The work day of a paralegal can sometimes get hectic –especially when preparing for court cases. This exciting career involves carrying out legal research, drafting legal documents, and interviewing witnesses on top of a whole list of general administrative duties. If you’re looking to play an important role in Canada’s legal process, then a paralegal career could definitely be for you!
Paralegals helps make the legal system run smoothly, meaning it’s a career that requires sharp multitasking and task management skills. Thankfully, there are several apps and software programs that can help simplify these duties.
If you’re interested in becoming a paralegal, read on to learn about a few programs that could really help make your office life easier!
Black’s Law Dictionary: For Paralegals Who Need to Find Terminology Fast
Black’s Law dictionary is available for desktops or mobile devices. This program is an excellent way for students taking paralegal courses in Sudbury to quickly research unfamiliar legal term.
Black’s Law Dictionary is one of the most widely used law dictionaries in North America – it offers over 45,000 clear legal definitions, and pulling up the electronic version on your smartphone or tablet is certainly much faster than carrying the six pound, 1,920 page hardcover version around with you!
Dropbox: Simplified File Sharing for Law Offices or Paralegal Schools
Software that helps manage documents will undoubtedly benefit any paralegal. Dropbox provides a central place to store and access files from any location your paralegal career takes you. You can use Dropbox to work on a group project during your training, and even for filing documents during a court case.
Because Dropbox is cloud based, anyone is able to access (or add) important documents from any location. Dropbox also has tons of space for file storage, which makes it a great alternative to compressing large files and sending them via email.
LiveNote: For Uncomplicated Legal Transcription
After earning a paralegal diploma, a large part of your job will be preparing deposition summaries—documents which are vital to attorneys. These documents are usually very time consuming, since creating them involves a paralegal sorting through pages of testimony to extract crucial information.
LiveNote has several key abilities that make transcribing important court cases much easier. It allows you to:
- create reports based on specific criteria (i.e. exhibits or indicated issues)
- locate specific areas of a transcript with keyword searches
- add notes anywhere in a transcript
Whether you’re working in a large law firm that’s involved in a complex litigation or a smaller setting that needs a simple case summarized, many experts say that transcription software is one of the most useful tools you can use.
On top of some of LiveNote’s basic features, it also offers real-time transcript text , and audio and video stream options so that interested parties can have access to a deposition and take notes as it’s occurring!
Do you know of any other useful tech programs for paralegals?