Estate planning paralegal job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

An estate planning paralegal posting has six working parts: duties, qualifications, skills and software, pay and benefits, schedule, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

If you are still deciding whether the hire makes sense — the level you need, where to source candidates, how to screen — our guide to how to hire an estate planning paralegal covers the decisions before the posting, and our guide to writing a law firm job posting covers the mechanics of the posting itself; this page is about the content.

Core duties.

An estate planning desk runs on precise documents, funded trusts and client confidences, so write tasks a candidate can picture: the instruments your firm drafts, the funding work that puts assets into them, and the administration files that follow a client's death.

Apply one test to every line — does the posting make clear that a lawyer reviews the work?

Supervision belongs in the duties block, not in fine print: Comment [2] to ABA Model Rule 5.3 lists paraprofessionals among the assistants lawyers must instruct on ethics, especially confidentiality, and says supervision should account for the fact that nonlawyers lack legal training and are not subject to professional discipline.

Rule 5.3(a) requires partners and lawyers with comparable managerial authority to make reasonable efforts to ensure the firm has measures in place, and Rule 5.3(b) puts a separate duty on the lawyer with direct supervisory authority — our guide to supervising non-lawyer staff under Rule 5.3 walks both.

States adopt their own versions of the Model Rules, so confirm yours with your state bar's ethics counsel.

Duties that earn their place on an estate planning paralegal posting:

• Conducting new-client intake under attorney supervision: gathering family and beneficiary information, building asset and liability inventories, and recording the client's planning goals
• Drafting wills, revocable living trusts, pour-over wills, powers of attorney and advance health care directives for attorney review
• Preparing trust-funding paperwork for attorney review: deeds moving real property into a trust, beneficiary designation change forms, and account ownership or transfer forms
• Coordinating signing logistics: scheduling witnesses and the notary, assembling signing packets and execution checklists
• Assembling each client's executed document set and after-signing instructions, and safeguarding original signed instruments in the firm's custody
• Preparing probate and trust administration filings for attorney review: probate petitions, notices to beneficiaries and creditors, inventories of estate assets and accountings
• Gathering date-of-death account statements and asset values, and organizing records for the tax filings the attorney prepares
• Calendaring filing and notice deadlines the attorney sets
• Maintaining the firm's estate planning form and precedent library
• Passing case-status updates and next steps to clients
• Opening matters, entering time in your billing system and tracking retainer balances

Client contact needs especially careful wording on this block, because estate planning clients hand over family and financial details at some of the hardest planning decisions they will make.

ABA Formal Opinion 506 (June 7, 2023) says a lawyer may train and supervise a nonlawyer to conduct prospective-client intake — gathering initial facts, running an initial conflict check, obtaining the signature on the fee agreement — provided the prospective client is always offered the chance to talk to the lawyer; and whether that nonlawyer may answer a prospective client's specific question depends on the question, because Model Rule 5.5 bars lawyers from assisting unauthorized practice.

So write what the paralegal gathers and records, never what they advise — especially not on which documents someone needs, how to leave property to a particular person, or what a trust will do for their family.

Qualifications and certifications.

Two wording decisions do most of the work in this block.

First, certificate versus certification: NALA distinguishes a certificate — completing a learning program — from certification, which validates mastery against a professional standard; finishing a paralegal course does not make someone a certified paralegal, so write the one you mean.

Second, required versus preferred: unless your firm genuinely requires a credential, list it under a preferred line — a hard requirement screens out every candidate who has the experience but not the credential.

What can you legitimately require?

NFPA reports that no single authority oversees the paralegal profession in the U.S. and that, as of its writing, no state has paralegal licensure — so experience, program completion and voluntary credentials are the substance, and the training and supervision you provide are part of the offer.

The voluntary credentials an estate planning paralegal posting can name:

• NALA's Certified Paralegal (CP) — the CP Knowledge Exam weights estate planning and probate at 7 of its 100 points (specifications effective 2024), so holders have at least tested on the subject matter. NALA's Advanced Certified Paralegal (ACP) credential is available only to current CPs, and the ACP course list NALA published as of October 2, 2026 shows no estate-planning-specific course — the nearest entries are Real Estate Principles and Land Use — so don't write "ACP in Estate Planning" into a posting.
• NFPA's CRP and RP — from its PCCE and PACE exams; NFPA says someone without substantive paralegal work experience is not eligible for either exam under its current criteria, so these credentials sit on top of substantive paralegal work experience.
• NALS's ALP, CLP and PP — Accredited Legal Professional, Certified Legal Professional and Professional Paralegal.
• State-level voluntary certifications — NFPA's regulation page lists 16, including California Certified Paralegal, Florida Registered Paralegal and Texas Board of Legal Specialization Certified Paralegal; the list itself names different kinds of issuers, so check the specifics with the issuing body before you require one.

