I am a current paralegal student in the Chicago area and will finish my certification in August. I have a BA in journalism and 20 years of experience working in marketing, sales and communications. My question is this: I would like to find either part or full time work while I am finishing school, which I would hope might develop into a paralegal opportunity (full time) upon my graduation. It appears most firms advertising opportunities are seeking 10 or more years of very direct experience in particular areas of law. How does one break in with that first paralegal job? How do those of you who are attorneys find your paralegal talent? How would you suggest I go about my job search?

You might want to consider starting as a Legal Secretary at a firm. Once you graduate from paralegal school, the firm may decide to keep you on as a paralegal.

Twinkie is 100% on the money. In my former firm all of our paralegals were people who started as legal secretaries and were then trained for our purposes. In fact we didn't even require them to become "certified" paralegals. We just trained them and when they were able to take over paralegal responsibilities they were promoted from secretary to paralegal.

Thank you. Good advice. Does anyone know of a good resource for finding legal secretary jobs in the Chicago area? I've tried Robert Half and they never respond, and generally I think I might do better if there's an agency that actively places people in these jobs to go through a recruiter. Suggestions?

Try craigslist.org. In my area the only legal jobs on there right now are legal secretary jobs.

Twinkie is 100% on the money. In my former firm all of our paralegals were people who started as legal secretaries and were then trained for our purposes. In fact we didn't even require them to become "certified" paralegals. We just trained them and when they were able to take over paralegal responsibilities they were promoted from secretary to paralegal.

Lisa - The scenerio you mapped out was exactly what happened to me many years ago when I was a Legal Secretary. The law office likes to train their own personnel that have been with the firm and know that particular area of law such as criminal, civil, real estate. Just going to paralegal school is fine and all, but paralegal schools don't really concentrate on one single aspect of law. Law is a very specialized career choice encompassing so many different niches, it's almost impossible for any paralegal course to properly cover.

In paralegal school you don't learn the "basics" like you do as a Legal Secretary.

Lisa - The scenerio you mapped out was exactly what happened to me many years ago when I was a Legal Secretary. The law office likes to train their own personnel that have been with the firm and know that particular area of law such as criminal, civil, real estate. Just going to paralegal school is fine and all, but paralegal schools don't really concentrate on one single aspect of law. Law is a very specialized career choice encompassing so many different niches, it's almost impossible for any paralegal course to properly cover.

In paralegal school you don't learn the "basics" like you do as a Legal Secretary.

Yep. In-house training makes the best paralegals IMO. And our firm was all real estate. Just by training the paralegals to handle our closings meant that after a year or so that paralegal could have handled any type of closing almost completely on their own. All the attorney needed to do was negotiate the contract and witness the closing documents. You don't get that kind of training in paralegal school.

Thank you for your valuable insight - all of you.