After having completed paralegal training and received your Bachelor’s degree or paralegal certification, it’s time to start your job hunt. After having located a paralegal job opportunity, it’s time to submit your application to the prospective employer – the process of acquiring legal employment consists of three phases, the resume submission, the interview, and the post interview follow up – were you not a stand out for the position.
Submitting Your Paralegal Job Application
Submitting your resume is a prerequisite for acquiring a legal job, all employers will require this of their applicants to get a sense for your qualifications. Your professional resume should inched your educational background, professional background and experience, and a list of references. Don’t list “references available upon request” at the bottom, just include them on the resume, or in your cover letter. This will illustrate your professionalism and commitment to land the job.
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One of the most important steps when investigating a particular field of employment is considering whether you possess or can obtain the core skills necessary to excel on the job. The worst thing one can do is commit several years toward a paralegal training program only to discover they don’t enjoy working in the legal field, or that being a paralegal doesn’t fit their personality or natural skill set.
Below a list of the core skills required to succeed as a paralegal. In order to advance in the workplace and gain an advantage on your competition, you must master these core competencies.
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Whenever I’m browsing online paralegal forums and job boards I often see job seekers asking the question “what is it like being a paralegal?”. So in this post I like to explain the paralegal profession in general, and answer the question as thoroughly and detailed as possible. I’m not going to embellish the advantages being a paralegal and make it sound as if this career is the best thing since sliced bread – as with any profession there are pros and cons. It’s every job seeker’s responsibility to decide whether a given career suits their personality and natural skill sets.
Working as a paralegal requires long hours and is difficult work compared to many other jobs. Generally the bigger and more established the firm one works for, the more hours they will be required to work. However those who are income motivated will relish in this fact, because most firms offer time and a half for overtime. Likewise, the smaller the firm one works for the less they will get paid. This correlation obviously can be attributed to company revenues – the larger firms not only get paid more on a per case basis, but they typically have a much higher case load as well. So they can afford to pay staff more and offer bonuses and higher amounts for overtime hours.
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The economy has taken a nasty downturn since 2008 and has seen minimal, if any recovery – and as a result, more people are filing bankruptcy than ever before. Attorneys who specialize in bankruptcy rely heavily on bankruptcy paralegals to handle many of the duties required to handle bankruptcy client cases. Most people don’t know is that paralegals handle much of the administrative case work such as client interviews and paperwork for the attorney.
When processing a bankruptcy client case, one of the main functions for the paralegal is interviewing the client to collect their financial background information. Things like income, liabilities, assets, creditors, etc. This is actually beneficial to the client as they can minimize the billable hours by the attorney, which are usually substantial. In many cases, a payment plan is setup for clients who don’t have the funds to pay in advance – this is a service offered by many law firms to help clients who normally couldn’t afford to pay for bankruptcy proceedings and associated fees.
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Today’s post is going to be short, but I wanted to touch on a few considerations for those of you in your search for a paralegal school or program best suited to your needs. While location, cost, and curriculum are probably the first things that come to mind when choosing a school, you’ll want to consider some not so obvious things.
For instance, what is your commitment level to the paralegal profession? Paralegal education ranges from rather short certification programs to master’s degrees in paralegal studies or criminal justice. Some institutions offer education at all of these levels, while some just offer certificates. If you’re like most people in between jobs and considering other careers, you may just want to get your feet wet by obtaining a paralegal certification. This won’t take as much time as a paralegal degree, but it also won’t work as hard for you. On the other hand, if you’ve carefully considered being a paralegal and think you’d enjoy the profession, you may want to review four year colleges that offer degrees in paralegal studies.
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