Should I become a paralegal to make me a more attractive candidate?
Working as a paralegal can make you a more attractive candidate, particularly if you’re lacking legally specific work experience. Many people have started out as a paralegal and made it to the very top of the legal profession. It’s definitely a valid route and shouldn’t be overlooked.
The immediate benefits to paralegal experience are:
Experience of working and building effective working relationships with lawyers, business support staff and clients
Networking and possible mentoring opportunities, particularly with graduate recruiters, trainees and partners who are involved in trainee recruitment
Proper insight into the type of work that trainees and junior associates do
Some firms will recruit trainees from their pool of paralegals because they are tried and tested
A signal to other firms of that type that you’re making a fully informed choice when applying to them e.g. if you’ve paralegalled at a City firm, other City firms will be able to see you know what working at a City firm is like.
However, I’d caveat paralegal experience with the following advice:
It is possible to be pigeonholed as a paralegal - much like an actor who stars in several films as an action hero can become typecast into action roles, it may sometimes be hard for firms to see a candidate who has been a paralegal for a few years as a solicitor. If you’ve been a paralegal for 12 months and you haven’t secured a training contract, there may be more benefit in seeking another role. This can help avoid typecasting and instead build another skillset. For instance, if you’ve spent 12 months being a litigation paralegal, you’ve probably developed many useful skills but there could now be more benefit in getting a commercially foccussed role, ideally in a bank or financial institution. This will help build your commercial awareness, which is another valuable skill firms look for in candidates.
Paralegal experience isn’t essential to getting a training contract - most law firms (City/national/regional) open their vacation scheme and training contract opportunities to second year law/third year non-law students who are unlikely to have had a full-time job before, let alone a paralegal role. A trainee solicitor is an entry-level role. A training contract is a vehicle used by most firms to give a person the legal experience needed to qualify as a solicitor. Of course, you can use (subject to your firm’s approval) paralegal experience as qualifying work experience (QWE) to reduce your time training contract.
Being a paralegal at a firm may not give you an advantage with that firm’s trainee recruitment process - many aspiring solicitors are exceptional paralegals. They’re getting rave reviews from their immediate teams and partners they’ve worked with. However, the HR team responsible for recruiting vac schemers and trainees are often siloed. HR often like to keep their trainee recruitment process totally independent of any internal reviews/recommendations to maintain fairness, the integrity of the recruitment process and to ensure candidates are exclusively assessed against certain criteria.
There are other roles which can also build the skills needed to impress on an application - I talk about non-legal role ideas in this previous article.
Finally, it’s important to remember that being a paralegal won’t make or break an application - it forms part of your work experience, which itself is a piece in the application jigsaw. Legal work experience helps show your motivation for a career in law and there are other ways of showing this motivation: attendance at law fairs/open days, taking part in a vacation scheme and completing informal legal internships. Your academics, competency skills, extra-curriculars and commercial awareness are also important.