Legal secretary job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A legal secretary posting has five working parts: the support work, the qualifications you require, the skills and software, a good-faith pay range with benefits, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

If you are still deciding what the role needs — the seniority, the team shape, where to source candidates — our guide to how to hire a legal secretary covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

Core duties.

Write the work a candidate can picture, not adjectives.

The anchor is the job itself: BLS describes legal secretaries and administrative assistants (SOC 43-6012) as preparing summonses, complaints, motions, subpoenas and other legal documents under attorney or paralegal supervision, and helping with research such as verifying quotes and citations in briefs.

That supervision line shapes the whole duties block: secretaries prepare documents for attorney review and signature, and legal advice stays with the lawyers — the ABA opinion below shows how question-specific even an intake answer is.

Duties worth a line on the posting:

• Managing attorney calendars: court deadlines, filing cut-offs, client meetings and appearances
• Preparing, proofreading and formatting legal documents — pleadings, subpoenas, discovery packets, correspondence — for attorney review and signature
• E-filing with the courts you appear in and tracking confirmations, service and returned orders
• Maintaining and organizing case files, physical and electronic
• Answering client calls and emails, scheduling appointments, depositions and signings
• Entering attorney time and supporting the monthly billing cycle
• [Supporting new-client intake — gathering initial information, running an initial conflicts check, collecting signed fee agreements — under attorney supervision]

The intake bullet is optional, and it is the one that needs care.

ABA Formal Opinion 506 describes a lawyer training and supervising a nonlawyer to do 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.

The same opinion notes that whether an intake nonlawyer may answer a specific question depends on the question, because ABA Model Rule 5.5 bars lawyers from assisting the unauthorized practice of law.

If your secretary will touch intake, say so in the posting and supervise it accordingly — and confirm the arrangement with your state bar's ethics counsel, because these are the ABA's model rules and your state adopts its own version.

Keep in mind, too, that Comment [2] to ABA Model Rule 5.3 lists secretaries among the firm's nonlawyer assistants and says lawyers must instruct them on the ethics rules, especially confidentiality; the duty to instruct sits with the lawyers, so "confidentiality" in your posting should be a commitment you back, not just a word.

One scoping decision comes before any of this: make sure the role you are posting really is secretarial support.

If the work you need is substantive casework — drafting documents for your signature, managing discovery, interviewing clients — write a legal assistant or paralegal posting instead, and set the pay against that role's duties.

The fix is always the same: define the duties, then pay the duties.

Qualifications and certifications.

Split the block into required and preferred, and keep the required list short enough that a strong candidate does not self-screen.

For experience, "[X]+ years as a legal secretary" is honest only if you mean it — if you would take a strong general secretary and train the legal side, write that, and budget for the ramp: BLS says legal secretaries may need several months to learn industry-specific terminology, compared with a few weeks of on-the-job training typical for general secretaries.

For credentials, the ones that exist for this role are voluntary certifications, so put them under preferred unless your firm genuinely requires them: NALS — the association for legal professionals — offers the ALP (Accredited Legal Professional) and CLP (Certified Legal Professional) among its certifications (its PP exam is the paralegal credential), membership is not required for the exams, and NALS describes the ALP as a possible first step toward the CLP; the ALP is valid for five years and renews with at least 50 hours of CLE credits and activities.

One screening note that saves time: NALA distinguishes a certificate — completing a learning program — from certification, validating mastery against a professional standard, so "completed a paralegal course" on a resume is not the same thing as holding a certification.

The candidate-side view of training and credentials is in our legal secretary career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs, and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train: word processing and document production, calendar and deadline management, e-filing, case management, time entry and billing, and the phone system your intake runs on.

The non-software skills that matter in a secretarial hire are specific: care with deadlines, proofreading you can trust before a filing goes out, discretion with everything a case file contains, and clear communication with clients who may be anxious about their matter.

A posting that names its real stack and real expectations filters better than one that lists "strong organizational skills."

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market and your budget, then adjust for the duties you wrote above.

The national benchmark: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, legal secretaries and administrative assistants (SOC 43-6012) had a median annual wage of $55,570 ($26.72 per hour), with the 10th percentile at $36,500 and the 90th percentile at $91,730 — the spread of the whole occupation, not a floor and a cap for your hire.

Legal secretary is one of the occupations BLS counts in its own series — the series name carries the title — so the figure is a direct match for the title rather than a proxy.

State figures are on our legal secretary salary page.

Whatever range you post should be one you believe — and in the jurisdictions listed below, each verified from statute or the state agency, the law requires pay information in the posting itself: California (employers with 15 or more employees, which must also give the pay scale to any third party that posts for them), Washington (15 or more; wage scale or salary range plus a general description of benefits, in effect since January 1, 2023), Illinois (15 or more; pay scale and benefits, a hyperlink allowed), Minnesota (30 or more employees in the state; starting salary range and a benefits description, and ranges may not be open-ended), Massachusetts (25 or more in the state; effective October 29, 2025), New York State (four or more employees), New York City (since November 1, 2022), Colorado (compensation and benefits in all postings), Connecticut (effective October 1, 2026) and Virginia (the wage, salary or range in each posting).

