the property owner.
The banks and mortgage servicers work with hundreds of thousands of people at a time and handle every request in an heartless, robotic fashion to attempt to support the masses, not applying individual attention, creativity, or compassion into each borrower's situation. So, working with the banks directly rarely works in the homeowner's favor. We have clients who have attempted to work with their lenders for over a year with zero results before they retained the Law Offices of ALG and Associates.
With proper research a property owner can find the a firm that is legitimate, complies with appropriate laws, can documents their experience, has the resources needed and sets appropriate expectations with the client. The Law Offices of ALG and Associates realize a Loan Modification is very important matter and the property owner definitely wants to treat it with urgency. We strongly encourage that property owner's do thorough research and make sure the firm LA dui lawyer they choose is the right firm for them.
Does the law firm comply with all state and federal laws pertaining to loan modifications? Your first clue will be how the firm collects monies for its services. If they ask for any monies before some of the work has been completed, it is unlawful.
The Law Offices of ALG and Associates - Loan Modification
How Do I Choose the Right Law Firm for a Loan Modification?
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As one can see, there are several factors to negotiate with the bank and without appropriate leverage of full legal representation, a Forensic Audit, a possible law suit and years of expertise, lenders dui lawyer in Irvine aren't generally motivated to consider your case.
The usual parameters of a case are stopping a foreclosure sale on a property, negotiating missed payments, accrued interest, property taxes and late fees, transitioning the loan from an adjustable rate mortgage to a fixed rate mortgage, moving from an interest only payment to an amortized payment, reducing the interest rate, change the term of the mortgage, including property taxes and insurance escrows in the monthly payment instead of being paid separately by the property owner, settling second mortgages for less than owed, and reduction of the principal balance owed.
Third, does the firm have the resources to complete the job in a timely manner? Loan Modification cases typically best dui attorney in Los Angeles take about 3 to 6 months to reach a settlement and require significant back and forth between the bank and the law firm. Do they have the critical mass of staffing to be able handle the case volume, negotiation and customer service requirements? Typically each case requires negotiators, processors, underwriters and case managers, in addition to the Attorney, to successfully achieve a modification for the property owner.
Fourth, does the firm set appropriate expectations? This depends ultimately on what is success for the property owner. There are many factors in what makes a case successful to a client and a reputable firm will set appropriate expectation on what can be reasonably achieved in a loan modification case rather than tell you what you want to hear to get your business. Whenever possible, it is recommended that the property owner meet with the prospective firm in person prior to retaining them.
Each lender has very specific guidelines they need to see in order to approve the loan modification. Unfortunately, most property owners do not have access to this information independently, and blindly submit and application, hoping for an approval. In essence, they are asking the lender to do them a favor. The financial information a property owners provides and how it is presented is vital to achieving an approval or denial with the lender and, through years of accumulated experience, the Law Offices of ALG and Associates knows exactly what each lender needs to see before we submit, which helps us achieve optimal results.
By: Suren Ambarchyan
The Law Offices of ALG and Associates can help advise you about Loan Modification - For more information about Loan Modification Services please visit www.lawofficesofalg.com or give us a call for a free consultation: Toll Free: 888-LAW-3111
Questions to Ask
Many property owners realize they are in an unsustainable financial position and need a loan modification on their primary residence, second home or income property's mortgage to retain ownership of the property. Many have heard the horror story of paying thousands of dollars to a "loan modification company" before any work has started and have never heard from the company again. So, how do property owners choose the right firm to represent you?
Elements to Negotiate
Second, can the firm provide strong experience and examples of successful cases they have completed? How many cases have they completed? How long have they been in business?
The Law Offices of ALG and Associates is a Professional Law Firm - legal experts in Real Estate Law, offering Legal Representation of Non-Advanced Fee Loan Modifications, Commercial Workouts, Litigation, Short Sales, Bankruptcy, and Debt Settlement.
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