Should an opportunity for promotion present itself in your current firm or should you decide you want to check out your job options externally, the first step is to do a full self-analysis of where your skills are at currently.

Whether you’re a seasoned legal support specialist or an entry-level candidate, try objectively to assess your present skill level.  Some of the questions you might want to think about are:

• What do you know now about your job or area of law that you didn’t know one year ago?
• Have you taken any legal or other training courses in the past three years?  If so, how have they been relevant to the work you are presently doing?  If not, are there any courses you would like to enrol in and what steps are you going to take to enrol?
• What are you doing now to increase efficiency that you were not doing one year ago?
• What successes have you experienced in your present and most recent job?
• What software programs are you best at and are you using these programs to an advanced level?
• Are you working in a team?  If so, what is your role within that team?
• Are you in the right area of legal work or is now the time to think about expanding on your knowledge about various areas of law?  How are you going to go about this?
• Where are your strengths?
• Where are your weaknesses?

A Skills Analysis exercise is something you might want to undertake once or twice a year, regardless of whether or not you have an immediate plan to change jobs or apply for a promotion within your present firm.

Remember, opportunities can present themselves suddenly or work situations can change without warning and it’s always a good idea to be ready to write a great resume and be prepared for change in our fast-paced world!