Is It Worth It To Become A Paralegal

how's it going everybody so I had a question from Taylor moon about whether or not it was worth it to do a paralegal program to become a paralegal and possibly use that as a precursor to going to law school and to that I would say for most people probably yes if you are going to become paralegal first with the intention of later on become a becoming a lawyer that's actually pretty helpful I would say for most people who want to find employment and I didn't become a paralegal first or anything like that but for my experience and seeing other people who were paralegals or legal secretaries and who had a year or more of meaningful law field work experience those people tended to find jobs more readily and the reason why is because if you were a paralegal before doing law school then you actually have work experience in the law field and a lot of employers find that valuable especially because many paralegals espect especially in the higher-end firms are doing the work of attorneys basically many paralegals are writing the motions writing analyses and so on so forth and in many cases the lawyers are just checking it off and making sure it looks good the paralegals are doing a lot of the legal work so I would say that as a concept doing paralegal work first before becoming a lawyer is likely going to lead to a more of a chance of finding employment after especially as compared to someone who just goes from undergrad straight to law school which is something that I had done you know in the market especially when I graduated those who had work experience that is long term I mean I had tons of work experience but were you just doing nothing but work for a year or more had much greater success of finding employment especially if they had been legal secretaries or paralegals for a significant amount of time and you know the answer there's just obvious those are people who already the work experience down they already have a history they already have a know-how of what to expect in a legal work environment they already have the know-how working through analyses and motions and filling things out um you know in a legal work environment a lot of students don't get that experience going to law school alone um I fortunately did because I did clinical but there are a lot of students who graduate and they don't have the practical skills and so if they didn't have a past work history you know it's it's pretty hard to find work these days it's not a little bit better not because of good reasons because of bad reasons with more government laws and regulations um but still you know it's not necessarily easy to find work I know so it recently who's who just finally got a job after many years and that person they had to send out I think like over 170 applications to legal and not legal and do a lot of stuff so you know it I still hear a lot of the same things going on if you didn't have connections if you didn't have family that was practicing law if you didn't have some sort of specialized internship in law school that could lead to a full-time job there's still some barriers to getting work and those who are finding work or not finding the luxury jobs of the past you know it's not pre-crash jobs here where you graduate law school and all of a sudden you know your bacon near six figures or just maybe under six figures and then within three years you know you're making big money it's a lot of stagnation in the wages a lot of people who are making as lawyers close to what people make with just a bachelor's degree alone if they can find jobs to and advancement not not that great either you know unless you end up going into a firm that is practicing you know personal injury stuff where they're practicing high in corporate you know your average legal practice or government practice and they're coming out with salaries that are really not much better than you know what teachers are making I mean it's it's still that bad but if you're you know looking to do you law practice do it being a paralegal I mean it's going to be harder to find a better job to do that gives you a sense of a legal work environment to know hey do I really want to spend three more years studying this do I really want to spend three years of my life to go in this career path you know it's about as far as you can take it to be a you know to be a paralegal and you get to see what it's like to work at a law firm and to get to get a taste of I'm doing legal research and doing you know forms you know it's about as close you can get to being an attorney without being an attorney so that's about you know that's good like I say I mean now how is the paralegal industry again the paralegal industry from what I've seen it suffers the same ways that the lawyers do you know there's outsourcing for specialized tasks to companies that doing are doing you know document review there's you know legal research firms in India where they can you know send things off but you know at the end of the day there's gonna still be a need for people to review and check things that have a human element to it so you kind of just have to put your finger on the market as far as attorneys go and that's pretty much gonna track what is happening with paralegals because they're tied together but you know you don't have a paralegal without a lawyer you know they can't practice law they don't have a law license in order to do that so you have you have to follow that aspect but yeah that's that's really all there is to it if you want to practice law and you want to get as close as possible to doing it to test the waters before you make the dive being a paralegal is it's really about as far as it goes so I hope that helps your thoughts and I'll talk to you later

Channel: Jack Lloyd

Views: 133,827

Keywords: paralegal before law school, paralegal, parralegal, parallegal, parrallegal, pairalegal, para, legal, lawyer, law school, lawschool, before law school, best major for law school, best study for law school, law school major, law school majors, lawschool major, lawschool majors, lsat help, lsat tricks, lsat tips, lsat advice, prelaw, pre law, pre law sdvice, pre law society, pre law societies, prelaw societies, law school help, pick law school, best law school

Id: Y_Wn7mZZkZ4

Length: 6min 15sec (375 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2016