I have spent 6 or 7 years working as a legal assistant and then paralegal plus another 4-5 as a law clerk. I have friends who are career paralegals. Since I know few things on this topic, I can confidently express my opinion about whether it is worth being a paralegal. I can also expertly weigh in on the paralegal profession’s pros and cons.
A paralegal is a legal professional supporting the work of attorneys in law firms. Paralegals usually cannot work independently and perform legal tasks under close supervision by an attorney. However, experienced paralegals sometimes perform intellectually challenging legal work on par with attorneys.
I already wrote on this blog a few extensive articles about whether it is worth being a paralegal. However, there are significant pros and cons of being a paralegal, which I discuss below.
I have read quite a few standard paralegal cheerleading articles written by unscrupulous persons with a financial benefit in people becoming paralegals. Unfortunately, much of that advice in those articles is plain garbage.
But here I am going to lay out the cold, harsh truth about the paralegal profession. So first, I will tell you the real deal about the pros and cons of being a paralegal. Then you decide for yourself whether it is worth being a paralegal or choosing some other profession.
Is Being a Paralegal Good? Is Paralegal a Good Job?
Some people think that being a paralegal is a very good prestigious thing and a paralegal is a good job. My take is that it may not be the case unless you like working for lawyers performing legal work in a secondary position.
Being a paralegal is a good thing if the paralegal works either for a close relative or has established a good working relationship with supervising attorney.
A paralegal can be a good job once a paralegal becomes proficient in a specific area of legal work. Then paralegal can find a law firm or in-house legal department which will treat paralegals with respect.
As a rule, I can rate being a paralegal as slightly below average good in job satisfaction. But quality paralegals may find it a good job because they are valuable to the law firm.
Being a paralegal is not an easy job. Paralegals must multitask, specialize in certain areas of law, perfect their knowledge and skill and try to become the best paralegal specialist they can be. Well-skilled paralegals are treated better by attorneys.
Still, there is often a lack of recognition of paralegal’s efforts by attorneys. Often it is because attorneys are simply too busy and overstressed. Being a paralegal could be good if you can handle playing a secondary role supporting a law firm’s work effort.
Law is a profession for sharks. Thus, many paralegals do not think they have a good job because stress is very high. In addition, many attorneys are not friendly, and paralegals must have thick skin, like anyone working in the law.
But I think that paralegals who do not feel being a paralegal is good do not like three main things:
- Purely legal job technicalities like deadlines, filings, complex documents to prepare, dealing with court or government agency filing procedures.
- A sometimes toxic and stressful work environment in the office.
- Average salaries, compared to some other professions.
From my experience, it is not that paralegals hate just being a paralegal. Instead, they are overwhelmed with one or more of the negative paralegal job aspects below. Solve that, and the paralegal job is as good as many other jobs out there.
Attorneys are often self-reliant and will expect their paralegals to think independently and be problem solvers. It is hard somewhat because paralegals did not go through law school experience. But experienced paralegals can handle pressure well and enjoy their paralegal job.
Thus, becoming knowledgeable, skilled, and indispensable can turn the position of paralegal into a good stable job.
A paralegal may be a good job for those who can manage intellectually challenging work. Being a paralegal is good if you want to shadow a lawyer in their work and do not have managerial or bossy ambitions and expectations from your career.
Although, some paralegals manage to boss around their lawyers and thus feel pretty good being paralegals.
A paralegal job is good if you like the legal field and want to work in it. Being a paralegal is not about making lots of money but about loving difficult legal work.
Are Paralegals Happy? Be a Happy Paralegal.
You may be surprised to find out that studies showed that many paralegals were not happy with their work. I think it has to do with the disproportion between complex work and not-so-super pay.
Plus, being bossed around by attorneys eventually gets old, and paralegals quit the profession for good. It is hard to find a senior career paralegal nowadays because paralegals have become unhappy with careers.
Like in any profession, some paralegals hate being a paralegal. Such hating being a paralegal has roots in the difficulty of the paralegal profession. First, because being a paralegal is a demanding and challenging job. Below I discuss more the pros and cons of being a paralegal.
The pressure for paralegals is real as paralegals must meet the same deadlines as an attorney. A law firm is a joint work, and unhappy lawyers pressure paralegals to catch up with deadlines and adhere to high work quality standards. Therefore, being happy often must come from within for paralegal.
Being a paralegal is a game of chance, not happiness. Nevertheless, some lucky paralegals end up in the hands of reasonable attorneys with caring and professional attitudes to their staff.
