Legal Assistant Floater Job in Houston Texas
Professional Alternatives is hiring a Legal Assistant (Floater) in Houston, TX with annual salary ranging from $60,000 to $70,000. This position provides flexible support across multiple legal personnel, handling document preparation, billing assistance, scheduling, and administrative coordination in a professional law firm environment.
What makes this opportunity interesting is the “floater” aspect, meaning you’ll support various attorneys and practice areas rather than being assigned to one specific lawyer. This exposure to different legal specializations, attorneys’ working styles, and case types provides broader learning and prevents the monotony that sometimes comes with supporting only one person.
Understanding the Legal Assistant Floater Role
As a Legal Assistant Floater, you’ll accurately draft, edit, and proof documents and correspondence for review by assigned legal personnel. This core responsibility requires strong writing skills, attention to detail, and understanding of legal document formatting and terminology across whatever practice areas you support.
You’ll open client files and initiate conflicts checks, which are essential processes ensuring the firm doesn’t represent clients with conflicting interests. This responsibility requires discretion and systematic attention to compliance procedures.
Billing and Administrative Support
Assisting with the monthly billing process involves multiple steps including communicating required edits on billing proformas to Billing Clerk, preparing correspondence for each client invoice, submitting revised proformas and drafted letters to lawyers for approval, and mailing or emailing specific invoices to clients. Legal billing is complex and detail-oriented work directly impacting firm revenue.
Inputting attorney time as needed utilizing the firm’s time entry software on a regular basis helps ensure accurate billing records. Attorneys often fall behind on time entry, and assistants help maintain updated records for billing purposes.
Calendar and Communication Management
You’re responsible for answering phone calls and taking messages, scheduling appointments, and performing other tasks related to maintaining assignments’ calendars, scheduling and coordinating meetings and conference calls, including travel, lodging, transportation, and meal arrangements. This coordination work keeps attorneys’ schedules organized and ensures smooth logistics for client meetings and case proceedings.
Opening and sorting all incoming mail, alerting legal personnel of deadline-sensitive materials or correspondence requiring immediate attention, and handling deliveries and FedEx shipments ensures critical communications reach attorneys promptly. Missing deadlines in legal work can have serious consequences, making this mail management role important.
Expense Management
Reconciling and submitting travel, client development, and client expenses for reimbursement through Chrome River and reconciling AMEX statements for all assignments involves tracking expenses, ensuring proper documentation, and managing expense reporting systems. This financial coordination work requires accuracy and familiarity with expense management software.
The Available Position
Professional Alternatives is hiring one Legal Assistant (Floater) for a Houston, TX law firm. This full-time position provides flexible support across multiple attorneys and practice areas within the firm.
Who Can Apply for This Position
The requirements balance educational credentials, professional experience, and specific skills essential for legal assistant work.
Educational Requirements
A four-year college degree is highly preferred, though a high school diploma or equivalent plus four years of work experience is acceptable. This flexibility recognizes that practical experience can sometimes substitute for formal education, especially in administrative legal roles where practical skills matter enormously.
Experience Requirements
Minimum 1-2 years of relevant experience in a professional services environment along with knowledge of terminology and procedures applicable to firm’s practice areas of legal personnel is required. This experience ensures you understand professional office dynamics, legal terminology, and procedures specific to law firm operations.
The specification that you need knowledge of terminology and procedures for the firm’s practice areas means you should have legal assistant experience rather than just general administrative work. Understanding legal documents, court procedures, and law firm operations distinguishes legal assistants from general office administrators.
Technical Skills
Accurate typing skills, good grammar, spelling, punctuation, and proofreading skills are required. Legal documents demand precision—errors in contracts, filings, or correspondence can have serious consequences. Your writing and editing abilities need to be strong enough to produce error-free professional documents.
How to Apply for This Position
Applications go through Professional Alternatives’ recruitment platform.
Visit Professional Alternatives’ job listing page where you’ll find the complete position description and application system.
Review the full job requirements carefully, noting the specific software mentioned like Chrome River for expense management and the firm’s time entry software. Familiarity with legal practice management software strengthens your candidacy.
Prepare your resume emphasizing your legal assistant experience, specifically highlighting document preparation, billing support, calendar management, and any experience supporting multiple attorneys or working in floater capacities.
Write a cover letter explaining your legal assistant background, your comfort with the floater role supporting multiple attorneys, your attention to detail in document preparation and billing work, and your interest in working with this specific Houston law firm.
Gather supporting documents including your degree or diploma, transcripts if requested, and professional references from previous legal employers or attorneys you’ve supported who can speak to your legal assistant capabilities.
Complete the online application through Professional Alternatives’ system, ensuring all information is accurate and all required fields are completed.
