Paralegal Career For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10

The Paper Chase: Preparing Documents

IN THIS CHAPTER

Getting familiar with the voluminous amount of civil case documents

Grasping the techniques for creating powerful and proper legal documents

As a paralegal, you need to familiarize yourself with all the types of documents that are relevant to the practice of law. This chapter covers the most important civil law legal documents in rough chronological order as they show up in the course of litigation. We focus on civil law rather than criminal law because paralegals are most apt to prepare documents for civil litigation. These documents range from the demand letter that tells the opponent to “cough up” prior to filing a lawsuit all the way to the appellate brief that seeks to either overturn a losing decision or uphold a winning verdict. After we explain what each document is used for and what it contains, we show you what they look like and give you tips on how to draft each one.

Communicating in Writing: Types of Legal Documents

We think that the best way to introduce you to the multitude of legal documents involved in a common civil law action is by taking you through a hypothetical case. In order to highlight the important types of legal documents, assume that a prospective client, Kelley Klutz, has just slipped ...