However, economic realities, conventions, and other necessities dictate that before striking out as a freelancer, a paralegal should obtain valuable work-experience by working with organizations, which have work in sufficient volume and variety. Pro bono work is always an alternative, but working full-time or part time in law firms or in-house legal departments is better for paralegals intent on learning and gathering relevant work experience.
Once, you have sufficient real-world work-experience under your belt, it is possible for you to open up your own shop as a paralegal freelancer. However, to be successful as a paralegal freelancer you also need to check certain realities, and do certain things, which we would be discussing in this article.
Check your expertise and mark down what you can do, and what you enjoy doing
First, make a strength and weakness analysis and mark what you have really learnt, and the type of work that you know well how to handle, and excel in. Freelancing is proving your competence in an unsheltered dog-eat-dog environment, and unless you excel in something, you are better off not advertising your capabilities in that field.
Create a professional network with other subject experts and paralegals
You might already have a professional network in place – culture it and develop working relationships with other professionals who can handle the work that you cannot. Inabilities to handle work do not necessarily arise out of incompetence, but can also arise from personal human exigencies. Work does not come according to what you like to do – but a freelancer can neither afford to turn away work, nor can he/she afford to accept work and then fail to deliver. This is a conundrum, where many people who are individually excellent end up in failure.
When you are working as a freelancer, remember, you would need the help of other professionals time and again to manage costs and time – otherwise, even if you keep minting money, you'd never be able to take a vacation, or afford to fall sick. Establishing genuine working relationships with other professionals from day one is essential for this reason, and for many other reasons, in order to achieve true success as a professional paralegal freelancer.
Market yourself properly
Once you have a sufficient resource base to deliver upon promises, your next step in establishing your business as a freelancer paralegal is to get the word out.
There are times when you get work, but have to get it done by someone else – the outcome is you build goodwill, and do not lose reputation – even though you may not make a monetary profit out of every deal. This is why I stressed upon the necessity of building a network of trusted professionals before starting to market your business.
The next obvious step, today, is to build a website with proper offerings and setup. Hire a professional designer and website expert to do the job, unless you are an expert yourself. Care about on-site SEO, but do not waste money on cheap indiscriminate search engine optimization, senseless link-building, or web advertising.
As a professional paralegal freelancer, you are into offering boutique service, hence you do not need your website to be the destination of billions. Pick and choose marketing tactics for optimized returns. Wholesale marketing is going to hurt you more than help you.
Use professional forums of paralegal professionals as well as potential clients to market your services. Just keep your presence visible with regularity – even if you do not see visible returns, it has returns, – something called brand reinforcement that is necessary for your survival.
Use local newspaper classifieds and magazine classifieds to advertise your presence. Do not fall into the trap of expensive all out full-blown advertisements. As a freelancing paralegal you need your presence advertised with regularity – buying an annual slot for classifieds pays off better than a single big advertisement, when it comes to local media – or any media for that matter.
Don't take unnecessary loans
Be very careful about taking unnecessary loans. At the freelancer level, and in the services businesses, viable business is built with ‘available resources.' If you can't do it with available resources, then you should think twice before going into the career of a paralegal freelancer. Business loans, if any are to be taken, should come only after you are a few years into freelancing, and have learnt enough about liabilities and outcomes, given your personal situations.
Well, that's really as much I can discuss within the scope of this article to get you on towards the career of a paralegal freelancer. I am sure you'd be able to work out the rest by yourself.
