Any Other Paralegals Here?

llmarmalade

Wondering if there are any other paralegals/legal assistants here? I work full time at a law firm so I’m taking my studying slowly. I definitely think it’s an advantage to start out your journey as a paralegal but also it’s hard to find time to study.

J.D.Jay94

I am a paralegal as well. I work for a large law firm, so I know exactly how you feel.

SLODHILL-1-1-1-1-1-1

I am also a paralegal and agree that finding time to study is tough. I am taking it slow as well.

Bebop_the_Cowboy

I'm not a paralegal but I work full time. I believe in you guys. Remember slow is smooth and smooth is fast. A little transitive argument for positivity.

Lime Green Dot

Paralegal here! Echoing "quality over quantity" and to that I'd add consistency and planning a timeframe most days of the week you can and will consecrate to studying.

I was working FT plus had another PT gig when I began re-studying for my LSAT. I think I was working close to 70-hour weeks and frequently did overtime. Not sustainable at all. But my workload was out of necessity at the very beginning. Now, thankfully, I have a partner who has been able to take more of the financial reigns when he graduated, so I had an opportunity to reduce my paralegal hours by a whole lot. But I think this was also due in no small part to my relative seniority among our staff (5 years and counting at a law firm with a huge staff turnover). If you're working mainly for the experience and have the means of reducing your hours, I'd recommend that, unless you operate better under pressure from multiple directions. I also had a co-worker who asked to leave at 4 instead of 6p everyday in order to have time to study - she made that clear to HR at the get-go and was granted it, but I know different firms may be much stricter.

Otherwise, definitely fitting in studies a few quality hours in the morning before going to work is the way to go and how I did it starting out. And making sure to "punch out" from work on the dot as much as it's within your power to. And not take your work home with you (unless you're remote lol, then I guess just stuff it neatly in the corner under a blanket somewhere). I failed at this for the longest time due to the various hats I had to wear for the high volume of cases that came our department's way.

I had to learn to be my own advocate by trial and error. Legal idioms aside, test the waters but try to stick up for yourself and your time, knowing how weighted the LSAT is (for now at least) in the application process.

Best of luck!