Law Students

The Paralegal Paradox.

By Steve Pirates

Being a paralegal is a great job. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the law, but who is not certain they want to commit the next three years of their life to the competitive education. For me, going to paralegal school, and working as a paralegal made me certain that I wanted to actually be an attorney and made the decision to attend law school an easy one to make.

There is a perception that having a paralegal background, and having a paralegal certificate is a huge asset going into law school. That perception is not entirely unfounded, but there are some unique challenges that face paralegals entering law school.

The advantages are pretty much what you would expect they would be, the average paralegal (at least in San Diego) has taken courses in contracts, civil procedure, criminal law, real estate, trusts and wills, and family law, as well as a legal research and writing course that focuses on memos and IRAC methodology. So, a lot of the underlying concepts are old hat for a paralegal. Some of the basic rules and statutes are covered in paralegal school. Statute of Frauds for instance, or Subject Matter Jurisdiction, or Habeas Corpus. So, coming into law school a paralegal can expect to be a little bit ahead of the curve in terms of “legal knowledge”. Also, the familiarity with the IRAC method really helps. Knowing how the professors are going to look at your exams from the beginning helps you organize your notes and study methods from the get go. Essentially, having a paralegal background gives you a map. You know where you’re going, you know how things work in the real world, so you’re not just adrift on a sea with no idea of where you are, or where you’re going or what anything really means. These advantages start drifting away about half way through each semester, as you go beyond the scope of paralegal abilities and into “lawyer stuff”. The “knowing how things work” and “knowing where you’re going” stays around though, and that’s always nice.

The disadvantages are a little more subtle. Knowing how things work can backfire when you’re in a class that is teaching you the “model” version of something. Knowing the California Penal Code in and out isn’t going to help you in Criminal Law, and if you can’t put your actual knowledge out of your head for a bit, and just accept the elements as taught in class, it can get rough. Where it can really get rough are in classes where they ask you to “do” things, like in Legal Skills, or in Civil Procedure II (where were have written a complaint, answer, motion, and interrogatories).

When you get used to doing something a particular way for a particular firm, changing your “style” for law school can be very challenging. So, writing a memo for Legal Skills or writing a model complaint for Civil Procedure can really be taxing. You have to go against your instinct for following a certain format, or for using a certain writing style.

Basically, it can be harder to suspend what you know and learn contradictory ways of doing things, than it is to just learn things from scratch. So, where law school builds upon the foundations of paralegal school, the background can really help quite a bit. But, where law school butts into some of the formatting taught in paralegal school, the background can hold you back a little bit while you get over what you “know” to apply what you’re being taught.

Full post as published by Jolly Lawger on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).