Are You Sure You Want to be a Paralegal? Read This First!

Are You Sure You Want to be a Paralegal? Read This First!Have you been thinking about becoming a Paralegal? You owe it to yourself to consider this Public Service Announcement first. The Recovering Paralegal provides an insiders look into the toxicity of law firms and why this dead end job is bad for women. Utilizing nearly ten years of experience as a litigation paralegal split between more than one law firm, the Recovering Paralegal explains why the law firm is no place to wind up. I want to get people

Have you been thinking about becoming a Paralegal? You owe it to yourself to consider this Public Service Announcement first. The Recovering Paralegal provides an insiderÕs look into the toxicity of law firms and why this dead-end job is bad for women. Utilizing nearly ten years of experience as a litigation paralegal split between more than one law firm, the Recovering Paralegal explains why the law firm is no place to wind up.

ÒI want to get people talking about what it is really like to work in a law firm as a paralegal. Based upon countless talks with anonymous paralegals across the country, it is my opinion that my own experiences were not unique to me. What I speak of in the book is something that goes on in toxic law firms everywhere! Unfortunately, it is a sort of dirty secret that people just donÕt talk about for fear of losing their jobs. Not all paralegals (thankfully) get to work with both a self-proclaimed ÒDirty Old ManÓ and a boss who barks at his staff every 7-9 minutes like a dog at the same time, but it seems that almost every single one is exposed to some sort of psychological torment, which always felt like abuse to me. Bullying is alive and well in the law office. I would like to shine a light on the psychological warfare that lawyers engage in with their own staff on a daily basis (some for fun to boost their own egos, others because they are so broken they donÕt know how else to communicate). I would like to warn those who are looking to enter the field and perhaps even provide some comic relief to those who are still working as paralegals. I wish someone would have written the truth before I entered the field. I certainly might have been swayed to consider another ÒcareerÓ option.Ó

The Author outlines all of the reasons why the law firm is a toxic place to work, provides a short quiz to help the reader determine if they have the personality traits necessary to survive inside the law office, and includes twenty-five exhibits to demonstrate the reality of law firm culture and what the daily work actually is. Those who are researching the paralegal ÒcareerÓ field - either as brand new people entering the work force or those who are looking for a second career, deserve a look behind the curtain. This ÒcareerÓ path is being sold to unwitting consumers as a viable choice with growth potential, and it is nothing but a dead-end job.