Ways to Get That First Paralegal Job

Getting that very first career job in any profession isn't easy but for paralegals, it's really tough. Most law firms want folks with experience. 

Most paralegal schools do a much better job nowadays of preparing graduates for a job search. When I finished paralegal school many years ago I had not gotten any useful advice, other than "use really high-quality paper to print your resume." 

Yes, I'm that old. I mailed out paper resumes.

Thank goodness you can do everything online now.

In my guide for young paralegals and those thinking of becoming paralegals I offer a lot of practical advice. Probably the most important chapter, though, is the one about getting that first job. I put it below as a lagniappe [little gift] for anyone out there struggling to find that first job.

 #gettingthatfirstparalegaljob, #findingworkasaparalegal, #paralegaljobhuntingtips

 

Getting That First Job

Excerpt from the book Paralegal 411: Tips, Tricks and Timesavers for the Litigation Paralegal

By Dee Thompson [on Amazon]

 

You’ve finished your paralegal studies and you have a certificate or a bachelor’s degree and you’re ready to go to work. You polish up your resume and hop on Indeed and look for jobs. Unfortunately, every job ad says they want someone with experience already.

            So how do you get experience?

            There is no simple answer. You have to think outside the box. You have to decide immediately if you want to stay in the city where you live or expand your search area. That is a critical decision.

            If you live in a large metro area like Atlanta, where I do, there are some advantages. There are many really large firms that will hire you to come in and be a project assistant, receptionist, or an admin, or a billing clerk. Sometimes those positions are never even advertised because they get in so many resumes they can just pick and choose. You would do well to figure out the biggest law firms in your town and go online and figure out the emails or phone number for the Office Manager or head of HR and get in touch with that person. An old-fashioned phone call may work best. Emails are easy to ignore.

            I once worked at a very large, very prestigious law firm here in Atlanta and some of the paralegals there started off as Project Assistants. PA’s would do things like bates stamp thousands of pages of records, or index depositions, or create binders full of records. (Sometimes larger firms call project assistants Interns.) If a huge batch of records needed to be sent to an expert witness, they might do that. It used to be a lot of paper shuffling and that has changed a lot over the years, but putting thousands of pages in a Dropbox folder or on a thumb drive still takes time. That kind of work is a great way to get a foot in the door.           

            If you live in a medium-sized or small town, don’t despair. Sole practitioners or attorneys in small firms are often willing to hire inexperienced people and train them. The unfortunate part is those tiny firms figure they can get away with paying newbies much less, or not offering benefits. You can also take a job answering the phone or handling intake calls (from prospective clients) and then get promoted.

            Law firms will often hire people without the exact kind of experience they want IF the candidate has experience in a related field. So widen your job search to include these types of positions:

·         Court clerks

·         Medical office employees

·         Mediation company coordinators

·         Insurance company clerks or admins

·         Government workers, for instance employees of the Department of Labor

·         Nonprofits

 

Litigation paralegals who have experience as nurses or even CNAs will usually have no trouble finding paralegal work. A Nurse Paralegal often makes more money than a regular Litigation paralegal, especially for firms that do personal injury or medical malpractice cases. Nurse paralegals basically spend their time reviewing medical records and creating summaries or chronologies and often can work from home.

Other places to look for jobs: LinkedIn, Craigslist, Robert Half’s website

Social media can be very helpful in finding a job. Lawyers and paralegals have many Facebook pages and you can sometimes get leads on good jobs there. I got one job by finding a Facebook page for lawyers in my town and posting on there that I am a very experienced paralegal needing work, and I got a contract position at a wonderful firm. They liked me and after a few months I was hired full-time.

Don’t want to go into an office? Look on Indeed and put “Remote” in the location portion of the search feature. Some firms will train folks to be Intake coordinators – to talk to prospective clients. 

If you are fluent in Spanish you have a huge advantage over other candidates.

