Understanding Legal Administration
Legal administration is a critical function within a law firm or legal department, responsible for the smooth operation of the business side of legal practice. Legal administrators work behind the scenes to ensure that everything from billing and accounting to human resources, office management, and technology support is running smoothly and efficiently. The role of a legal administrator is to oversee and coordinate these various departments, ensuring that everyone is working together towards common goals and objectives.
The importance of legal administration cannot be overstated. It is the foundation upon which a law firm or legal department is built , and without it, chaos would ensue. Legal administrators are like the conductor of an orchestra, making sure that each department is in tune with one another and working together in harmony. They are the unsung heroes of the legal world, providing essential services and support that allow attorneys and other legal professionals to do their jobs effectively.
In short, legal administration is at the heart of every successful law firm or legal department. It is the glue that holds everything together, and without it, the organization would not be able to function.
Common Duties of a Legal Administrator
Legal administrators perform a wide range of duties within the legal environment. They spend almost as much time doing legal-related clerical and administrative work as they spend completing legal research and formal legal analyses. While they may not directly interface with clients often, they spend much of their time coordinating and scheduling internal and external communication of various legal matters.
In many cases, they manage the schedules of not only the legal professionals but also any additional staff members in the firm or legal department. They organize and control the calendars of their superiors. This is a vital part of their duties. Legal administrators are often called on to schedule clients and their meetings with attorneys, and in some practices, it is their responsibility to identify which attorney would be best suited to take a client’s case based on the attorney’s skills and current workload.
Legal administrators are also responsible for organizing and coordinating meetings of various clients and other legal resources, such as expert witnesses and opposing legal representation. To support these meetings, they must not only prepare the meeting spaces, but they also create all legal documents required at the meetings. When needed, they are also responsible for preparing contracts, agreements, pleadings, etc., when they are required outside of meetings.
In addition to developing, maintaining, and updating case files, legal administrators are also responsible for organizing and implementing firm technology systems, including computers, software, phones, copiers, fax machines, projectors and other resources. They often identify new legal software systems that can be utilized by the firm to streamline legal and administrative processes. These systems may include time recording software, legal research software, case management systems and legal billing systems.
As well, they are responsible for analyzing firm metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). In some firms, they are responsible for reporting these metrics to senior stakeholders within the firm. Legal administrators will also identify and develop new processes to improve the efficiency of the firm or legal department. This can include restructuring report formats or filing systems to make it easier for the employees to access these resources.
Low-level guidance such as mentoring junior legal professionals, including paralegals and legal assistants, as well as interns and law students, is another key responsibility of legal administrators. They are also accountable for training new employees of the legal firm on all primary legal processes and administrative tasks, such as software systems used to complete their tasks.
Finally, they are responsible for maintaining an organized and orderly office. This is a general responsibility, but it includes tasks such as drafting and sending out external correspondence to other legal professional, business professionals and clients. They are also responsible for ensuring that every legal professional has the appropriate tools and resources to complete their work. This range of diverse tasks can require outstanding organizational skills in legal administrators.
Necessary Skills and Qualifications
The role of a legal administrator, while expansive, is not just reserved for those who have prior legal experience or specific legal training. Having said that, a law firm administrator will be expected to have at least a fundamental knowledge of law firm operations, but also of the law as it pertains to their area of responsibility. For example, if they are responsible for payroll and HR, then they will have to be versed in state and federal employment law. If they oversee the billing department, then they should have at least a basic understanding of the trust accounting rules that govern how clients’ funds should be handled.
A law firm administrator must possess many skills and take on a multitude of roles. While there will be a few hard skills, such as construction projects, finance and accounting, technology, and the law itself, legal administrators are predominantly tasked with soft skills.
These skills include, but are not limited to:
For those individuals looking to enter the field, this is only an overview of what the candidate should possess.
It is important to point out that a legal administrator is not just an office manager with knowledge about law firms. This position requires a minimum of 5+ years of experience as an administrator (with 10+ years being when qualified candidates are readily available), so lawyers should be willing to compensate them accordingly.
Career Development and Promotion
The role of a legal administrator can be seen as pivotal to many other legal and professional positions in a law firm or related organization. These include those with Human Resource responsibilities, receptionists, marketing associates, and paralegals. Thus, a promotion might entail a move up from manager to Director of Firm Administration, a comparable title and level that exists in many law firms or corporations for senior managerial staff. On the other hand, a legal administrator might stay in the same position for many years, but assume a variety of roles to guide the firm through change and growth, and help to elevate the overall operational functioning and business practices. On the whole, this role requires a great deal of professionalism and a high level of responsibility. Therefore, successful legal administrators often find career advancement opportunities to be abundant and a logical next step. An advanced degree or certification may be required, as well as continuing education to help maintain expertise and knowledge of industry best practices and trends.
