received simkins PFO today.
I have a question and if anyone knows please give me a piece of advice!
I have been struggling to find a paralegal job and finally I’ve recently interviewed for a paralegal role at a small local criminal defence law firm.
One of the questions was how serious I am about getting into criminal law and although it is definitely one of my interests, it is not IT for me, just yet. I have interests in other areas of law - and ideally, I would like to work in a city law firm eventually.
Which makes me think that how helpful is this experience gonna be for me to get into a city law firm (as a paralegal or TC)?
Would this make me look a bit indecisive as I have a career in a different industry and then a criminal law paralegal and then a city law firm?
I don’t want to waste their time and money to train me up as a criminal law paralegal… I feel like I am overthinking this (without a job offer from them lol) but please share your insight on this! I am not young so I would like to make smart choices 😭
First of all, congrats on your interview!
I received a TC offer at a large commercial firm only with previous public inquiry and immigration paralegal experience. I work in medical law now and for various reasons I am now applying to other TCs, and am struggling with sounding commercially focused in any of my answers.
I think you will gain transferable skills you can definitely write about in applications which helps, and law firms often recruit career changers. However, I personally think I may have had better luck this year with applications if I had recently worked in more commercially focused areas as a paralegal. I also graduated in 2021, so feel like I can’t
really write about being in the commercial law society etc at university as part of my motivation now.
I think any legal experience is good experience, but I just wanted to offer my perspective as someone in a fairly similar position 😊