A atuação do secretário executivo em escritórios de advocacia: competências e desafios

Abstract

This study investigates the competencies required and the challenges faced by executive secretaries working in law firms. It is a qualitative, descriptive, and exploratory study conducted through interviews with ten executive secretarial professionals employed in law firms located in the Vale do Mamanguape region, Paraíba, Brazil, in June 2026. The data were analyzed using thematic content analysis (Bardin, 2011). The analysis is grounded in the concepts of invisible work and articulation work (Star & Strauss, 1999), the sociology of professions (Abbott, 1988), and the concept of competence proposed by Fleury and Fleury (2001). The findings indicate that the management of procedural deadlines constitutes the core critical responsibility of the profession, carried out under conditions of high responsibility but with no decision-making authority. Participants spontaneously distinguished the boundaries between their duties and those of lawyers, supporting the conditions necessary for legal practice without participating in the legal decision-making process itself. Professional invisibility is reflected in the diversity of job titles: ten professionals describing essentially the same work routine hold ten differently named positions. The study also identifies a disconnect between interpersonal recognition and institutional recognition, as well as the latent nature of bilingual competence, which is acknowledged as valuable but is consistently underutilized in professional practice. It is concluded that the legal recognition of the profession is a necessary, but insufficient, condition for achieving broader recognition in the labor market.