LO
Paralegal — skills, knowledge and links
Where this job sits in the official classifications, what those classifications say it demands, and what it connects to. Every block names its source: our own judgements, the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET, or the U.S. Department of Education.
How it connects#
O*NET also lists (no page here yet): Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants · Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers · Court, Municipal, and License Clerks · Executive Secretaries and Executive Administrative Assistants · Correspondence Clerks · Office Clerks, General
In the official classification#
Paralegals and Legal Assistants
Fit with this page: same job
Job Zone 3: medium preparation
See it on O*NET OnLine ↗In Europe, internationally and in Singapore
Legal and related associate professionals
Fit with this page: broader than this page
Legal associate professional
Fit with this page: same job
What O*NET rates highest#
From O*NET 23-2011.00 (Paralegals and Legal Assistants). Ordered by O*NET's importance rating; the words are O*NET's own scale anchors.
Transferable skills
- Social PerceptivenessImportant
- Service OrientationImportant
- Complex Problem SolvingImportant
- Judgment and Decision MakingImportant
- Time ManagementImportant
- CoordinationImportant
- PersuasionImportant
- NegotiationImportant
Knowledge
- Law and GovernmentExtremely important
- English LanguageVery important
- AdministrativeVery important
- Computers and ElectronicsVery important
- Customer and Personal ServiceVery important
- Administration and ManagementImportant
Work activities
- Documenting/Recording InformationVery important
- Working with ComputersVery important
- Communicating with People Outside the OrganizationVery important
- Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or SubordinatesVery important
- Getting InformationVery important
- Updating and Using Relevant KnowledgeVery important
Abilities
- Written ComprehensionVery important
- Oral ComprehensionVery important
- Oral ExpressionVery important
- Written ExpressionVery important
- Near VisionVery important
- Speech RecognitionVery important
Essential skills
- WritingVery important
- Reading ComprehensionVery important
- Active ListeningVery important
- SpeakingVery important
- Critical ThinkingImportant
Each task in O*NET's terms#
O*NET describes work as detailed activities. Each of this page's 5 tasks is matched only against the activities O*NET lists for this occupation, with a stated fit; 5 match at least one. The alignment and its fit are this site's judgement, made task by task by its AI agent (Claude) on 2026-09-26; O*NET does not align tasks like ours. The activity names are O*NET's, the translations ours.
- First-pass document reviewEvaluate information related to legal matters in public or personal records.O*NET's activity is broader · Getting Information · O*NET 31.0
- Drafting from precedentPrepare legal documents.O*NET's activity is broader · Documenting/Recording Information · O*NET 31.0The same activity in: Lawyer
- Running the matterCoordinate legal schedules or activities.the same activity · Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates · O*NET 31.0
- Client and witness contactMeet with individuals involved in legal processes to provide information and clarify issues.the same activity · Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates · O*NET 31.0
- Checking what the tools produced
Tasks O*NET proposes to add#
O*NET's analysts propose new or reworded task statements for future data collection, drawing on what surveyed workers write in, research into new technologies and professional associations. They are candidates, not yet part of the rated task list, and they say nothing about whether automation is involved. This site does not fold them into its own task judgements.
- Manage attorneys' calendars and schedule meetings.New task · 2024-08 · reported by surveyed workers · O*NET 31.0
- Request, review, and summarize relevant records for the cases.New task · 2024-08 · reported by surveyed workers · O*NET 31.0
Our task judgements#
O*NET says what this job demands. It does not say what automation is doing to it — that is what this site's 5 task judgements are for: 4 backed by a verified event, 1 platform inference. VOLO judgement
Sources and rules#
- Each block says where it comes from: this site's own judgements, O*NET, the U.S. Department of Education's CIP–SOC crosswalk, the European ESCO classification and its official crosswalk to O*NET, the ILO's ISCO-08, Singapore's SSOC 2024, or something computed mechanically from those. Nothing on this page is a rating we made up.
- O*NET's importance ratings are used only to order and shorten the lists. They are never combined with this site's impact index or evidence counts.
- The fit between our page and an O*NET occupation is our judgement and is stated per code: same job, broader, part of it, or only the closest there is.
- The ESCO and ISCO-08 fits are derived mechanically from the official ESCO–O*NET crosswalk; where we override it, we say why in our data (for example, the crosswalk pairs radiologists with radiographers, which is a different job). The SSOC 2024 fit is our reading of the Singapore Department of Statistics' own titles and definitions. Official names are shown as their publishers write them; we do not translate them.
- Each task is matched only against the detailed work activities O*NET lists for the codes this page maps to. Where nothing fits, the page says why instead of forcing a match: work O*NET does not describe yet (used only for tasks we judge to be emerging), or nothing in O*NET's list for this occupation. An alignment never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- Rules are read only from this site's verified records. A rule's official name must appear word for word in a record that reads it, so no name is made up; a policy mandate is read only as 'must', 'must not' or 'funds', because 'should' and 'in principle' are not a mandate. Reading a rule never changes a task's direction, its basis or the impact index.
- How these pieces fit together — objects, links and the actions that change them — is drawn as one diagram: The VOLO ontology
- ESCO (European Commission), occupation records from the ESCO API; CC BY 4.0. ESCO–O*NET crosswalk, ESCO Secretariat with the U.S. Department of Labor/ETA, version 1 (Sep 2022), O*NET-SOC 2019 ↔ ESCO v1.1.0; CC BY 4.0. Singapore Department of Statistics, Singapore Standard Occupational Classification 2024 and its correspondence with ISCO-08.
- O*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026 release, U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration, CC BY 4.0. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. The translations of O*NET descriptors on this page are ours, not O*NET's.