Transferring Your Existing Skills To A Paralegal Career
Unless there is a particular area of the law that is calling your name, your wisest course of action may be to choose a specialty that is complementary to the skills and knowledge you already have. Once you are a seasoned paralegal, you can make a switch into a different specialty. The following chart will help you get started in the right direction.
At this point, you may be saying, “Wait a minute. I’m not going to paralegal school just so I can do all these non-law-related assignments for my employer.”
However, you must remember that running a law office is just like running any other business. Books must be kept, budgets must be created, employees must be hired and fired, marketing of the firm’s resources must be done to keep new business coming in, client relations work is performed constantly to keep the “customer” happy, and someone must be responsible for the care and feeding of the computer network. Most small and mid-sized firms don’t have separate departments to do all these jobs. They are divvied up between existing employees, including attorneys, paralegals, and secretaries. As part of the law office team, you may be asked to do your share of administrative work. While some paralegals find this type of assignment boring, others welcome it as a nice break from the endless round of billable hours.