Such happy paralegals have good perks, understandable quality standards, a manageable workload, vacations, time off, and decent money. Usually, they work solid law firms or in-house corporate legal departments.
Other paralegals end up in small, medium, or large law firms with a-hole lawyers who are never happy themselves, who treat their staff like trash, with the toxic office environment and few perks.
Workloads are unmanageable; salaries are low, and such paralegals become unhappy, hate their work, and eventually quit their jobs or professions. These are the cons of being a paralegal, which I describe below in this article.
Overall, job satisfaction and level of happiness for paralegals are statistically relatively low. This may make many paralegals feel unhappy as paralegal.
Tips to Feel Happier as a Paralegal:
- Check paralegal turnover in a law firm. Low paralegal turnover may mean they are treated better at a law firm, and paralegals stay for years if not decades.
- Litigation law firms have the most stressful work environments, but litigation paralegals have the higher job mobility options.
- Do not argue with your lawyer but just do work well and improve your knowledge and skills. Remember that paralegal’s job is to support work attorneys doing work, not the other way around.
- Treat paralegal job as a skilled professional job. Improving your skills is a must.
- Forget about work when you head home.
Note: I hated being a paralegal. But I have met paralegals who loved it. It all depends.
Is Paralegal a Stressful Job?
A paralegal is an undeniably stressful job. Most jobs in law are stressful due to uncertainty of the outcome of the legal matter. Sudden deadlines, large volumes of work, unhappy attorneys, and clients – all that makes paralegal job stressful.
But there are both pros and cons of being a paralegal.
Most Important Truth About Paralegal Job
Here it is. A paralegal is essentially a person who wants to do practically all the work that that lawyer should have done themselves.
In other words, the main con and disadvantage of being a paralegal are that attorneys often want paralegals to do all the work for them. Essentially, paralegals are doing the lawyer’s job but for less pay.
Meanwhile, attorneys are grabbing more business and more clients and throwing even more workload on their paralegals.
The above is the essence of being a paralegal. Paralegals will be treated better if they can reduce the attorney’s work burden to the maximum, even at the expense of personal life and personal time.
What Are the Pros and Cons of Being a Paralegal?
Being a paralegal has its pros and cons. Let me list the pros and cons of being a paralegal below for your convenience.
What Are the Advantages of Being a Paralegal? (Paralegal Pros)
Why is it Good To Be A Paralegal
Despite being hard, there are advantages to being a paralegal.
The advantage of being a paralegal involves performing intellectually challenging work. Working in a law firm is an excellent intellectual exercise.
Another advantage of working as a paralegal is finding a good attorney boss. Paralegals who work for a good attorney manager must feel lucky. Unfortunately, not every paralegal is so fortunate.
Most paralegals end up working in small firms, and in smaller firms, paralegals have the advantage of having a closer relationship with their supervising attorney or attorneys.
The advantage of the paralegal position of that close relationship is access to an attorney for potential advice for free. Personal access to attorney advice is definitely among the pros of being a paralegal.
Another pro of being a paralegal is that all responsibility for the paralegal’s work is ultimately attributed to supervising attorney. Thus, a paralegal is somewhat shielded from malpractice when working for an attorney or law firm.
Another potential pro of paralegal job is that lawyers usually supervise paralegals and provide some training. If supervising attorney boss is good and established a good working relationship with a paralegal, then that attorney will be guarding its paralegal against troubles or mistakes in work.
Paralegal profession pros for some is that being a paralegal can be a step before going to law school and becoming a lawyer. Working in law for a few years may give paralegal an understanding of harsh reality so that paralegal makes an informed decision before committing to law school and becoming an attorney.
The danger is that being paralegal may suck you in, and you start forgetting that there are other viable career options in life. Likewise, the law may suck you in, and you may go to law school not because you want it but because you think you don’t know anything else. That would not be a good reason to become an attorney.
But what if you are terrific as a paralegal and feel that you can do that work on an attorney’s level? Then going to law school may be a natural step for you as a paralegal.
Beware that law schools do not necessarily consider paralegals better candidates than anyone else. Law schools want diversity in education and career experiences among their students. Except, law schools are always happy to see anyone with a STEM degree and work experience.
Among other cons of the paralegal profession is that paralegal may focus and become proficient in one or a few areas of law. Then such a paralegal may command more respect, slightly better pay, and has more options to change law firm or law department moving to a better paralegal job.
