Top 12 Paralegal Skills to Put on Your Resume
The legal hiring market is brisk and unforgiving. A sharp resume—stacked with relevant, provable paralegal skills—can tip the scales. Showcase capabilities that speak to speed, accuracy, and judgment, and you’ll stand out in the scrum.
Paralegal Skills
- LexisNexis
- Westlaw
- CaseMap
- Time Matters
- Concordance
- PACER
- Microsoft 365 (Office)
- Adobe Acrobat
- E-filing
- Document Review
- Legal Research
- TrialDirector
1. LexisNexis
LexisNexis provides expansive legal research across case law, statutes, regulations, treatises, news, and analytics—core fuel for drafting, strategy, and verification. Many teams now work in Lexis+ with Practical Guidance baked in, which accelerates real-world workflows.
Why It's Important
It compresses time. You get authoritative sources fast, validate citations, and mine secondary materials to frame arguments with confidence. Clean inputs lead to strong outputs.
How to Improve LexisNexis Skills
Train with intent: Work through platform tutorials and quick-start guides; then practice on live matters to cement muscle memory.
Search like a pro: Combine Boolean connectors, segment searches, and filters. Build alerts to track new decisions without babysitting the screen.
Use Practical Guidance: Pull checklists, samples, and practice notes to shortcut drafting and spotting issues.
Cite-check relentlessly: Shepardize early and often to avoid stale or shaky authority.
Swap tips with peers: Join professional groups and share field-tested queries, sources, and workflows.
How to Display LexisNexis Skills on Your Resume
2. Westlaw
Westlaw delivers deep legal content with powerful tools for searching, validating, and monitoring authority. Many organizations now rely on Westlaw Precision and Edge features to tighten accuracy.
Why It's Important
It speeds up research while reducing risk. From KeyCite signals to editorial enhancements, you can target what matters and discard the noise.
How to Improve Westlaw Skills
Master connectors and fields: Precision searching beats broad nets. Tailor queries to jurisdiction, date, and document type.
Lean on Precision/Edge tools: Use features like KeyCite Overruling Risk and advanced filtering to surface controlling law, faster.
Explore practice areas: Drill into practice-specific pages for curated sources that match your matters.
Schedule training: Short webinars and update sessions pay dividends when features evolve.
Personalize your workspace: Saved searches, folders, and alerts keep your research organized and living.
How to Display Westlaw Skills on Your Resume
3. CaseMap
CaseMap (and CaseMap Cloud) helps map facts, issues, witnesses, and documents into a coherent case story. It’s visual thinking for litigation.
Why It's Important
Complex matters become navigable. You connect facts to evidence, people to timelines, and themes to strategy—without drowning in files.
How to Improve CaseMap Skills
Start with structure: Build matter templates for facts, issues, and key players so future cases snap into place quickly.
Link everything: Attach source documents, Bates ranges, and citations to facts for instant verification.
Use reports and views: Generate chronologies, issue outlines, and witness summaries to brief attorneys fast.
Practice on real data: Import a past case and rebuild it; you’ll discover shortcuts fast.
Stay current: New features roll out periodically; review release notes and iterate your workflows.
How to Display CaseMap Skills on Your Resume
4. Time Matters
Time Matters is practice and case management software for matters, calendars, documents, time, and tasks—workflows that hold a firm together.
Why It's Important
Deadlines don’t slip. Files get found. Time captures cleanly. That’s daily risk control for busy teams.
How to Improve Time Matters Skills
Learn the core: Matters, contacts, calendar, documents, email—get fluent with the basics before layering on complexity.
Customize smartly: Tailor forms, triggers, and templates to your practice areas to shave off repetitive steps.
Integrate tools: Connect with Microsoft 365 for email, document versioning, and calendaring harmony.
Document standards: Establish naming conventions, folder templates, and intake checklists everyone follows.
Audit and refine: Review workflows quarterly; remove bottlenecks and automate where it makes sense.
How to Display TimeMatters Skills on Your Resume
5. Concordance
Concordance, now offered by CloudNine, is a litigation database used for ingesting, indexing, searching, and reviewing large document sets. Think eDiscovery-era organization with fast retrieval.
Why It's Important
When the production is massive, you need reliable searching, tagging, and batching. Concordance keeps the haystack tame so the needles show up.
How to Improve Concordance Skills
Standardize everything: File naming, load files, metadata fields, foldering—consistency reduces hunt time and errors.
Exploit indexing and tags: Build clear tag trees (issues, privilege, responsiveness) and use saved searches to keep teams aligned.
Quality checks: Sample batches for coding consistency and missing metadata; fix early, not late.
Template workspaces: Create repeatable project shells for new cases so setup is fast and clean.
Keep learning: Track release updates and share internal playbooks; small tweaks add up quickly.
How to Display Concordance Skills on Your Resume
6. PACER
PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) provides access to federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy court dockets and filings, typically through CM/ECF and NextGen CM/ECF.
Why It's Important
Real-time docket insight means fewer surprises. You can monitor filings, pull orders fast, and track deadlines as they land.
How to Improve PACER Skills
Know the terrain: Learn the differences between appellate, district, and bankruptcy systems and how each structures searches and reports.
Use the training site: Practice running searches and reports without incurring fees; get comfortable before the clock starts.
Search smarter: Combine party, case number, nature of suit, date ranges, and court filters to pinpoint the right matter quickly.
Organize downloads: Standardize folders, filenames (court, case number, ECF number, date), and logs so anyone can find records instantly.
Watch the costs: Understand per-page charges and the quarterly fee waiver threshold; batch your pulls when possible.
How to Display Pacer Skills on Your Resume
7. Microsoft 365 (Office)
Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, OneNote, Teams, SharePoint—everyday tools that frame how legal work gets drafted, tracked, and delivered.
