Legal assistant and legal secretary are two labels for work that overlaps on paper and splits in practice.
NALA treats legal assistant and paralegal as synonymous, yet firms often use legal assistant for a secretarial role — while legal secretary names a separate BLS occupation with its own duty list.
The difference comes down to what each posting means by the title: here is the split in duties, training and pay.
Short answer: the difference between a legal assistant and a legal secretary
In its careful use, legal assistant describes paralegal-level work.
The ABA's current definition of paralegal, adopted at its February 2020 Midyear Meeting, covers a person qualified by education, training or work experience who is employed or retained by a lawyer, law office, corporation, governmental agency or other entity, and who performs specifically delegated substantive legal work for which a lawyer is responsible.
Legal secretary is the steadier of the two labels: it names an occupation BLS tracks separately — legal secretaries and administrative assistants.
BLS describes them as preparing summonses, complaints, motions, subpoenas and other documents under attorney or paralegal supervision, and helping with research such as verifying quotes and citations in briefs.
What tangles the comparison is that the assistant title is not standardized.
NALA treats legal assistant and paralegal as synonymous terms, pointing to the state supreme court rules, statutes, ethics opinions and bar guidelines that define them that way — and firms often use legal assistant for a secretarial role.
The ABA added to the drift in 2020 when it dropped the term legal assistant from the paralegal definition it had carried since 1997.
BLS, for its part, reports paralegals and legal assistants inside one combined occupation.
So the practical answer: the duty list in a posting tells you which job you are looking at, not the title.
For the role behind each side of this page, the legal assistant career guide covers the assistant title in both senses, and the legal secretary career guide covers the secretarial track.
Duties compared
BLS's duty lists draw the line.
For paralegals and legal assistants — the substantive sense of the legal assistant title — BLS lists:
- investigating case facts
- researching laws and regulations
- gathering and organizing documents
- drafting correspondence and documents such as contracts
- obtaining affidavits
- helping at trial with exhibits and notes
- filing documents with courts and agencies
- scheduling interviews, meetings and depositions
The duties the BLS description names for legal secretaries are document production and research support:
- preparing summonses, complaints, motions, subpoenas and other legal documents under attorney or paralegal supervision
- helping with research such as verifying quotes and citations in briefs
The supervision line is the structural difference.
The secretary's documents are prepared under attorney or paralegal supervision, while the substantive work is what an attorney delegates and keeps responsibility for.
NALA's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility puts it in Canon 3: a paralegal may perform any task properly delegated and supervised by an attorney, as long as the attorney stays responsible to the client, keeps a direct relationship with the client and takes professional responsibility for the work product.
Firm size reshapes the assistant's day.
BLS notes that in small firms paralegals may work on all aspects of a case, while in larger firms they may work on one phase, such as preparing witnesses for deposition or trial.
And because firms often use legal assistant for a secretarial role, both of these lists can travel under the same job title.
Hold a posting's duties against the two lists above and the role identifies itself.
Skills and training compared
For the substantive assistant role, BLS lists an associate's degree as the typical entry-level education — some employers prefer a bachelor's degree, others consider a high school diploma plus experience, and some hire people with no legal education and train them on the job.
Certification is a layer on top: not required, but some employers prefer or require it, and it typically means passing an exam plus ongoing continuing education.
BLS's important-qualities list for paralegals and legal assistants runs to communication, detail orientation, interpersonal skills, organization and research.
For legal secretaries, BLS's handbook note is about onboarding rather than degrees: legal secretaries may train for several months as they learn industry-specific terminology and practices.
The training contrast tracks the duty contrast.
The substantive role has an education path with certification as an optional layer; the secretarial role's named ramp is the terminology picked up on the job.
Pay compared
Pay can be compared like-for-like here, because both roles have a wage line in the same May 2025 BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook data, with medians:
| Paralegals and legal assistants | Legal secretaries and administrative assistants | |
|---|---|---|
| BLS occupation code | 23-2011 | 43-6012 |
| Median annual wage, May 2025 | $62,890 | $55,570 |
Read both numbers as occupation-wide medians under BLS's combined titles — paralegals counted with legal assistants, legal secretaries counted with administrative assistants — not as a wage for either job title alone.
Where the assistant occupation works moves the number.
BLS put 75% of paralegal and legal assistant jobs in legal services in 2025, and the May 2025 median for the occupation in legal services was $61,770 — below the $62,890 occupation-wide figure.
The law firm jobs this comparison is about sit in that sector.
Wage data ages — check the latest BLS release
Legal assistant or legal secretary: which to choose
Run the comparison in either order — legal secretary vs legal assistant or the reverse — and the decision rule is the same: choose by the work you want to own.
If investigating facts, researching law and drafting documents a lawyer is responsible for is the draw, the substantive assistant role is that job, and its entry route is the education path in the section above.
If keeping a law office's documents and workflow moving is the draw, the secretarial role is that job.
Weigh the trajectories BLS projects alongside the day-to-day.
Paralegals and legal assistants: about 404,900 jobs in 2025, projected at 403,800 in 2035 — 0% change over 2025–35, what BLS calls little or no change.
Legal secretaries and administrative assistants: 157,600 jobs in 2025, projected at 149,300 in 2035, a 5% decline.
BLS names technology including AI on both sides — potentially making paralegals more efficient at research and document preparation and limiting demand, and letting staff prepare their own documents without secretaries.
That is BLS's framing of headwinds on demand, not a claim that either job disappears.
If the comparison you actually needed was legal assistant vs paralegal, that split has its own page: paralegal vs legal assistant.
When you are ready to read real openings, browse legal assistant jobs and hold each duty list against the two lists above.
Career information, not legal advice. The wage and outlook figures here are BLS May 2025 medians and 2025–35 projections for the named occupations — check the latest BLS release for current numbers.