Employment question: legal proofreading

[redbird]

It seems that a lot of the temporary/contract work available is for legal proofreading. There are places that advertise legal proofreading classes. What I don't know is whether (a) they teach what I'd need to know to get such a job, and (b) whether law firms would hire me given general editorial and proofreading skills, plus one of these relatively short classes (say, two four-hour sessions, with practice/homework between), and the ability to pass a proofreading test, in the absence of specific legal proofreading experience.

Does anyone reading this know, or know where I could find out? The people teaching the classes claim high success rates, but they would.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Back in the dark ages when I did legal proofreading, and legal secretarying, and paralegal work, I simply lied about what I had done before. My guess is that if you have a friend who's a lawyer (anywhere in the country) who will write you something on stationery about what a good proofreader you are and how much better you made zir pleadings/documents/depositions, that's cheaper and more effective than any class.

And you/we must know a lawyer or two ...

[redbird]

What I'm wondering is, given that so many of the legal proofreader ads ask for "redlining," "blacklining," and "EDGAR," it's worth the money for a quick introduction to exactly what the first two terms mean in this context and how they map onto non-legal proofreading, and the two-hour introduction to EDGAR, which seems to be about SEC paperwork.

Google suggests (once I get past the graphics stuff) that blacklining has something to do with track changes, but I don't want to bet on that.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Me too! I want to know too!

Um.

legal proofreading

[carrisan.livejournal.com]

I actually did a legal proofreading course (proofreadertraining.com) and I noted the same things that you did. A friend told me about a legal proofreading course taught by a guy who still does legal and financial proofreading for work, and he teaches classes too. Seems he does both and has a ton of experience with the financial part--that's the EDGAR (electronic data gathering and retrieval--an SEC searchable database [see how much I know now--whoohoo! :)]) Anyway, back to the point. I did the legal proofreading class and got a pretty thorough understanding of it all.

Re: Redlining and blacklining--while there are differences, it seems to me that the terms are used interchangeably once you're out there. Redlining and blacklining show the differences/changes that have been made to documents as they progress through cycles (versions, basically). The SEC wants to know what changes have been made between preliminary filings and filings of their documents, like annual reports, stock offerings, and so forth. New text is underlined, and marks are made for text that has been changed or deleted--thus, changes are kept track of / tracked. EDGAR is important, but if you have no proofreading experience I would do a course. I had good luck with mine and would recommend it.