Anyone a Paralegal?

Thinking I need a new career path. Anyone a Paralegal? If so...tell me about it :)

Anyone a Paralegal?

I am - what do you want to know?

Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

Me too

Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

Me three

Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

I've never been a paralegal, but I am a lawyer. I practiced in a large Manhattan firm for 9 years. The paralegals who worked there were compensated well, but it was a job that I would never want to do myself. In a law firm, all of the stress (about deadlines, work, etc.) flowed downhill, and a lot of it landed on the paralegals.

The paralegals in my firm did things like maintain huge databases of documents that we obtained in discovery and pulled together searches of them for us, helped prepare briefs and court filings (organizing exhibits, making copies, etc.). They basically did all of the work that the associates were too busy or didn't want to do.

In a smaller firm or different legal setting, paralegals do more substantive work, but I think the pay is probably substantially less.

To be a good paralegal, I would say you need to be highly organized, be a great multitasker, be able to work up against tight deadlines and handle stress, and be able to work with many different types of personalities. Computer skills are also key.

I would really look into it and talk to people who are paralegals before you go too far down the road. In many legal settings, being a paralegal is a hard and pretty much thankless job. There are "career" paralegals, but many at my firm used the position as a stepping stone to other things (to save money to go to law school, etc.).

Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

Another lawyer here. I work for a federal agency and although we employ paralegals, there are fewer a d fewer of them.

In addition, gIven the number of unemployed lawyers today, smaller and mid size firms are hiring lawyers for what once was the cost of an experienced paralegal.

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Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

Message edited 6/24/2013 12:27:10 PM.

Re: Anyone a Paralegal?

I used to work at a large, international law firm based in NYC, and we had a huge paralegal staff. Everything from a legal staff coordinator to "senior legal assistants" (who were more in a supervisory role) to "paralegal clerks" (who were more inexperienced and handled more clerical issues/less responsibility. Given the nature of our large complex cases, I could not imagine our paralegal staff ever being phased out, although of course we might cut back if there were budgetary concerns. But at larger, full-service law firms, I can't imagine the paralegal industry drying up.

But we had paralegals ranging from older, career paralegals to young, just out of college kids who were using the job as a stepping stone. A lot of the latter had firm connections (parent was a judge or a friend of a partner or client).

I think the salary was pretty good, especially for the experienced paralegals, but the hours were long, our cases often involved travel for trial/trial prep (we had trials in far flung states that lasted for weeks/months), and the work was pretty high stress and focused around managing document databases and discovery, for the most part.

But again - I think the paralegal profession is not one-size-fits all. There are different levels and I think the job description can vary widely based on where you work. So for anyone considering it, I would try to get an idea of where you would want to work (long Island v. City, law firm v. non-profit, size of firm, etc.) and then do some research into the specifics.