Paralegal job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A 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 role is right — the level you need, where to source, how to screen — our guide to how to hire a paralegal covers the decisions before the posting; this page is about writing it.

Core duties.

Write tasks a candidate can picture, not adjectives: the discovery you need prepared, the filings your e-filing system expects, the client updates that currently wait on the attorney.

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 says supervision should account for the fact that nonlawyers lack legal training and are not subject to professional discipline.

The full structure behind that — Rule 5.3(a) requires firm-wide measures and Rule 5.3(b) puts a separate duty on the lawyer with direct supervisory authority — is in our guide to supervising non-lawyer staff under Rule 5.3.

Duties that earn their place on a paralegal posting:

• Drafting correspondence, pleadings and discovery responses for attorney review
• Managing case calendars, court deadlines and filing dates
• Preparing and organizing discovery documents, exhibits and trial binders
• Filing with the court and tracking confirmations
• Gathering client documents and passing on case-status updates
• Running initial conflict checks and opening new matters
• Keeping client files current in your case management system
• Supporting billing with time entries

Intake duties need the most careful wording on this block.

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.

Where the line sits in detail: our guide to paralegal UPL risks.

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, or you will screen out strong candidates who learned the work on the job.

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 — while its regulation page also lists a different category, licensed legal paraprofessional programs (Arizona, Minnesota, Oregon and Utah appear on its list), which are separate roles from a traditional supervised paralegal.

The credentials you will see on resumes:

• NALA's Certified Paralegal (CP) — open under its Category 1 eligibility to recent graduates of qualifying paralegal programs, from ABA-approved programs to paralegal programs of at least 60 semester hours with at least 15 semester hours of substantive legal courses.
• 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 signal verified 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 — the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, the State Bar of Wisconsin, the Ohio State Bar Association — so check the specifics with the issuing body before you require one.

One boundary to keep 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 paralegal career guide covers it.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — your case management platform, your document management and e-filing setup, your time-and-billing system — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

A posting that names its real software stack filters better than one that lists nothing, and it sets up the working session at interview.

Skills worth a line each: drafting that survives attorney review, deadline management, 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 a writing or skills exercise, keep it short and run it on a mock file.

The FLSA defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work," so a candidate producing real, usable work for the firm — say, a brief the firm actually files — 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 duties 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 two titles — set the range by the duties, and see the state figures 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), 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.

California also requires the pay scale for a position on an applicant's reasonable request regardless of employer size.

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 is 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 staff may take a percentage of a specific case 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, discovery, filings and billing support, write exactly that breadth into the duties block instead of dressing it up — candidates self-select better on an honest list than on a generic one.

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 a practice area.

Rewrite the duties bullets around the documents your matters actually produce.

A litigation paralegal lives in discovery responses, exhibits, e-filing and trial binders; a family-law paralegal handles sensitive client documents and steady status communication; a transactional paralegal keeps entities, closings and document sets current; a personal-injury paralegal assembles medical records, demand packages and lien follow-up.

Let the requirements block follow: ask for experience with the documents your practice generates, not "paralegal 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 practice and day-one ownership of a caseload.

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 paralegal postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Duties that promise legal advice.

Phrases like "manage your own clients" or "advise clients on their options" 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.

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 outright: California (Labor Code 432.3, all employers), New York (Labor Law 194-a), Illinois (820 ILCS 112) and Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A).

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 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 pull thin applications, because strong paralegals cannot tell whether the role is supervised work or a catch-all.

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 — don't 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 tied to the job, which is the EEOC's standard for pre-employment questions.

And before yours goes up, browse the live 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.