Georgetown University here in DC is offering a 1-year paralegal certificate for less than $5,000. I have always been interested in the law but have been intimidated by the cost and admissions stats of law school. This seems like a segue to an interesting and possibly lucrative career, which could also serve as a launing pad for law school if I choose that path later on.
I hate the job path I’m on now and I desperately want a change. Is it possible to get hired as a paralegal at 42 or am I fooling myself?
Well, I worked in a law dept. of a huge retail company (as a regular ol’ secretary) and there were paralegals who were quite a bit older than me (they appeared to be mid- to late-50s.
I considered it as a career path at one time. You learn so much because you’re the legs of the operation. It appeared to me to be very knowledge-intensive. Almost like they knew as much as the lawyers, for all the reading and researching they did.
I’d go for it. There are so many places to work after you’ve been certified. Law firms, corporate, the possibilites are endless.
I considered the same thing in a fit of “I’m never gonna get in to lawschool” paranoia but my parents talked me out of it as a long-term career since they thought I would be bored with the work. If you are interested in paralegal work, you could easily get a job at a firm without getting the certification. I got several jobs at medium-sized firms before I went to school (I ended up taking more lucrative marketing positions in favour of saving more money for school). Also, if you know lawyers in big firms, you can work your connections to get in. I’m currently working in a firm where the children of some of the lawyers came in for this summer to do some light secretarial work and they have all since moved into positions as “litigation assistants” at major Boston firms.
I would not write off lawschool just because you don’t think you’ll get in. I also had that attitude and ending up getting into 95% of the schools I applied to. If you really think you would like to do it as a career-it’s definitely possible. There are some people at my school who are over 35 and for whom lawschool was a mid-career shift. They all seem to be doing very well-although I’ve noticed they all have very supportive partners! Maybe if I didn’t go to school in the boondocks there would be more-I’ve heard urban schools get a more significant mid-career shift population. Perhaps working as a paralegal for a while would be a good way to decide if you just want to stay in that track or would prefer to go on to lawschool.
Paralegal here, checking in. First, let me say that I don’t have a paralegal certificate, so I know that you don’t neccesarily need one to get hired. (It might help, though) Honestly, it’s not a bad job, although a little limited in possibilities for advancement without law school. Age shouldn’t be a problem, and I don’t think you’ll have a problem getting hired, especially since, IIRC, you have previous experience as an editor? Since one of the main skills a paralegal needs is the ability to read quickly and with comprehension, and be able to summarize what he or she reads, your previous experience will help you there.
It’s a satisfying job, for the most part, and I wish you the best of luck in pursuing it.
I was a paralegal for two years in major NYC law firms. The language I would use to describe these two years is unfit for IMHO. I’d be happy to talk about it at further length if you are seriously interested. Email address is in my profile.
I worked at a very large firm here in Richmond for two years right out of college. I was thinking about going to law school and I wanted some exposure to the profession before I spent the time and money on law school. In the end, I decided against it (not that my work experience soured me on the idea, I generally enjoyed the work, atmosphere, etc.). In my experience, many of the paralegals in the firm I was with were doing the same thing and didn’t stay more than two or three years. The “career” paralegals were almost all middle aged woman who had started out as legal secretaries and had moved up into the positions.
I don’t know that I’d make an entire career our of being a paralegal, but if you’re trying to figure out if you want to be an attorney when you grow up I think it is a good place to start. Your age shouldn’t be an impediment.
Being a paralegal myself, I’d certainly say it’s a viable career option. Much depends, however, on what area of law you want to work in.
For mine (immigration), a certificate isn’t a big plus, because I don’t know of a single certificate program that teaches immigration law. The paralegals here have had all sorts of interesting career paths, from the way I got here (immigrant social service experience plus a stint as an interpreter at Immigration Court), to working in related areas of law at other companies/firms (expat human resources and that sort of thing) to serving as a Foreign Student Advisor at a university.
However, my mom has also been a paralegal for a zillion years – she started off working for Legal Assistance Foundation without a certificate, and since she was working mostly with public benefits issues and had a long background in social service before that, she did fine. But later on, the lack of a paralegal certificate kept her from being considered for a lot of jobs in more mainstream areas of law (litigation, etc.), so she went back at night and got her certificate.
