Paralegal Specialist

OLA provides legislative counsel to the Director and staff of the AO and the Judicial Conference and its committees, monitors legislative activities and advocates legislative positions of importance to the judiciary. The incumbent of this position provides a range of legislative, program, and administrative support services for the office. The incumbent will: 1) conduct legislative and legal research; 2) identify issues and analyze legislation, laws, agency documents, press articles and other materials; 3) provide clear and effective written and oral presentations which summarize issues and analysis; 4) perform other activities essential to information management; 5) apply knowledge and previous experience with Congressional operations to all tasks; and 6) prioritize multiple assignments and work effectively in a fast paced, high priority, deadline driven environment.

The duties include, but are not limited to:

Preparing a "Congressional Record Summary" of all items of interest to the federal judiciary in each daily edition of the Congressional Record for wide distribution within the Administrative Office and the federal judiciary, along with alerting OLA attorney staff to subject matter highlights from the summary, when necessary.

Analyzing the impact of legislative proposals, performing legislative research, and answering inquiries utilizing on-line research tools, such as Library of Congress, Lexis-Nexis, Westlaw, and Congressional Quarterly.

Performing data entry and related maintenance of OLA databases, including text-searchable databases of all legislative files.
Analyzing or interpreting data or other information; analyzing, evaluating and maintaining congressional materials (House/Senate bills, hearings, testimony, etc.) for relevance and importance to the judiciary.

Searching for and extracting information from files, documents, reports, publications, recordings, or other materials.
Tracking the progress of work (for example, legislation) through an established system.

Reading and understanding non-technical materials (for example, letters, memoranda, electronic mail, simple instructions).
Compiling and organizing correspondence, bills, memoranda, and other related materials to create legislative histories of bills of importance to the federal judiciary.

Performing updates and related maintenance to OLA's intranet website.

Performing administrative tasks to include, but not limited to, receiving telephone calls and visitors and making appropriate referrals; preparing and formatting letters, memoranda, congressional testimony and other documents; reviewing and distributing incoming mail and tasks.

Attending and/or monitoring hearings and markups as required by the needs of the office, along with providing written and oral reports of proceedings, with emphasis on items of importance to the federal judiciary.

Establishing and maintaining working liaisons with congressional committees, White House Clerk's Office, Federal Register, AO senior staff and other judicial employees, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Federal Judicial Center, Government Printing Office, and other federal agencies as required.

Composing complex correspondence or other written work.

Serving as the primary point of contact for a specific duty or subject area.