Why It's Important
It’s the backbone of drafting, collaboration, intake, and reporting. Mastery saves hours each week. Sometimes days.
How to Improve Microsoft Office Skills
Word: Styles, templates, cross-references, table of authorities, track changes—build clean, stable documents that behave.
Excel: Formulas, filters, PivotTables, conditional formatting—deadline trackers, damages charts, and privilege logs that don’t break.
Outlook: Rules, categories, search folders, calendar sharing—communication without chaos.
PowerPoint: Simple layouts, readable charts, limited text—presentations that make points, not puzzles.
OneNote: Centralize research, meeting notes, and checklists with tags and instant search.
Automation: Quick Parts, building blocks, mail merge, and basic macros to vaporize repetitive tasks.
SharePoint/Teams: Version control, coauthoring, permissions, and channels for secure, traceable collaboration.
How to Display Microsoft Office Skills on Your Resume
8. Adobe Acrobat
Acrobat is the law firm workhorse for creating, editing, combining, securing, and sharing PDFs—filing-ready, searchable, and properly redacted.
Why It's Important
Courts live on PDFs. So do clients. Clean OCR, proper bookmarks, and safe redactions prevent headaches and sanctions.
How to Improve Adobe Acrobat Skills
OCR like you mean it: Run text recognition on scans and check accuracy; make everything searchable and selectable.
Redact safely: Use the redaction tool (not highlight) and scrub metadata. Verify by searching for the redacted terms post-removal.
Bates numbering: Apply consistent prefixes, digit padding, and ranges; log them for reference.
Assemble with care: Combine, reorder, and bookmark exhibits; add hyperlinks to indices when courts allow.
E-sign workflows: Set signing fields, routing order, and audit trails to keep execution tidy and compliant.
Compare and comment: Use Compare Files for redlines and standardized stamps for review cycles.
Accessibility: Add tags, reading order, and alt text where required by local rules.
How to Display Adobe Acrobat Skills on Your Resume
9. E-filing
E-filing replaces paper submissions with electronic uploads to court systems—federal CM/ECF and an array of state platforms with their own rules and quirks.
Why It's Important
It trims time, reduces rejections, and keeps the record clean. No courier. No guesswork, if you follow the playbook.
How to Improve E-filing Skills
Know the rules, precisely: Page limits, font, bookmarks, text-searchable PDFs, proposed orders—requirements vary by court and by judge.
Prep filing-ready PDFs: Proper OCR, bookmarks, hyperlinked tables (when permitted), and flattened, secure redactions.
Use a checklist: Parties, case numbers, event codes, exhibits, certificates of service—verify before you click submit.
Calendar to the minute: Some systems cut off at specific times; file buffer windows into your schedule.
Document management: Store stamped copies separately, with standardized filenames for instant retrieval.
Train on the portal: Walk through dry runs and review local tutorials; it prevents late-night scrambles.
Security first: Use firm-approved secure connections and follow confidentiality protocols, always.
How to Display E-filing Skills on Your Resume
10. Document Review
Document review means examining files for responsiveness, privilege, issues, and facts—then coding, organizing, and escalating what matters.
Why It's Important
Accuracy here shapes the case. Miss a hot doc or miscode privilege and the fallout can be brutal.
How to Improve Document Review Skills
Define the play: Get crisp on scope, issues, key terms, privilege criteria, and escalation paths before the first click.
Use the right tools: Review platforms with analytics, threading, deduplication, and TAR can speed relevance decisions.
Code consistently: Clear tag sets and decision trees reduce drift; sample for quality and retrain as needed.
Write a protocol: Document naming, redaction practices, and QC steps. Protocols prevent “interpretation creep.”
Build a feedback loop: Short, frequent check-ins with attorneys realign the team as facts and theories evolve.
Track metrics: Throughput, overturn rates, and error types inform staffing and training.
How to Display Document Review Skills on Your Resume
11. Legal Research
Legal research is targeted retrieval and analysis of authority—cases, statutes, regulations, and secondary sources—to support arguments and decisions.
Why It's Important
The right rule, properly applied, wins motions and shapes settlements. Weak sourcing does the opposite.
How to Improve Legal Research Skills
Clarify the question first: Nail the jurisdiction, posture, issue, and desired outcome before searching.
Build strong queries: Use Boolean connectors, proximity, field limits, and jurisdiction filters to cut noise.
Triangulate sources: Primary law, annotated statutes, treatises, practice guides—cross-check and synthesize.
Validate everything: Shepardize/KeyCite early; update again before filing. No stale law.
Organize notes: Summaries, quotes, and citations in a consistent format so drafting is nearly plug-and-play.
Stay current: Track new cases and statutory changes with alerts; fold updates into your memo bank.
How to Display Legal Research Skills on Your Resume
12. TrialDirector
TrialDirector (now commonly deployed as TrialDirector 360 by IPRO) organizes and presents exhibits, video, and demonstratives in court with speed and precision.
Why It's Important
Clear presentation can sway. Callouts, side-by-sides, synced video—evidence lands cleaner and faster.
How to Improve TrialDirector Skills
Practice the rhythm: Hotkeys, callouts, highlights, and split screens—rehearse until it’s second nature.
Prep exhibits meticulously: Name files consistently, pre-mark exhibits, and build playlists for direct and cross.
Sync transcripts: Link video to transcripts; create clips with timestamps for surgical courtroom use.
Backup plans: Redundant drives, printed exhibit lists, and a fallback display method—trial days are unforgiving.
Room check: Test the courtroom tech early: cables, screens, audio, and permissions. No surprises.
How to Display TrialDirector Skills on Your Resume