If you’re seriously interested, I’d try out an entry-level law firm or corporate paralegal job before I invested a year and $5k in the certificate program. See if you like the environment first; it definitely isn’t for everyone, especially high-pressure areas like litigation. I really don’t think your age is an issue, though. More details on request.
You wind up doing 95% of the attorney’s work while he takes 110% of all the credit and fees.
You get blamed for 100% of any errors/delays in filings, etc. for what probably are < 1% your fault.
The promised 9-5 workday is ballpark. Plan on quite a few “we have to get this out today!” nights and 7:00 pm or later days.
There is no such thing as too much paper in a law firm. I have little songs in my head based on the constant rythmn of the photocopier doing, 'cha chung, cha chung, cha chung" at 60 pages per minute.
And I am going out on a limb here, but most lawyers are assholes. Finding the few good ones in between is the trick to a happy career in law.
And to be honest, $5,000 seems a bit steep for this program. Do some price comparisons if you feel you really want to go through with it.
I got my certificate a few years ago and I have had no success in breaking in to the field. There are two reasons for this in my locale. The first is that we have a law school in town. Law firms would rather hire a lawyer who they can pay as a first-year clerk and bill at a higher hourly rate (paralegals around here bill $50 an hour and first-year lawyers bill at $100 an hour) and lots of the law school graduates want to stay in town after finishing schools. The second is that those firms and businesses that will hire actual paralegals will not hire you unless you have experience, and of course one can’t get experience without getting hired. The best I could do working with my training was to carve out a little bit of sidework at my last job filing bankruptcy claims, which a placement agency I talked with last week said might qualify me for some placement interviews but I’m not holding my breath.
My guess is that in the DC area you’re going to have a glut of lawyers and find yourself in a situation similar to mine.
If you decide to go for it, make sure the course you’re in is accredited by the ABA. And, no joke, take a typing course. You’ll want a typing speed of minimum 50 WPM with minimal errors.
Chiming in to echo Captain Amazing. There are other ways to become a paralegal and you don’t even need to work in a lawyer’s office to be one. There are about a dozen paralegals around here and no laywers in sight. One of our paralegals is due to retire soon and I’m going to apply for her job.
Not necessarily. Chicago is certainly chock-full of lawyers, and there are several law schools here. But the only paralegals I know who have had trouble finding work are ones with substandard writing skills or spotty work histories.
FTR: I’m in a Government office that handles transfers of intellectual property rights. Our paralegals handle inquiries from patent and trademark attorneys and make corrections to our database. The paralegals here earn around $45K-$50K per annum.
If you’re gonna be a paralegal you may as well get the 4 year degree. Why? Because if you have “just” a certificate and you want a raise, the first thing they’re gonna say is “but you don’t have a Bachelor’s.”
I’m not saying you have to have a BS or BA. I’m just talkin’ money here.
Lots of paralegals never had any school past high school and are kicking ass and taking names. Everything a paralegal needs to know can be learned on the job, IMHO.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned gender. Where I live, there is no such thing as a male paralegal. It’s wrong, it’s sexist, but guy paralegals don’t have a prayer of getting hired here. I imagine in big cities, though, it may not matter as much.
Age? Doesn’t matter. I can’t tell if you’re a guy or not. If you’re a woman, I submit your age will actually help. Again I’m going to generalize here. If you were a lawyer’s trophy wife, which would you rather have: for your husband to have a farm fresh spring chicken with perky boobs as his paralegal, or an older, married woman who has a motherly air about her and isn’t looking for a rich guy to marry? It’s been my experience that lawyer’s wives, if they don’t actually work at the office, still end up popping in and keeping tabs on what’s going on. I would think a male paralegal would be considered an ideal, too.
I have one more year before I’m done with school and I’m really looking forward to being a “real” paralegal. Yes, you do all the work and get paid a fraction of the income you’re generating. However, there is one beautiful thing about being a paralegal. Say it with me: no malpractice insurance. If you screw up a case, it’s your boss’ ass on the line, not yours. Nobody is going to sue the paralegal that missed the deadline when his/her boss has a deep pocket to go after.