Education and Training Requirements
Formal education requirements vary widely among legal administrators. Legal administrators may be hired with a bachelor’s degree in any discipline, although many legal administrators have undergraduate or graduate degrees in management, business administration, accounting or finance. Formal continuing education is often required for maintenance of corporate licensure. This typically includes programs that address new developments in employment and labor law, health care, taxes, information technology, and financial management . Advanced experience and ability to work effectively with a wide range of personalities are extremely important factors in hiring. Legal administrators are expected to understand the functions of the different departments within a firm, and to be skilled at identifying issues and evaluating proposed solutions. There is no single certification program for legal administrators. However, some certifications are available from the Association of Legal Administrators.
Compensation for Legal Administrators
Given the conscientiousness required by law firm management for the entire process of hiring a new employee, it is interesting that insufficient thought is often given to ensuring that a firm’s compensation structure – including both salary and benefits – is carefully considered. Relying on data from Legal Management magazine, the Association of Legal Administrators’ 2010 Open Compensation Survey pegged the median salary of a legal administrator at $93,000 per year. Twenty percent of legal administrators earn less, but 47 percent earn more. Law firm environment, area of the country, length of service and specific responsibilities are all legitimate areas of concern when setting one’s expectations for pay in the legal administration arena.
The results of the most recent survey indicate that the median annual salary for legal administrators is $100,000, with 20 percent of respondents earning less than $86,964 and 20 percent earning more than $173,678. More than half of those responding to the survey have been with their firms for 10 years or longer, with about 13 percent for 20 years or more with their current firm. As you might guess, those with expansive experience generally command higher salaries. Seventy-six percent of respondents work in firms with 50 or more attorneys; as firm size increases, so too does the administrator’s compensation.
In larger law firms, administrators consistently report working 60 hours per week, with an average salary of $113,348. Practitioners in midsized firms of 20 to 50 attorneys work 50 hours per week, earning $95,275 on average. Administrators in smaller firms also report a 50-hour week, but their median pay drops to $84,038.
Type of firm also plays a role when it comes to compensation, with smaller regional firms within the Northeast, Midwest and Western regions paying the most ($98,040 on average). And for those who literally put in the extra time, working 60-plus hours per week, the average compensation rises to $111,518.
Daily Challenges and Solutions
As previously mentioned, the daily demands on a legal administrator can vary from mundane tasks to a high-stress environment where one must learn to juggle and prioritize between the competing responsibilities of legal constraints, office organization, retention of records, and staff oversight. Most of the time, that is.
Daily challenges come from such sources as:
Budgetary constraints:
Solution: Identify redundancies and utilize e-billing to help minimize obligations and expenses.
Office organization:
Solution: Draft and implement an engagement letter that includes detailed instructions for all parties. Include a good faith clause that any increase in time above the original estimate will be immediately communicated to the client.
Staff oversight:
Solution: Develop a training and mentoring program with achievable goals and follow the program with performance reviews and honest communication to bring concerns to the attention of the staff member early on.
The unexpected:
Solution: Maintain the flexibility of formal and informal sources for substantive expertise, especially in specialized fields, and involving your IT provider to keep you secure. Looking at ways to make your processes secure, less manual, and give you more time for those unexpected choices and challenges will strengthen your practice and your relationships.
Legal Administrator Job Outlook
Despite artificial intelligence whipsawing the employment landscape, the job market for highly skilled and experienced legal administrators remains outstanding, say experts. "I absolutely don’t see any slow down there," says Marcia Bloch, principal of Marcia Bloch Legal Search, Inc., a legal search and placement firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose clients have included firms such as Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman; Weil, Gotschol, Manges; Morrison Foster; Gordon & Rees; and Kauff McClain & McGuire. "My clients tell me that they are continuing to recruit for the best people," she says. "The legal administrator role is very secure."
Wendy Warkentin, who is executive director of the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), an international organization with 10 chapters across Canada and 23 chapters in the United States, and is the principal of Warkentin Consulting, which specializes in recruiting and consulting for law firm management, says the number of job postings related to or for ALA members has "increased dramatically" over the last two years . "While many positions have not had the same titles — for example, ‘legal administrator’ has been replaced by ‘legal COO’ or ‘legal operations manager’ in some organizations — the responsibilities and the overall customer base continue to show great demand for qualified candidates," she says. "In addition, there are many firms and law firms that are creating executive-level positions that are central or critical to business and law firm operations — that is, positions that lead beyond the practice of law but impact and support legal practice."
According to the National Association for Law Placement’s statistics released in its July 2017 report, 242,454 law school graduates were working at eight months after graduation, up from 238,964 the previous year. And for 2018, there were 118,264 plus JD jobs, of them 57% in large law firms, 19.2% in government, 10.6% in public interest, 3.6% in business and 1.3% in other. (See the NALP 2018 End-of-Year Report.)