Legal Assistant (Office Automation)

Summary For additional details on cost of living allowances (COLA), please refer to the OPM website Nonforeign Areas (opm.gov).

For more information on the Department of Justice and the United States Attorneys’ Offices, visit http://www.justice.gov/usao/.

As needed, additional positions may be filled using this announcement.

This position is also being announced to applicants eligible to apply through Merit Staffing procedures under 27-HI-13081158-MS.

Duties

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Duties At the full performance level, you will serve as a senior legal assistant responsible for directly and independently supporting Assistant United States Attorneys (AUSAs) by providing a wide variety of technical assistance services related to complex financial litigation actions and matters. If selected, you will receive formal and/or on-the-job training as needed. Duties include:

• Providing substantive assistance to AUSAs in complex financial litigation matters where the work is complicated by the requirement to independently develop, analyze and evaluate information regarding complex and/or unusual financial assets to assist AUSAs in cases.
• Reviewing incoming material and determining the need for correspondence and legal documents such as motions, orders, pleadings, and subpoenas.
• Preparing legal actions such as indictments, criminal complaints, search warrants, judgments, applications, notices, affidavits, summonses, grand jury subpoenas, rules to show cause, proofs of claim and satisfaction of judgment.
• Conducting research of issues using various legal and non-legal databases and websites.
• Obtaining and analyzing financial information on debtors to determine their present and future potential ability to pay.
• Managing discovery and evidence in paper copies and electronically and may present the exhibits using trial presentation software in court.
• Managing paper and electronic documents and evidence, correspondence, briefs, witness interviews, and other documentary materials.
• Keeping track of case status and ensuring records are retained in a manner that will facilitate effective retrieval.

Responsibilities will increase and assignments will become more complex as your training and experience progress. This position is considered a career ladder opportunity, with a full performance level of GS-8. If selected at a lower grade level, you may be non-competitively promoted to the next grade level at the discretion of your supervisor and is contingent upon meeting regulatory and legal requirements for promotion, satisfactory performance, and the availability of higher-level work. Promotion is not guaranteed, and no promise of promotion is implied.

Requirements Help

Conditions of employment

• You must be a U.S. Citizen or National
• Initial appointment is conditioned upon a satisfactory pre-employment adjudication. This includes fingerprint, credit and tax checks, and drug testing. Continued employment is subject to a favorable adjudication of a background investigation
• You must be registered for Selective Service, if applicable
• If selected, you may be required to complete a one year probationary period.
• You must meet all qualification requirements upon the closing date of this announcement.

Qualifications GS-5 To be eligible at the GS-5 level, you must have: at least one year of specialized experience equivalent to the GS-4 level; or four years of education above the high school level; or a combination of both specialized experience and education as explained below.

Specialized experience is defined as reviewing documents with legal implications for accuracy and completeness (e.g., court documents, real estate documents, contracts, insurance or benefits claims, mortgage or loan applications, tax forms, or other types of legal documents); typing and formatting correspondence and forms; maintaining file systems; and obtaining needed information from files or general reference sources.

Combining Education and Experience: Successfully completed post-high school education may be used to meet the total one year of specialized experience requirement equivalent to the GS-4 grade level. Only education in excess of the first 60 semester hours (i.e., beyond the second year) is creditable toward meeting the specialized experience requirement. One full academic year of study (30 semester hours) beyond the second year is equivalent to 6 months of sp…