One boundary keeps your requirements honest: the ABA approves paralegal programs — it does not certify or license paralegals; NALA, NFPA, NALS and AAPI certify individuals.

And verify any credential a candidate claims directly with the issuing body before you rely on it.

If you want the candidate-side view of training routes and credentials, our estate planning paralegal career guide covers it.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — your document management platform, case or practice management, the county recorder's e-recording system where you file trust-funding deeds, your court's e-filing setup for probate matters, and the time-and-billing system — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

A posting that names its real stack helps candidates judge the fit before they apply, and it sets up the working session at interview.

Skills worth a line each: precision with document-heavy work (in an estate plan, a transposed name or an unfunded asset may surface after the client is gone), comfort building asset inventories in spreadsheets, writing that survives attorney review, deadline management across a planning and administration docket, patient plain-language communication with clients planning for incapacity and death, and confidentiality habits.

The confidentiality line is not filler — Comment [2] to Rule 5.3 makes instructing nonlawyer assistants on ethics, especially confidentiality, the lawyers' job for the assistants they employ, whether employee or independent contractor, and a posting that promises that instruction signals a supervised shop.

Skills tests.

If you screen with an exercise, keep it short and run it on a mock file — an asset inventory built from a mock set of account statements, or a trust-funding checklist on a mock fact pattern.

The FLSA defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work," so a candidate producing real, usable work for the firm — say, a deed your firm actually records — may be an employee owed wages; a short exercise on a mock file is the safer design.

The EEOC adds a second constraint: a required test must be necessary and related to the job, and must not exclude people of a protected group or people with disabilities.

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market, then adjust for the caseload and matter types you wrote above.

The national benchmark: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, paralegals and legal assistants (SOC 23-2011) had a median annual wage of $62,890 ($30.24 per hour), with the 10th percentile at $44,740 and the 90th percentile at $101,500 — the percentiles mark the spread of the field, not a floor and a cap for your hire.

In the same release, paralegals and legal assistants in the Legal Services industry had a median annual wage of $61,770.

BLS combines paralegals and legal assistants in one occupation, so the federal data cannot separate the titles, and our sources carry no estate-planning-specific wage series — treat these figures as the broader category your hire sits in, not an estate-planning-specific rate.

Our estate planning paralegal salary page carries this benchmark with the proxy caveat spelled out, and the occupation's full percentile table sits on our paralegal salary page.

Whatever range you post should be one you believe.

California defines "pay scale" as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire, with penalties running $100 to $10,000 per violation.

In the jurisdictions our research verified, posting the range is already the law, not a nice-to-have: California (employers with 15 or more employees — and an employer that uses a third party to post must give it the pay scale to include), Washington (15 or more, in effect since January 1, 2023), Illinois (15 or more), Minnesota (30 or more), Massachusetts (25 or more, effective October 29, 2025), New York State (four or more employees), New York City (since November 1, 2022), Colorado, Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia.

Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado and Connecticut also require a general description of benefits in the posting, and Minnesota bars ranges that are open-ended.

California goes a step further: the pay scale is due to an applicant on reasonable request regardless of employer size.

Nevada is the opposite pattern — the law we read there requires giving the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview, not in the posting.

Other places have their own rules we did not read — check with your state labor agency before you post.

Two pay decisions sit behind the range.

Overtime: DOL regulations say paralegals and legal assistants generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals, because an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for the field — the exception DOL gives can apply to a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job, and job titles do not decide exemption, duties and salary do.

Our guide to paralegal overtime rules walks the analysis.

Bonuses: Model Rule 5.4(a) bars sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, while Rule 5.4(a)(3) lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan based in whole or in part on profit-sharing — whether a paralegal may take a percentage of a specific case's fee is a state-specific ethics question, covered in our guide to staff bonuses under Rule 5.4, worth confirming with your state bar's ethics counsel before you promise one in a posting.

Before you post, confirm the rules that move.

