City & Guilds Level 3 Certificate Legal Secretaries (Evening)

General information

This qualification provides students with the secretarial skills and legal knowledge essential within legal organisations. These skills could be transferred to any office environment. The course will cover the areas of Probate, Conveyancing, Litigation, Family and Corporate law. Audio typing, proof reading and IT skills will also be covered to an advanced level.

Course content

This course includes:

• Advanced Legal Word Processing & Advanced Audio typing
• Business Skills in the Legal Environment
• Proof reading

Legal text processing: in this unit you will develop the skills to produce advanced legal documents in the areas of Conveyancing, Criminal and Civil Litigation, Family, Probate and Corporate Law.

Business Skills in the Legal Environment: this section covers aspects of legal practice, maintaining effective working relationships, contributing to the co-ordination of administration services; researching, preparing and presenting information; maintaining and developing a paper-based information system, which will include database skills.

A range of topics relating to the accurate preparation and production of a variety of documents, both external and internal to an organisation; preparing and producing documentation for meetings; interview and negotiation skills.

Audio skills: audio work is an important skill which is widely used in legal offices. You will have the opportunity to develop these skills at your own pace to an advanced level.

Proof reading is an important skill to have especially when working in a legal environment. Students will be sitting a proof reading exam at the end of the unit.

Teaching and assessment

Students will complete assignments at the end of each module. These are internally marked by tutors and externally verified by City & Guilds to ensure that delivery of the course meets nationally recognised standards. There is an externally set and marked proof-reading test and the Legal Environment unit from the Legal Studies module is assessed through online tests. OCR text processing qualifications are externally examined.

Entry requirements

5 GCSEs A*- C, including English language, or Legal Secretaries Diploma Level 2 including functional skills or equivalent at Level 2

Additional course costs

There will be additional costs for registration with the awarding body and for course books.

Progression

With this qualification students enhance their opportunity of securing employment in a variety of environments including solicitors’ offices, courts, banking, insurance and large commercial concerns which operate their own legal departments, as well as local government.