Reflections From My Time as a Paralegal
I was a paralegal at a 175-lawyer Boston firm for 2 years before law school.
Here’s a little about what I recall, along with some thoughts that may help you when you start at a firm.
🔹 I was hired fresh out of college and had no experience. There were 6 of us, plus a paralegal manager, and she was the only one with prior experience. (The firm wanted no “career paralegals”; the gig was a 2-year commitment, with 3 years max.)
🔹 As for work, our manager was the interface between us and the lawyers for initial case assignments. After we were working with an attorney, though, we often got future work directly from them.
🔹 Three paralegals shared one, standard-office-size, interior office. {How we got anything done, I don’t know.} We three also shared a secretary, but she supported two attorneys, too, so we had to do most of our work ourselves.
TIPS:
1: Always carry a pen and paper with you when you go to an office to receive an assignment.
2: Be careful with gossip. Lawyers will entrust you with a lot of information, including about their good and sour relationships with other lawyers at the firm. Be a vault. Do not get into the gossip game.
3: Treat all office support staff like you want to be treated. Everyone is there with an important role to play, no less important than yours. Your happiness level and amount of success at work will be directly related to how you treat others in the office. I cannot stress this enough.
4: Your admin is your best ally. Invest in the relationship. Treat them like the gold that they are. You are NOT “above” them in any way. They have been at the firm for a lot longer than you and deserve a lot more reverence than you might first think.
5: It will be the norm that you have no idea how to do an assignment. Do not despair. Trust yourself to be resourceful. Nothing you’re assigned is rocket science, and almost all of it has been done many times before.
—Go look on the system for models.
—Ask around with the admins.
—Find a peer who has been there longer than you and get guidance.
—Pick up the phone and call a friend.
—Or call a clerk. (The ones at the local state department in Massachusetts in the early 1990s REALLY helped me. Thank you again. 🙏🏻)
6: If a lawyer describes an assignment to you and asks if you have ever done it before, a good answer is: “I will figure it out.”
7: If you get stuck and have to ask the assigning lawyer questions, don’t pepper them throughout the day. Wait to collect all your questions in one place before asking, organize your thoughts, and make the questions easy to understand.
💌 Amanda
🗳️ I’d love to hear about how things work for hiring paralegals and how your offices are set up at your firm today.
🗳️ What tips would you add?