| Topic Name: |
Too Late? |
| Message Name: |
SF views |
| Date Posted: |
06/09/2000 |
| In Reply To: |
While Gurdonark's advice is usually right on, in this case, he may be a little behind the times. In New York, practically every prestigious firm's staff of Legal Assistants (or Paralegals) is made up entirely of recent college graduates, none of which have been to paralegal school. Most of them come from Ivy League, or other top tier, schools. I would assume that the system is pretty similar in Chicago. If you came from a top tier school, all you need to do, really, is show up with your resume. You'll get an offer (base salaries are generally 28-35k in NY, with overtime pay being the opportunity to make real bucks). It is also pretty common for paralegals now to stay for only one year, although firms usually prefer if you stay for two or three... but in the current job market they have trouble competing. One warning-- the work is not real interesting, and most paralegals you'll meet get pretty discouraged from going to law school. I disliked my experience as a paralegal and would suggest trying something else out for the year; I don't really thinkbeing a paralegal adds that much to a law school application, but I definitely could be wrong about that. |
| Message: |
I'm an attorney in SF and I've seen the firms here hire the college grad model (frequently with the stipulation that the job is for a maximum of two years) and the credentialed paralegal/career legal assistant model. The credential seems to be most helpful in practice areas that allow paras to get lots of hands on experience with court documents (litigation/probate). The college grad model seems to be used more frequently in the corporate transaction practice area.
While I agree that, especially in the corporate practice area, the work of a paralegal/legal assistant can be tedious and discouraging, and in fact I know someone who delayed going to law school for almost five years because of a bad para experience, I don't think that is sufficient reason to abandon the idea. Ultimately, the more information you have, the better. If you learn enough about the legal profession and lawyers to make an objective judgment that the law is not for you, you certainly haven't wasted your time. If you hate the people and the work, but still hold out hope that not all attorneys are mean (they're not) and not all legal work is drudgery (it's not), then maybe you were destined to be a lawyer! Or if, like my friend, you take a step back, look at another field for a few years and then decide to go to law school anyway, you're a better, more well-rounded person for it.
Because law school doesn't prepare you for "real life" practice of law, but rather is supposed to teach you to think like a lawyer and give you the skills to research the questions that you think up while thinking like a lawyer, the nitty gritty experience of filing documents with a court or forming a corporation or reviewing a lien search won't help you in law school, per se. What will help you is having had the experience of working in a law firm, perhaps talking to different lawyers about their practice areas, seeing what the pace is like in litigation vs. transactions, seeing what kind of people seem to be well suited for the different practice areas, etc., all with a view to what you might do in the future with a law degree. Find lawyers that you respect and ask them about their practice area and what has helped them over time. That's valuable information. Ask around about the classes that people took or didn't take in law school and how they would do it now if they were to do it over. That will surely help you in law school. Don't discount the value of learning early how to bill your time or write a simple cover letter to a client. That kind of thing will serve you very well as a summer associate and a first year.
Best of luck.
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