Paralegals

[Howard Treesong]

I'm an attorney: former partner at big law firm, now in-house at Fortune 500 company. I've worked with literally dozens of paralegals over the years. Very very few are actually competent, and many are total boobs. If you're a) competent and b) discipline and c) organized you can do pretty well. A few of the paralegals at my old firm are making north of $100K, but that (almost always) requires significant overtime.

It's a hard job, in the sense that it requires perfection at silly tasks without much intellectual upside. Mistakes cause huge client problems, but perfection gets little reward from most bosses. You'll very likely need to be able to subordinate your ego to someone you may very well be much smarter than, which would have been a problem for me.

Last point: you'll never be a stakeholder in your firm as a paralegal. That's a huge divide. I might suggest taking a paralegal job, then going back to LS in a year or two. Even at your age, the long-term upside is much better as a lawyer, presuming you do well in school -- as I predict you will based solely on your taste in avatars.

[claudenm]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm an attorney: former partner at big law firm, now in-house at Fortune 500 company. I've worked with literally dozens of paralegals over the years. Very very few are actually competent, and many are total boobs. If you're a) competent and b) discipline and c) organized you can do pretty well. A few of the paralegals at my old firm are making north of $100K, but that (almost always) requires significant overtime.

It's a hard job, in the sense that it requires perfection at silly tasks without much intellectual upside. Mistakes cause huge client problems, but perfection gets little reward from most bosses. You'll very likely need to be able to subordinate your ego to someone you may very well be much smarter than, which would have been a problem for me.

Last point: you'll never be a stakeholder in your firm as a paralegal. That's a huge divide. I might suggest taking a paralegal job, then going back to LS in a year or two. Even at your age, the long-term upside is much better as a lawyer, presuming you do well in school -- as I predict you will based solely on your taste in avatars.

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I think your last one is a moot point. No paralegals every expect to be a stakeholder in their firm. It's just like saying no paralegal will ever make $500,000.

Also, most associates won't be a stakeholder in their firm, and even if they do make partner it's even more rare to make equity partner.