Call all placement firms in your town. Robert Half is a well-known legal placement firm with many offices. I’ve gotten many contract jobs through them, and some permanent jobs. Many firms will only work with experienced paralegals but if you can get someone on the phone, ask for their advice. Sometimes law firms don’t even use specialized placement firms, but they will call a general placement firm to hire an admin or a receptionist. Call all the placement firms in your town if you want to be thorough.

Never underestimate the power of networking. In my first job, the firm hired a “paralegal” who had never worked in a law office or been to paralegal school but her father was a golf buddy of one of the attorneys. I had to train her, starting off by explaining how a lawsuit worked. That sort of thing still happens, especially in smaller towns.

You may have to think really far outside the box. For instance, your parents’ neighbor is an attorney. Print out a nice copy of your resume and walk next door with some homemade brownies, and chat. Offer to do an unpaid internship for a few weeks, to prove yourself. Ask the attorney to email your resume to his or her attorney friends. You never know what might happen.

Worst case scenario, take any job you can get, but keep looking for paralegal work. Don’t give up. 

 above, my two books that talk about my paralegal experiences - both are on Amazon but you may have to put Dee Thompson in the Search box

 

 

Heart of My Own Heart

Do you like to read on Kindle? My third novel Heart of My Own Heart is now available for free, on Kindle (through Friday Jan. 23rd). It's an epic novel of time travel and adventure. 

The main character, Sara, is born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, and narrowly escapes the witch trials there, to build a new life in America. She travels through time to instruct her descendants on how to manage their powers in the New World, finally winding up in the South where she witnesses wars and civil unrest, and falls in love. 

I did a lot of research and it's my most ambitious novel, one that I'm proud of. 

I would love to see it made into a series on Netflix or Hulu and in my mind this is the perfect cast: Amy Adams as Sarah, Nicole Kidman as the Goddess, and Sting as Azor, the angel/warrior. 

 #timetravelnovels, #novelsaboutwitches, #novelsfeaturingjohndee 

Below is an excerpt. 

I was uninvited and unbidden, and yet I felt at home immediately. Eleanor walked over to greet me and I knew immediately that she felt a sense of relief and sisterhood, which startled her. She had never met me, and yet I seemed so familiar. She had no idea I was her ancestor, of course.

“Good afternoon,” I said with a smile. “I am Sarah Walker, the new governess.”

I immediately picked up on two things. Eleanor desperately wished her last living child would be educated, but they had barely enough food to feed themselves.

“Did my husband write to you, to employ you?” Eleanor asked, puzzled. She didn’t know where her husband was, but thought he was in Virginia somewhere. She had not heard from him in months.

“No, but you need me,” I answered quietly.

“Well, yes, but -- I’m sorry, but I cannot pay you,” Eleanor said, staring past me, embarrassed.

“I can tutor your daughter, teach her reading, writing, sums, everything she needs to know, to earn my keep, and help you with the work,” I explained patiently. “My husband was killed in the war and my only son. I have nobody and nothing.”

Eleanor looked embarrassed, but helpless. Time to try another tack.

“I can also show you how to make your farm yield better.”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“Let me think about it a moment,” Eleanor replied. “Please come rest a spell on the porch and I will find something to drink.” She turned to go back to the kitchen but at that moment, Mary came bounding downstairs, out the front door, and down the porch steps and took one look at me, regarding me frankly with startling blue eyes.

“Hello,” she said shyly.

I regarded my young charge, who had flaming red hair, and knew this one was the promised child, the child with magic in her.

“Would you like to learn to read?” I asked gently.

“Oh YES! Can you teach me?!” Mary said excitedly.

“Of course,” I replied with a smile, pulling a child’s illustrated book from my bag. I had conjured it from the remains of the tattered old newspaper. It was beautifully illustrated.

Mary had never seen such a beautiful book, and she squealed with pure joy. “Mama mama look! A beautiful book just for me!”

Eleanor stayed in the other room. “What do you say?”

“Thank you!” Mary enthused.

She had been born just before the war and knew only hardship, I realized instantly. My heart warmed to the tiny girl. I could see the spirit in her that would help her to thrive.

