Finding The Best Paralegal Jobs

It doesn’t take long to qualify as a legal assistant and if you are prepared to work in the larger law firms you can specialize very quickly. This will help you secure the higher paid positions or get paralegal jobs that pay better locally to where you live.

The US Department of Labor predicts that paralegal jobs are a huge growth area with healthy employment opportunities for the foreseeable future. This is for Number of reasons not least of which is the fact that employers i.e. the law firms, are looking for ways to cut costs. These employers realize that well trained paralegals can undertake time intensive projects such as legal research at a much lower cost than if an attorney was to take time out to do this work.

In fact legal assistants, once properly trained and certified, can do much of the work an attorney would have historically done. They are prohibited by law from giving legal advice or from representing clients in court but  are qualified to do most of the other tasks.

Another reason why this is such a growth area is the fact that while computers have helped speed up legal research, they cannot take over the majority of this role as it involves both emotional intelligence and interpreting cases.  Both of these tasks remain outside the capabilities of computers.

What about bankruptcy paralegal jobs?

The type of job you do will depend on the area were a lot that you work in. If you want to work regular hours and enjoy helping people and were good at math at school, you may like to investigate bankruptcy paralegal jobs. The legal assistants who work in this area tend to have normal hours. There is very little requirement to keep pace with case law as generally speaking there are few changes in the laws governing bankruptcy.

This is partly due to the fact that state’s aren’t allowed to regulate bankruptcy law.  Your duties will be very similar from one case to the next.  But given the current economic climate and the number of both personal and business applications for bankruptcy is it a huge growth area of employment and offers great opportunities.

Perhaps being a criminal paralegal would be more exciting?

If you like the idea of working in the criminal law field, you should investigate criminal paralegal jobs. If you like the idea of putting the bad guys away, you might want to work for the public prosecutor i.e. the district Attorney or Attorney General i.e. these are the people who bring charges against the defendants. Alternatively you may work with the public defender or a private law firm who specialize in criminal defense.

When working in criminal law you will find that the individual accused of the crime does not have to prove their innocence. The burden of proof is on the government who must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty. If you like watching crime dramas such as Law and Order or similar programs, you’ll probably already be aware of some of the defenses that can be used. For example entrapment is one defense often used in drug cases where the accused maintains that the police made them commit a crime.

When working in criminal paralegal jobs, you may be dealing with clients who are accused of a felony or a misdemeanor. As the name suggests a misdemeanor is the less serious of the two classes of crime. The most obvious felony is homicide or murder is better known.  If this is an area of law you are interested in working in, you will need to be prepared for long hours as well as a strong stomach.

You must be resilient too.  You may be involved in prosecuting someone who you know is guilty but who walks free because for some reason your case didn’t meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” burden.  This happens more frequently than we would all like to believe.  It can be very difficult to see months or years of work amount to nothing.

What about contract paralegal jobs?

Some legal assistants do not wish to work for one law firm on a permanent basis. Contract paralegal jobs are widely available as law firms can become very busy at trial time and will look to take on qualified experience paralegals on a contract basis.  They only need these staff members for the period of the trial and do not wish to employ them on a full time basis.

Contract positions can appeal to those individuals who wish to retain control over where they work.  Also if you are a relatively inexperienced paralegal you can use contracts to gain experience in various areas of the law which will help you to decide where you wish to specialize. If becoming a freelance paralegal appeals to you, you may wish to read our paralegal salaries section for further information.

Becoming a freelance paralegal isn’t suitable for everyone but may offer you the opportunity to increase the salary you can earn.  There are all sorts of paralegal jobs available. It is just a case of finding the one that best suits your particular skill set, personality and interests.