Among other pros of being a paralegal is a significant advantage of the lack of a degree to become a paralegal in most states. Therefore, paralegals incur less debt to become a paralegal. Having no debt is a considerable advantage of paralegal over many other professions.
What Are the Perks of Being a Paralegal?
Working as a paralegal may include some specific nice perks. For example, I already mentioned access to attorneys.
Working as a paralegal sometimes involves many different roles, from drafting pleadings to interviewing clients and talking about their cases. That happens more often in smaller law firms, and such work develops many soft skills like multitasking, critical reasoning, and others.
The other perk of the paralegal profession is the occasional possibility to talk to interesting clients. In large law firms, paralegals rarely contact clients, but in smaller ones, they communicate with clients more often. That develops communication skills like n other.
For example, in one of the laws firms I worked for, all paralegals had a chance to speak to millionaires and even a couple of billionaires occasionally. While that did not transform into higher salaries, that was a pleasant and worthy experience.
Speaking to very accomplished people who otherwise would never have found time to talk to me was kind of self-satisfying. That little perk for paralegals made work a little bit more interesting.
Of course, paralegals may enjoy perks in the form of regular benefits. For example, well-established law firms pay benefits like medical insurance, 401K, transportation and offer other perks for their paralegals.
In-house company law departments almost always have extra perks for paralegals, just like for any other employee. Those perks include benefits, discounts on the company’s products or services, corporate parties, and other things.
When I officially became certified as a paralegal, my law firm created a party for that occasion. First, we went to a nice restaurant, then to a nightclub on the Santa Monica beach, and to a couple of other fun places.
I came back home in the morning with a bottle of some expensive bottle of wine. An extra few hundred dollars in cash in my pocket presented to me was a perfectly legal gift. I will omit few other extraordinary adventures that night.
Little perks like pizza, food, and drinks were quite a regular occasion, especially when we did overtime.
I also briefly worked for a law office where the attorney smoked weed or sniffed something in his office behind closed doors. He would not mind sharing it, but it was not the kind of perk I wanted. So, I left.
Another little perk of being a paralegal is that work can be pretty interesting. Sometimes it is a pleasure to work on exciting cases with interesting facts.
Sometimes as a paralegal, you work on cases with fascinating personalities and events. As a result, you may learn a lot about the law and human psychology, life, personal finances, and other valuable topics.
Disadvantages of Being a Paralegal (Paralegal Cons)
Why it Sucks Being a Paralegal
Unfortunately, in addition to advantages and perks, there are many disadvantages of being a paralegal.
The paralegal is always in a secondary support role. A paralegal is a second-class employee at a law firm and is bossed around by attorneys and office managers. The inequality of positions puts paralegals at a perpetual disadvantage.
A paralegal will always be in a position to be an attorney, even if the paralegal has 25 years of experience and the attorney is 25-year-old. So I count that situation a significant con of being a paralegal.
Another major disadvantage of being a paralegal is the lack of upward mobility of career growth and a salary cap for paralegals. More about paralegal salary read in section below.
Other major cons include a lack defined career path for paralegals like for many other professions. A paralegal is only a professional, clerical job.
Another major con of being a paralegal is a lousy attorney boss who is also an awful manager. Such attorney bosses can make paralegal’s life and work miserable. Therefore, it is a significant disadvantage of being a paralegal with a-hole attorney boss.
And if that attorney is also not a good lawyer and the law firm has problems regular with clients and money, I suggest running as fast as possible.
The major con of being a paralegal is that attorneys expect paralegals to relieve them from many mundane tasks. Lawyers expect paralegals to perform those tasks on par with attorneys but for much less money.
Paralegals sometimes must wear many hats to be valuable for the firm and work different roles like legal secretaries, file or copy clerks. That happens most often in small law firms that do not have extra staff resources like separate legal secretaries or file clerks.
Such a multi-role situation can be an advantage or disadvantage of being a paralegal depending on the firm and on how you see it.
Because of all the above reasons, the most significant disadvantage and con of being a paralegal is high job stress which can lead to professional burnout.
The workload is usually quite heavy; law firms often save costs on staff, and paralegals are expected to perform a heavy load of work.
My con of being a paralegal was that the work was sometimes relatively mundane, dull, tedious, and just not meaningful. Being a paralegal can be very dull at times.
Law work environment often requires long hours, and that’s a con if you prefer to be at home at night.