Posting laws differ by state, city and employer size, and legislatures keep amending them; classification and bonus questions have their own variation.

Confirm current pay-disclosure rules with your state labor agency, and classification and bonus questions with employment counsel or your state bar's ethics counsel.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

If one hire has to span intake, drafting, trust funding, probate filings and client service all at once, write exactly that breadth into the duties block instead of dressing it up — an honest list lets candidates judge the breadth before they apply.

The named-supervisor line matters more in a small firm, not less: with fewer lawyers, each person's supervisory role is specific, and the duty attaches to the lawyer with direct supervisory authority, so name who reviews the work.

Adapting for your case mix.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the documents your matters actually produce: a drafting-forward wills-and-trusts practice runs on instrument drafts, execution logistics and a precedent library; a practice with a probate and trust administration docket runs on court filings, notices to beneficiaries and creditors, inventories and accountings; a practice that pairs estate planning with elder law or special-needs planning adds coordination-heavy paperwork around public benefits and care planning; a firm whose plans live or die on funding runs on deeds, beneficiary designations and account transfers.

Let the requirements block follow the documents: ask for experience with the records your cases generate, not "estate planning experience" in the abstract.

Paralegal or legal assistant?

Pick the title your market uses and define it by the duties — BLS combines paralegals and legal assistants in one occupation (SOC 23-2011), so the federal data cannot tell you where one title ends and the other begins.

Whatever the label, the posting works the same way: duties a lawyer reviews, requirements you mean, a range you believe.

Adapting for level.

An entry-level posting leans on program completion and the training you will provide; a senior posting asks for years of supervised estate planning casework and day-one ownership of the trust-funding pipeline or the administration docket.

Say which one you are hiring — the honest version shows up in the requirements block and in the pay range you set, and it saves you from re-writing the posting after the first round of applications.

Five wordings sink otherwise good estate planning paralegal postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Duties that promise legal advice.

Phrases like "advise clients on which documents they need," "explain what the client's trust does" or "handle your own caseload" read as practicing law.

Keep every duty inside supervised work — ABA Formal Opinion 506's intake line is the model: the nonlawyer gathers facts, runs the initial conflict check and collects the fee-agreement signature, and the prospective client is always offered the chance to talk to the lawyer; whether the nonlawyer may answer a specific question depends on the question, because Model Rule 5.5 bars lawyers from assisting unauthorized practice.

The full boundary list is in our guide to paralegal UPL risks.

2. Preference wording that screens by who people are.

The EEOC says it is illegal to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for, or discourages applications from, people because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information — its own example is an ad seeking "recent college graduates," which may discourage people over 40 from applying.

Write about the work, not the person: cut "young," "digital native" and "recent grad."

Keep application questions to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified — the EEOC treats questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion as irrelevant to that decision — and treat the borderline ones as risky rather than harmless, because federal law does not clearly forbid every such question but the answers can be used as evidence of discriminatory intent unless justified by a business purpose.

Keep the process accessible, too: an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs in order to apply, unless it causes significant difficulty or expense.

3. Salary-history questions.

The state laws we read bar seeking an applicant's salary history: California (Labor Code 432.3, all employers), New York (Labor Law 194-a), Illinois (820 ILCS 112) and Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 s.105A — which allows confirming history only after an applicant volunteers it or after an offer with compensation has been made) — and Virginia's posting law and Nevada's NRS 613.133 ban it as well.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask an applicant about their salary expectation for the position.

Other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours before the interview stage.

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) and New York City's Fair Chance Act (most employers) bar asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment; Illinois bars it until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post.

5. Vague everything.

"Wear many hats," "fast-paced environment" and "other duties as assigned" with no task list leave strong candidates unable to tell whether the role is supervised casework or a catch-all — and in Minnesota the law adds its own reason to be specific: posted ranges may not be open-ended.

The fix is the duties block above: specific tasks, the software they run on, and the lawyer who reviews them.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — do not let applications sit unanswered while you compare notes.

If the pay range or the duties change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate: the same questions, the same mock-file exercise, a scoring sheet — it keeps comparisons fair and keeps every question essential to deciding whether a person is qualified, which is the EEOC's guidance for pre-employment questions.

And before yours goes up, browse the live estate planning paralegal jobs on this board to see the pay framing and duty lists you are competing against.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Posting laws, classification rules and ethics rules change and vary by jurisdiction — confirm them with your state labor agency, employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you post.