California also requires the pay scale on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size, and it 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.

Other places have rules we did not read, and the thresholds move — check with your state labor agency before you post.

Two more blocks finish the posting.

The benefits block is where a small firm competes on honesty rather than size: list what you actually offer — health coverage, retirement plan, paid time off, parking or transit support — and state your hours expectation, including any overtime reality, as your firm's own numbers.

And classification: the DOL says job titles do not determine exemption status — duties and salary must meet the regulations — so do not assume the title settles overtime treatment; confirm classification with employment counsel in your state before you set the posting's pay line.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

In a two-to-ten lawyer firm, the secretary is often the office's process owner — the person who actually runs the calendars, the filings and the billing paperwork — so write that scope in honestly instead of disguising it as a big-firm specialism.

Name who they support and in what split ("two partners and one associate"), because the ratio is the job.

A named supervisor matters more, not less: "reports to the managing attorney" tells a candidate who reviews their work, and it matters for your firm too — ABA Model Rule 5.3(b) puts a duty on any lawyer with direct supervisory authority over a nonlawyer to make reasonable efforts to ensure that person's conduct is compatible with the lawyer's professional obligations (a model rule; your state adopts its own version, and our guide to supervising non-lawyer staff under Rule 5.3 covers the structure).

And post the range you actually budgeted rather than one copied from a larger firm; a range you can stand behind saves you from renegotiating with the candidate you wanted.

Adapting for a practice area.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the docket you actually run.

For a litigation secretary, write the court-deadline work: e-filing, service tracking, deposition and hearing scheduling, exhibit preparation.

For a transactional practice, write the document flow: signature packets, closing checklists, entity filings, client portals.

Family, criminal and estate practices live on client contact — if the call volume is high, say so, and write the routing rule: nothing guessed, everything to the right attorney quickly.

Let the requirements block follow the same logic: ask for experience with the kind of work your firm produces, not "legal experience" in the abstract.

If you expect overtime during trial or filing season, state it as the firm's own expectation rather than leaving it to guesswork.

Adapting when the role is hybrid or shares a desk.

If the secretary also covers the phones or the front desk, say what share of the day each duty is, so nobody is surprised in week one — and if the phones are the whole job, that is a receptionist posting, not this one.

If part of the week is remote, name which duties happen where: filings and signature work are the natural candidates to keep office-side, while time entry, transcription and file maintenance travel well.

Whatever split you choose, keep the supervision real in both places — filings and signature work still route through attorney review wherever the person sits.

Five wordings sink otherwise good legal secretary postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Duty lines that drift into legal work.

"Advise clients on their options," "handle legal matters independently," "manage cases" — a secretary prepares documents under supervision, and keeping every duty on the preparation side of that line is what keeps the practice-of-law question out of your posting: ABA Formal Opinion 506 ties whether an intake nonlawyer may answer a specific question to the question itself, because ABA Model Rule 5.5 bars lawyers from assisting the unauthorized practice of law.

Keep every duty on a prepare-for-review-and-signature basis, put supervision in the wording, and confirm the intake arrangement with your state bar's ethics counsel before you post.

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 a help-wanted ad seeking "females" or "recent college graduates," which may discourage men and people over 40 from applying.

Write about the work, not the person: cut "young," "digital native" and "recent grad" from a secretary posting the same as any other.

3. Application questions that reach past the job.

Keep the questions in your posting and application form 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.

Conviction-history questions have their own timing rules in some places: California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) bars asking about conviction history on an application until after a conditional offer of employment, and New York City's Fair Chance Act makes it unlawful for most employers to ask about or consider criminal history before a conditional offer.

Other states and cities have fair-chance rules this page does not cover — check yours before the form goes live.

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

4. Vague everything.

"Legal secretary wanted," no team shape, no software, no range — an umbrella posting pulls applications across every experience level and saves you none of the sorting.

The fix is the template above: name the attorneys or team, the practice area, the systems, and a range you believe.

5. A pay line you cannot stand behind.

In the jurisdictions named above, pay information in the posting is not optional, and "salary depending on experience" is not a range: California defines the pay scale as a good-faith estimate of what you reasonably expect to pay on hire, and Minnesota's law says ranges may not be open-ended.

Post the range you budgeted; if the range or the duties change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — a slow reply reads as a closed door.

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate — the same questions, the same structure, a scoring sheet — so comparisons stay fair and every question stays tied to the job.

And before yours goes up, browse the live legal secretary 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, pay-transparency 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.