How To Land Your First Job As A Paralegal even with ZERO Experience: Tips from a Lawyer

if you're interested in becoming a paralegal i'd like to talk you through what it takes to be a good one what kind of experience you have to have hint sometimes it's zero experience and i'll give you some examples of how you can get into working in a law firm even if you don't have relevant experience i'm tiffany weber i'm a north carolina real estate attorney paralegals are in high demand and rightfully so paralegals are indispensable to attorneys because they help prepare case files they can draft legal documents for the attorney to review and refine and they just generally keep the attorney's practice on track by making sure everything is moving like it's supposed to be so we are very blessed and thankful to have it thomas and weber a great group of paralegals interestingly at north carolina where i am located does not require you to have any sort of certification to be a paralegal the trick is you cannot call yourself a certified paralegal if you are not certified so the difference is is are you a north carolina certified paralegal or are you a paralegal in my office we have a lot of people who did not go to school to become a paralegal you can do that you can go to school to become a paralegal you can take the certification exam you can have that nccp next to your name the whole nine but most of my team did not go that route and i think that's great because it brings a lot of varied experience into our firm that makes it better in my office i can think of three different paths for how people became paralegals one is that they they went to school they did the traditional route so we've got our paralegal supervisor tana she went to school she's been a career paralegal and it definitely shows in her work and i think that's part of why she is so good at what she does is that she took what she learned in her coursework and was able to apply it immediately on the job um that's again i think that's why she is the manager and why she's been doing this so long and so well now some of the things that you might expect to learn if you are in school to become a paralegal you're going to learn essentially the organization and life cycle of a case so you'll know how it's going especially in litigation how it follows through from pre-suit to discovery to litigation to settle you know all of those things you're gonna learn about the life cycle of case um you may also learn you know how do you put together your litigation binders how does how do the files need to be organized you're gonna learn legal terminology because there's all kinds of it a lot of it's latin and you're going to need to know when your boss asks you hey what was the men's raya you know you need to know what that means without having to google it every single time so you're going to learn legal terminology so that's the school route and i think that you know they're shining examples of when school can be very helpful but it's not the only way we also have a paralegal in our office that came from a different corporate background so she worked in accounting melanie had an accounting background and she came to us without having been a paralegal before but she quickly picked up on what was needed and then she also had work experience that she already understood how do i work in an office with other people how do i meet deadlines how do i do all of those things so she was immediately set up for success she also had the capability to learn new concepts quickly so if you're somebody that doesn't really like to learn stuff on the fly you think you need a couple years to get your bearings then maybe don't try to just jump into a new career path without having some education on it then finally we have so many people in our office who came to us having no experience in the law whatsoever they never worked at a law firm before in any capacity we have typically hired people from food service and retail and all of those people are so great at what they do and i think something that you learn in in food service and hospitality and in retail is how do you deal with angry people you learn how to master dealing with somebody who is completely upset over the most minor inconvenience you forgot my ketchup well i'm gonna burn your world down well they know how to deal with people like that so if you can handle someone who's upset over a minor inconvenience and get them back to where they need to be then you can handle just about anything so those people come to us with problem solving skills of course they have those baseline skills i talked about but they bring a level of problem solving to the firm that it makes it a home run to be able to transfer into learning how to do you know real estate paralegal work from an industry that has nothing to do with the law so thank you bath and body works i'm sorry that we try to hire all of your employees just kidding we that's not our stated intention just happened that way a couple times so shout out jordan and amanda we are so glad that you are with us now um that's who i'm talking about specifically they do a great job at managing people melissa's another great example coming from hospitality and food service and works different types of work like that cool as a cucumber under pressure and that is a trait that will serve you very well as a paralegal now what personality traits do i think you need to have to be a good paralegal this is regardless of if you go to school to be a paralegal or not think you need to be organized absolutely you need to be organized because if your firm is doing any sort of volume you're not just working on one file every day for months at a time if you're in a litigation firm sure your cases may extend but most firms don't only have one client that they do one single thing for forever and ever amen so you need to be organized to make sure that you know what's going on and what needs to be done you also need to have superior attention to detail and my firm one of our four core values is details matter this is true not just in my firm but in really any business is that the details matter how you do the little things that's how you do the big things so if you are sloppy in your work on the little things then you will probably be sloppy in your work on the big things so a good paralegal looks at even the minor things it might be a form that you've seen a hundred times but you're still checking to make sure everything is just right so attention to detail is critical also you need to be not just a good communicator but you need to be a great communicator in real estate specifically in my firm our paralegals are communicating with all the parties all day long so you need to make sure that you are not sending communication to someone that's not supposed to get it we represent the buyer so if this is something that's supposed to go to the buyer you're not sending it to the seller that you're talking to who you should be talking to and in a way that they can understand and allows them to act appropriately a pet peeve of mine is if somebody just like dumps information on me and doesn't tell me why they're sending it or what i need to do with it so if if our office was full of paralegals like that then i would probably go crazy thankfully it's not that way so they send over actionable information they communicate in a way that helps people understand what's their next step so if you want to be a paralegal highly recommend that you communicate in that way so in my office i have seen all the different paths that paralegals can take and i have seen them all work out beautifully so what the whole point of me saying this is that while it is great to go get the certification if that is something you desire please don't let that be the only thing holding you back from trying out being a paralegal if that option is open to you and your state doesn't require the certification like north carolina then give it a shot you do not have to have been a paralegal to be a paralegal in a state that doesn't require that certification so take a look wherever you live to see if it's required if it's not just know that there is always a chance for you to switch career paths and become a paralegal hopefully at my office someday [Music] you

Channel: The Real Estate Lawyer

Views: 17,783

Keywords: paralegal, legal career

Id: gEjACu5L2BE

Length: 8min 19sec (499 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 07 2022