In your application materials, provide specific examples of your legal assistant work rather than just listing duties. Describe situations where your proofreading caught important errors, your organizational skills prevented scheduling conflicts, or your billing work improved accuracy.
Important Details to Consider
The salary of $60,000 to $70,000 annually is competitive for legal assistant positions in Houston. Your exact placement within this range likely depends on your years of experience, educational credentials, and specific skills or software proficiencies you bring to the role.
The floater designation means you’ll support multiple attorneys rather than working exclusively for one lawyer. This provides variety and broader experience but requires adaptability to different working styles, practice areas, and priorities. You need to be comfortable juggling multiple attorneys’ needs and switching contexts frequently.
Working in a law firm environment involves deadline pressures, confidentiality requirements, and high standards for accuracy. Legal work is detail-intensive and mistakes can have serious consequences for clients and the firm.
Experience with legal billing, conflicts checks, and court procedures specific to law firms is important. General administrative experience from other industries doesn’t fully prepare you for the specialized procedures and terminology in legal environments.
Application Timeline
No specific deadline is mentioned, suggesting rolling applications until the position fills. Legal assistant positions often fill relatively quickly when strong candidates emerge, so applying promptly makes sense if you’re interested and qualified.
Additional Career Opportunities
While exploring this opportunity, check out other positions like medical courier delivery driver jobs if you’re interested in diverse career paths beyond legal assistance.
Common Questions About This Role
What does working as a “floater” legal assistant actually involve day-to-day?
Floater legal assistants support multiple attorneys rather than being dedicated to one lawyer, which means your day involves switching between different attorneys’ needs, practice areas, and working styles. You might draft a contract for one attorney in the morning, prepare billing materials for another at midday, and schedule depositions for a third attorney in the afternoon. This requires exceptional organization to track multiple attorneys’ deadlines, preferences, and ongoing matters without mixing up details. You need flexibility to reprioritize when urgent needs arise from any of your supported attorneys. The variety prevents monotony and exposes you to more practice areas, but it requires stronger multitasking and organizational skills than supporting one attorney exclusively. Success depends on excellent communication with all your attorneys about priorities and capacity.
How important is knowledge of specific practice areas versus general legal assistant skills?
General legal assistant skills like document preparation, proofreading, scheduling, and billing procedures transfer across practice areas, but specific practice area knowledge significantly enhances your effectiveness. Each legal specialty has unique terminology, document types, and procedural requirements. Corporate law involves different documents than litigation, which differs from real estate or family law. As a floater, you’ll ideally have broad exposure to multiple practice areas or strong learning ability to quickly understand new areas. During your application and interviews, emphasize any diverse practice area experience you have. If you’ve only worked in one specialty, demonstrate your ability to learn new areas quickly. Most firms will train you on their specific practice areas, but existing legal assistant skills and terminology knowledge provide the foundation for learning new specialties.
Can legal assistant positions lead to paralegal or other career advancement?
Yes, legal assistant positions often serve as stepping stones to paralegal roles, legal operations, or even law school for some. Paralegals typically have more substantive legal responsibilities like legal research, drafting pleadings, or client interviews, while legal assistants focus more on administrative support and document preparation. Many paralegals started as legal assistants and gained experience, took paralegal courses or certifications, and advanced into paralegal roles. As a floater exposed to multiple practice areas and attorneys, you gain broader experience than assistants supporting only one lawyer, potentially accelerating your learning and advancement. However, advancement requires initiative—taking paralegal courses, seeking additional responsibilities, demonstrating substantive legal understanding, and expressing your career goals. Some people remain legal assistants by choice, finding satisfaction in organizational and administrative excellence without pursuing paralegal work or law degrees. Your career trajectory depends on your ambitions and initiative.
Final Assessment
The Legal Assistant (Floater) position offers solid opportunity for experienced legal assistants in Houston seeking variety and exposure to multiple practice areas. The salary of $60,000 to $70,000 annually provides competitive compensation for legal assistant work in the Houston market.
The floater structure suits professionals who enjoy variety, can manage multiple priorities simultaneously, and want broader experience than supporting one attorney exclusively. The 1-2 year experience requirement makes this appropriate for legal assistants with proven capabilities ready for more dynamic roles.
If you have legal assistant experience, strong document preparation and proofreading skills, comfort with legal billing and administrative procedures, ability to juggle multiple attorneys’ needs, and preference for variety over specialization, this position deserves consideration. Just ensure you understand the floater role’s demands for exceptional organization and flexibility, and apply with strong materials demonstrating your legal assistant capabilities through concrete examples. Legal assistant work provides stable careers in professional environments for detail-oriented individuals who enjoy supporting attorneys and contributing to client service excellence.
