Paralegals

[amplify]

Here is my situation:

I am currently in marketing. Marketing sucks. The work that I enjoy related to it is the research I do on companies, and writing up call guides, pain statements, unique selling propositions, basically distilling the essence of a company's offering into documents. The rest of it is kind of a house of cards, since marketing generates such vague results, we spend half our time talking people into doing campaigns with us and the other half explaining to them why they don't see any results.

So I'm looking to change careers. My background before marketing was computers, and I use these skills every day. I wrote the application that we use to monitor calling activities, and have generally awesome all-around IT skills. I would really like to have a job where I can use this, plus my abilities in reading, writing, and research.

The job I have thought to possibly go for is Paralegal. I don't have an undergraduate degree yet, and if I went back I could get this degree fairly quickly. Also, some positions don't even require the degree so I could start applying for positions while going back to school. The other variable is that I am 37 years old but I don't know how that really affects anything.

I know there won't be a lot of money to start with, or ever really, but there is always the possibility of law school down the road.

So, El Dgenerates, are you a paralegal or a lawyer? What's it like? Are there other jobs that might use the same skills that I haven't considered? Does the actual job come anywhere near what I am assuming? I'll be getting a book this week, but anything you fine folks can tell me would be greatly appreciated.