Will Attorneys hire Paralegals or Legal Assistants with good LSAT scores but no college degree?
La28217 asked:
This may sound silly but I have a family member (really) who possesses a Paralegal Certificate, a Notary License and good LSAT scores but NO College degree, who is seeking a job as a Paralegal or Legal Assistant. However she has no current working experience in the Legal field.
Is she being delusional or is that possible?
So far the skeptics have told her that NO Licensed Attorney in his or her right mind would hire such a person to work as a Paralegal or Legal Assistant under their supervision.
She is planning to enroll in a Community College this year to pursue a Associates degree in Paralegal Studies, but right now she just needs a job.
Could someone please expound on this for me or point me in the right direction? She’s my favorite Niece and I’m trying to help her secure employment.
Thanks
I appreciate the answers I’ve gotten thus far on the subject. Thanks guys
(I am NOT speaking about the SATs!)
My Niece has earned 62 College credits but she does NOT have a degree. Thus she was qualified to take the LSATs.
I know people who are currently employed as Paralegal and Certified Legal Assistants who attended college but did NOT earn a degree.
I am speaking of REAL Paralegals NOT Legal Secretaries.
So the part about not being able to find work as a Paralegal without a formal degree isn’t true. It appears as though the job requirements depends upon the Law Office or Firm that’s doing the hiring.
If anyone else has more info. or answers they would like to share please do so. At this point I am all hears or should I say, “all eyes”.
Thanks again
Thanks to all of you who have responded to this question thus far.
While your answers were extremely thorough, they were exclusively just YOUR Personal Opinion, versus 100% Facts.
I would like to dig a little deeper on this subject if I may by posing these additional questions:
1) Were you all born working in a Law Firm or did someone hire you to give your “Experience”?
2) Did any of you come out of your Mother’s womb with “Excellent Professional References” or did someone hire you, allow you to prove yourself and than after watching your Work Ethic give you “Excellent Professional References”?
3) How does an applicant for ANY type of job gain experience or earn Excellent References unless someone hires them and gives them the Opportunity to work?
4) How do you explain ALL of the Paralegals and Certified Legal Assistants working in Law Firms and Law Offices across this country who don’t possess a Bachelor’s degree?
Are they just Pretending to be Paralegals?
Please advise.
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Filed Under Law & Legal |
Tagged With College Credits, Family Member, Favorite Niece
Comments
3 Responses to “Will Attorneys hire Paralegals or Legal Assistants with good LSAT scores but no college degree?”
She took her LSAT’s with no college degree? Are you sure you do not mean the SAT’s? You are not allowed to take the LSAT’s until you have completed at minimum your sophomore year at college. It clearly states it on the application process (I took the LSAT’s 3 years ago.) An attorney may hire her with just her High School diploma (a small office) but the chances are highly unlikely. Also let me add regardless of how well she did on the test (and again I repeat I doubt very much it was the LSAT’s and must be the SAT’s) that plays no role in the hiring requirements for a paralegal position.
No law experience means she will have little or no chance of finding a job. Almost all firms want experience, usually 2 years. If she wants to be a paralegal, she should find an entry-level job, like a clerk, and then get the experience to become a paralegal. Once she finds an entry-level job, she can begin school. She needs to find an ABA-approved school. More and more employers are demanding a formal education and they want to see ABA-approved schools.
I have a BA with high honors, high-level office experience and I enrolled in an approved paralegal program. Not only could I not find an entry-level job, I was told many times that no firm would hire without experience. I left the program because I was not about to waste over 2 years. Also, there are not as many paralegal jobs as people think. The ones available go to people with experience. If you do manage to get a job with no experience, you will make a very low salary.
In my one class, we had 5 people who are paralegals. They got their jobs through years of experience. They have no degrees, but want the Associates to get other jobs. There were 5 of us or so with BAs and none of us could get hired. Several have Criminal Justice degrees. That shows you how important experience is. It is necessary. I saw an ad today that said not to apply unless you had several years of experience and certain legal area exposure. I have seen several similar ads.
The skeptics are right in this case. Bottom line: you need at least 2 years of experience and a formal approved education is becoming more important. Without experience, you will most likely not find work, even if you have the education. With experience, you will find work, but you will be limited without the education. That is why you need to find an entry-level job before you even start school.
Neither Shane nor Gettingby said it was impossible for your niece to get a job as a paralegal. They both said it was highly improbably that your niece would be able to get a job as a paralegal in a law firm and they are both correct.
The recession has hit the legal sector hard and there have been hiring freezes or rounds of layoffs of legal support staff, including paralegals, implemented by every major law firm, and many small to mid sized law firms. What that means is that very few law firms have any paralegal openings and there is an abundance of seasoned paralegals with years of experience and certifications and/or college degrees seeking those jobs.
The overwhelming majority of law firms use placement agencies to recruit paralegals. While these agencies may take your niece’s resume, it is probable it would be given little or no circulation among law firms because they have more qualified candidates and the law firms will be asking for experienced paralegals only because they know they are available for hiring in abundance in this recession.
From a personal perspective, part of my responsibilities in my law firm is to supervise and recruit paralegals for our corporate department. Our firm does not have the financial resources to offer the salaries that larger firms offer paralegals, yet even with that drawback in my ability to recruit paralegals, I simply will not consider interviewing a paralegal that has no experience unless they have at least a college degree (and my counterpart in our litigation department will not do so either). If my firm was currently hiring in this recession, my standards would be even higher and I would not interview a candidate with less than 2 years of experience as well. What possible motivation could I possibly have to interview your niece over a dozen candidates with 2 or more years of experience, a college degree, and excellent professional references? What possible motivation could any law firm have to do so?
If your niece is primarily motivated by monetary needs then the only thing I can suggest is to interview with a few placement agencies and hope they will take her resume. Even though the likelihood of getting employment is slim it costs her nothing but her time to put her resume into circulation through the normal channels.
If she is looking for experience (which would also enhance her resume) I suggest she think outside the box and look for non-paying internships and volunteer positions with public service law groups. Many of them are looking for volunteers to assist their attorneys and the work is often more substantive than the kind of work that is available to entry level paralegals in law firms. Some of them act in conjunction with law firms serving as co-counsel in litigations and advocacy programs so it might also offer her the opportunity to network with law firm attorneys and paralegals.