Another biggest con and disadvantage of being a paralegal is a total restriction on the independent practice of law.
Paralegals are not allowed to independently practice law, with certain exceptions in few states like California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico. Therefore, a paralegal will always work for a salary at the mercy of lawyers.
A notable con of the paralegal profession is that lawyers sometimes can be pretty unhappy assholes themselves. Working with overstressed, unhappy lawyers trickles down that stress onto paralegals they supervise.
Another often cited major paralegal job con is that lawyers usually do not appreciate the work of their paralegals. As a result, overall paralegal pay has plenty of room for improvement.
Attorneys often have inflated egos and obnoxious personalities. If you can handle that, you will be fine. I coped with that by keeping my mouth shut, eyes open, and work done.
Paralegal job is not 9 to 5, and overtime is often involved, especially in law firms or departments focusing on litigation. And that’s a con too.
No career growth options present another major disadvantage of a paralegal career because there is essentially no career to build.
A paralegal’s work is always hard. I rarely met a paralegal who had it easy.
Relatively low pay is yet another major disadvantage of working as a paralegal. In addition, low pay may result in a lack of motivation. See my other article and see more details below.
Another con of legal work generally is frequent toxic environment law firms. A toxic law firm environment results from locking multiple people with inflated personal ambitions and a self-deceiving impression of high self-worth in one office.
As a result, they treat each other as opponents and enemies, not like friends.
I experienced such an environment with gossiping, backstabbing. My suggestion is to stay away from office politics if you cannot play it. Do your job well, keep your mouth shut, and do not take sides whatsoever. The only side you should ever take is the attorney who pays you your salary. Note that man law firms do have a good and professional working environment.
My pet peeve and con of being a paralegal was the lack of clear expectations or standards. Lawyers are generally not good at communicating clear standards of work. They just want everything perfect and avoid spending an extra minute editing because hours and even minutes are billable to a client.
Lawyers are usually not too supportive, with some exceptions. They expect paralegals to figure out things on their own and do an almost perfect job. That is a disadvantage for paralegals who never went to law school and lacked foundational theoretical legal knowledge.
The major disadvantage of working as a paralegal is that lawyers unjustifiably rely on paralegals to make decisions and acts that attorneys must have made or taken themselves. That high level of responsibility imposed on paralegal does not always correspond to pay and may even violate ethics rules.
But understand that attorney is that boss, and paralegals cannot argue with attorneys even if the attorney is wrong. Moreover, attorneys fire paralegals at will, and that’s another disadvantage of paralegal comparatively to lawyers.
One extra job con is that paralegals sometimes have to support several attorneys and figure out how to prioritize whose work they will do first. Hurting lawyers’ ego is quite possible when juggling several bosses.
The attorney profession has a high rate of substance or alcohol abuse. That may make the office environment disgusting.
A significant disadvantage about the legal profession is that most clients call lawyers when they are already screwed up and facing a significant problem. Thus, solving those problems can be a drain and is a con of the legal profession as a whole.
Often as a paralegal, you will witness the ugly sides of human behavior. People are screwing each other as you would never have believed otherwise. Just like a lawyer, a paralegal often deals with human ugliness but for much less money.
Paralegal as a secondary support professional is at a disadvantage because lawyers and clients may yell at the paralegal. But paralegal cannot yell back.
I remember how one of my attorney bosses simply transferred the call of the unhappy client to me. I spent about an hour of my time calming her down and reassuring her that we are on it. I convinced her that we monitor the situation and work as much as we can to speed up the resolution of her case. No bonus for that because it was part of the job. A con of being a paralegal.
Finally, paralegals do not have many transferrable skills which can help to move into another profession. Therefore, paralegals may need to take courses or get into college to change careers. The exception could be writing or real estate paralegals who later become writers or go to become real estate agents. Maybe, there are few other exceptions.
Can Paralegals Make Good Money? Paralegal Salaries.
Whether paralegals can make good money depends on what you consider is good money. Paralegals do not always make good money. Salaries often do not commensurate with the complexity of the work assigned. But experienced and skilled paralegals can make good money.
Allegedly, the average paralegal salary in the USA is $58,000 (See a list of sources after the article). I will tell you that 58K-60K for a paralegal is on the above-average side.
I have a paralegal friend who did a $50 an hour paralegal job, but then global pandemic made law firm lay off a large chunk of support staff, he included.
Most lawyers remained on the job, which is another example of the disadvantage of being a paralegal.