Thank you, I thought quietly, hoping the heavens could somehow hear her. The war here was almost over, and the rebuilding time would be challenging but I felt like I could manage that.

Little did I know how complicated life was going to get. 

 

To Lawyer or Not to Lawyer?

When I was a young pup I was offered a full-ride scholarship to law school and I turned it down, a story that still puzzles most lawyers. I just didn't want to read case law, or spend 90% of my waking hours at work. 

I graduated from college in 1984 with an undergraduate degree in Drama. Emphasis, playwriting. There weren't any jobs for playwrights in Knoxville Tennessee at that time -- what a shock. 

In hindsight, I realized I should have majored in journalism. I had worked for about 6 months on the staff of The Knoxville Journal, and it wasn't glamorous or exciting. I was just a lowly "gopher" [get me a coffee, kiddo!] but I shared the same huge newsroom with the reporters and editors and I had a front-row seat to how everything worked. Reporters were very underpaid and worked long hours. What most horrified me is the fact that so many of the stories covered [city council meetings, utilities board meetings, etc.] were so deadly dull. I wanted more adventure and more money.

So like an idiot, I decided I would be an actress. After all, I had done some plays in high school and acting was a lot of fun. I didn't realize until I got to college that short chubby girls would never be cast in anything. I wasn't the skinny ingenue type and I couldn't play character roles because I looked too young. So I switched to playwriting. I should have switched majors entirely, but I was young and stupid and my parents really didn't think my major mattered. 

My mother figured, based on her own experience, that I would get married as soon as I finished college, and stay at home and have babies, like her. My dad figured my college degree made no difference because employers would hire me because I was smart. He ran the Trust Department of a bank and he hired people with no business degrees and no experience banking because they were smart and personable. It never occurred to him that he was very unusual. Even in 1984, most employers weren't willing to take a chance on a somewhat shy, chubby young woman who looked about 16 and had a degree in Drama. 

Even KFC and Waffle House turned me down.

So I went to paralegal school and studied corporate law for three months. Then I got my first job as a Litigation paralegal, and learned on the job. There's a lot more drama in Litigation, actually. I had to use my acting skills a few times as I recounted in my memoir Talking Back, Stories from the Big Hair and Pantyhose Years. 

above, me in 1980 around the time of my stint as a newspaper gopher

When I had been a paralegal about a year my father strolled into my office and threw a brochure on my desk. He expected me to sign up to take the LSAT [Law School Admission Test] and go to law school at the University of Tennessee. He offered to pay all my tuition and expenses. 

I said nope, not interested. 

Two huge issues presented themselves to me as soon as Dad said the words "law school." 

I had thought about law school, actually. I hated reading case law, however. It put me to sleep. I knew from talking to our law clerks that to get through law school I'd have to spend hours every day studying case law. The thought made me cringe. 

Secondly, I knew the young lawyers worked far more than 40 hours a week. They routinely put in 60 or more hours. Some of that work involved writing briefs, which meant more case law. I wanted to get married and have kids, and actually stay home with my kids. 

Dad was really angry with me. 

I didn't find out until years later, after he died, why he was so intent on me being a lawyer. Mom told me he had been offered a full scholarship to Emory Law School and he had turned it down. Instead, he went into the Army. He had finished his master's program. He was an honor student. He thought the military was the place for him, though. When he married Mom a few years later and told her about the scholarship, she told him she would just teach school while he was in law school and kids would be delayed until he finished and passed the bar. He said no, it was too late.

So he wanted me to have the career he had turned down. 

Silly me, I wanted to make my own choices in life. 

I think I made the right choice. I don't think I would have made good grades in law school, so I wouldn't have been able to get a good job upon graduation. Dad would've been disappointed anyway. 

I made the right choice for me. 

I let my kids make their own choices in life. I don't push them to try and fulfill my dreams. They have to forge their own paths. It's part of loving them -- letting them go. 

 

Some of my hard-won paralegal wisdom is collected in Paralegal 411: Tips, Tricks and Timesavers for the Litigation Paralegal. Available on Amazon. 

below, me and Dad when I was about 25