Use a temp agency that specializes in the legal field. A lot of law firms almost only hire people who have come through temp agencies. No risk. They get the temp, if the temp is an idiot, they fire them and get another temp. If the temp is good, the next time there is an open position they request that temp, or hire them outright.
Plus, temping gives you the chance to see how the various law firms work, not to mention the advantage that a legal temp gets paid more than all other office temps. My guess is that even in cities like DC and NYC they need legal temps on a regular basis. It is a great way to get your foot in the door and meet the people who make the decisions! I got my job in the legal department at the film studio in LA after temping for several studios and then deciding which one to pick.
(And I also learned which studio legal departments to avoid at all costs!)
I’m a lawyer (please don’t throw anything) and I just want to say that paralegals and legal assistants are the Gods’ gift to lawyers and in my office, both my fellow attorney and I treat her better than we do each other.
Another friend is a paralegel in the Seattle area, and she has never had a problem getting a job, but has worked for idiots, unfortunately.
What I really wanted to add to this conversation is to let gobear know that I went to law school as an older student. If you want any info on my experiences, or encouragement, just e-mail me. I’m one of those rare lawyers who found my dream job, )I don’t even have to worrying about a partnership track, plus, no billable hours!) so I’m a bit of a cheerleader for the profession.
I have a BA (in history) and some post-graduate courses, but I didn’t finish my MA for fear of incurring a heavy debt and be unable to find a well-paying job.
But it’s impossible to get a job as a paralegal without some previous experience or training in the field. That’s true for every job opening in the DC area. It’s an incredibly tight market; employers know that, so they have the liberty to post exceptionally narrow requirements for a position and shitcan any resume that does not comply 100 percent.
Really? Then I’m screwed unless being gay counts as an exception.
I’m beginning to believe my life is over.
I can’t do that. My job now is degrading, but at least I now have decent health insurance. I ws temping for Manpower in February when I had to have an emergency appendectomy. The limited insurance I had through the agency didn’t begin to cover my expenses, so we took out a bank loan to pay off the hospital because they would not let me pay them in installments. Of course, I got hired by the company I was temping at too late for their insurance to help me. So now I’m many thousands of dollars in debt, I’m trapped in a dead-end job, and I feel like I have no future.
gobear, what is your idea of a rewarding job? Providing you can find an opening, of course? What are your expectations?
Given, I don’t know squat about the D.C. job market; I think you need to talk to someone in the field in D.C. for that. But the salary surveys I use for work are telling me the average salary for paralegals in your area is in the low $50s, and that includes the public and nonprofit sectors, which tend to pay less than the private sector. (And as others have mentioned, the field is in the process of professionalizing; plenty of paralegals don’t have a bachelor’s degree, so the ones who do are more likely to be on the high end of the pay scale.)
Personally, I find my job quite intellectually engaging, and we do employment-based work, which doesn’t come with war stories nearly as interesting as you might find doing asylum or marriage fraud or criminal immigration cases. Gender? Well, there aren’t any male paralegals in our office right now, but there have been in the past, and immigration law tends to attract a large proportion of women anyway – our office as a whole is about 90% female. It’s not a conscious hiring tendency that I’m aware of; it’s just the way this subfield of law is.
Yes, we do tend to work longer than 9-5, but I think you’d be hard-pressed these days to find a professional job where people don’t sometimes work more than 40 hours a week.
Sometimes? The standard around here is that they expect 10% overtime from salaried employees. They chart your billable hours against this standard minus vacation time, some sick time, etc. Works out to something like 38.5 billable hours per week on average. If you had a two hour meeting to be trained on some new whiz-bang productivity aid and a one-hour meeting with your supervisor to go over your performance review then they expect you to put in 1.5 hours of OT that week or to have put in enough OT either before that week or after that week to make up for your non-billable time. Crappy, certainly. Probably actionable if they ever used it as a basis for termination, but still the standard.