THE ROLE OF A LEGAL SECRETARY IN PREPARING CANDIDATE LEGAL PRACTITIONERS AND LAW GRADUATES FOR LEGAL PRACTICE

Legal secretaries are not legal practitioners; yet, they are in a position to provide valuable practical and professional training to candidate legal practitioners, during their term of practical vocational training, as well as to law students performing paralegal services at university law clinics. In a country like South Africa, legal secretaries mostly perform administrative work in law firms and at university law clinics.

Despite their administrative knowledge, they also accumulate experience in the drafting of various legal documents, legal ethics, professionalism and, sometimes, even legal knowledge. This experience puts legal secretaries in the position to assist legal practitioners with training candidate legal practitioners and law students for entry into legal practice. Such additional training becomes important in light of the fact that legal practitioners, and even legal academics, have complained
about the competence of law graduates who enter legal practice – they simply do not have sufficient practical knowledge and the relevant skills that practice requires.

Conventionally, legal practitioners act as principals for candidate legal practitioners, which task is statutorily ascribed to them when candidate legal practitioners enrol for practical vocational training. Legal secretaries are not conventional trainers. In this article, it is argued that there is a firm theoretical foundation to recognise the important role that legal secretaries can play in the
professional and practical upbringing of candidate legal practitioners and university law clinic students. The doctrines of constructivism and kinesthetics learning are relevant in this regard. It is argued that legal secretaries should be seen as “para-lawyers” or legal assistants in the sense that they should work with legal practitioners in providing practical 9 and professional training to candidate legal practitioners and students. It is trite that university law schools use the lecture method to teach law, resulting in law graduates mainly receiving theoretical training with little
to none practical experience. Work-integrated learning is important for law graduates wanting to be admitted as legal practitioners and legal secretaries can make a contribution, especially legal secretaries who have years of experience behind them.