I would say that the range of $20 – $27 an hour is a more typical salary for a paralegal with few years of experience. $12-$18 is the most cited starting paralegal salary. As you can see, paralegals cannot make as much money as coders, for example. Well, it is harder to become a programmer than a paralegal.
One of the main reasons for widespread paralegal job dissatisfaction is that salary level often does not correspond to paralegal work’s hardness and stress when working in the law. In short, work is hard but making good money is also tricky for paralegals.
Those paralegals who survived working in legal shark tanks and obtained plenty of experience and skills in one or few legal specializations can make relatively good money.
For example, experienced litigation, transactional or corporate paralegals can make decent salaries at law firms.
Experienced paralegals can even independently work from home, supporting attorneys. Thus, they may hire an assistant to help them with the workload. Then they do more billable hours for attorneys and law firms and make good money this way. But remote work in law is a kind of rare benefit for paralegals.
Another type of paralegal that potentially can make good money is an independent paralegal in those several states which allow independent paralegals to practice law (see another article). Then they essentially run their businesses.
But most paralegals work at small or medium law firms, and they are not making large amounts of money.
Local cost of living is also important when discussing how much money a paralegal can make. Paralegal in Iowa or South Dakota supporting New York attorneys from home will make better money than paralegal living in New York. Because economically, their salaries are adjusted to the local cost of living.
The wage of $25 an hour in New York is nothing, but in rural Mid-West is decent money.
Can Paralegals Make Six Figures?
Very rarely can paralegals make six figures income. The six-figure for paralegals usually happens in two cases.
One is when a paralegal works for a large law firm and gains sufficient experience. A big law firm may allow a paralegal to make six-figure salaries. However, small and medium law firms usually do not pay paralegals six figures.
Another way to make six figures for a paralegal is to open own shop and work independently for law firms treating work as a business. But it is harder to find work this way as law firms usually want their paralegals to work on site.
Paralegals could easily make six figures if they could open their own offices and offer legal services directly to the public. But current ABA and state bars’ rules do not enable paralegals to provide legal services independently as that is the unauthorized practice of law. So paralegals would be eating attorneys’ lunch, and they won’t allow it.
But things may change, and in recent years, paralegals were allowed to practice law in several states (see my other article about this). Under such a scenario, paralegals independently practicing law and running their shops like businesses may make six figures in revenue or income.
On the regular paralegal path note, moving to an in-house company legal department may transform into a better salary. Companies tend to pay support staff better than most law firms. As a result, some in-house legal departments may eventually pay six-figure salaries to their very experienced paralegals.
Do Paralegals Write a Lot?
Paralegals often write a lot because attorneys outsource to paralegals drafting documents, pleadings, and briefs for litigation court cases. I can tell confidently that litigation paralegals write a lot. Such paralegals must have a good command of the language and excellent writing skills to earn a good salary.
On the other hand, paralegals in transactional work, like real estate or tax law, may not write as much. This is because such paralegals deal with many forms to fill out, agencies to require and file information, etc. Therefore, transactional type of work usually does not require much writing.
And corporate paralegals may or may not have to write a lot, depending on the niche of their work. For example, paralegals drafting contracts may draft a lot of contracts.
Note that often-drafting means taking previously written documents and simply re-writing them and reusing whole paragraphs. That makes work more manageable and efficient.
On the other hand, new research and new cases may result in paralegals writing a lot in their work.
Why Is It so Hard to Find a Paralegal Job?
Another among the cons of paralegal work is that it is hard to find a paralegal job for the following reasons.
First, since no education or degree is required to become a paralegal, pretty much anyone can become one. There is an oversupply of young inexperienced paralegals, making it hard to find a paralegal job.
The second reason is specialization. See, each paralegal can physically specialize only in one or a few areas of law. That specialization closes opportunities in other areas of law. Thus, the necessity to specialize reduces job opportunities and mobility for paralegals, making it hard to find a paralegal job sometimes.
And suppose a paralegal is a specialist in California state litigation. In that case, they may find it harder to move to Texas and find the same state litigation job because the procedure is different.
It can be hard to find a job for new inexperienced paralegals. But experienced and skilled paralegals usually can find a job much more manageable.
Conclusion
Is it worth being a paralegal? I think it may be worth being a paralegal if you want to get into law school later. There are many pros but even more cons of being a paralegal.
The barrier to entry into the profession is easy, and that is an advantage. But the path has no career growth. Decide for yourself what you want to do with your life.
