Below are 5 paralegal mistakes (and a bonus one) to avoid early on in your paralegal career.
I’m going to share some of the biggest pitfalls that I see new paralegals make early in their careers that could be holding you back. And if you’re making any of them, what you can do to self-correct now so that it isn’t detrimental to your paralegal career.
Mistake 1 - Stay in Your Lane
Paralegal mistake number one – being afraid to step outside your lane. This will stunt your career growth and your earning potential. So what does it mean to stay in your lane?
It means you do exactly what they ask of you, exactly what is in your job description, and nothing else.
It also means that you might pigeonhole your career by getting too niched instead of having a well-rounded skill set in your practice area.
Learn the paralegal skills required for success.
The Problem with Staying in Your Lane
A perfect example of this is a litigation paralegal who I interviewed for a position at the firm. She had the years of experience and checked all of the other boxes for education and the basics that HR wanted to see.
I called her in for an interview, and the problem was that at 10 years of experience, and a normal salary for someone with that experience, she had never prepared for or attended a trial.
Worse yet, she didn’t take any supplemental training on the topic. At her firm, they had paralegals pigeon-holed into a specific phase of a litigation case. One paralegal did all of the legal research, cite checking and investigations. One paralegal did all of the discovery. Another paralegal did all of the trials.
The paralegal I was interviewing had only ever worked on large-scale document productions. Sometimes she even managed document review teams of 10 or 20 other people. But she had NO experience drafting motions or pleadings, NO experience interacting with clients, and NO experience getting ready for trial.
Find out more about your role as a trial paralegal.
I couldn’t afford to hire this paralegal even at the salary she was already making, because she essentially had the skill set of a first or second year paralegal. I was going to have to spend the same amount of time training her as I spend with the brand new paralegals.
I needed to teach her how to manage the discovery process, how to prepare for hearings, how to prepare for trial – all of the skills that a paralegal with 10 years of experience should have. And the biggest problem with all of that was the attorneys needed someone who could hit the ground running.
Speaking Up
One other aspect to this that I’d like to give you, especially as a new paralegal, staying in your lane means that you might be afraid to speak up when you have an idea of how to do something better or different.
However, you fail to speak up or just do it that way, because others might say things like “We’ve been doing it like this forever” and so you white-knuckle your way through it, even if it’s preventing you from doing the best possible job you are capable of doing.
Here’s how you can find your confident voice as a new paralegal.
Go Above and Beyond
And finally, I want to add one other thing about following the job description and the potential for a bonus.
Your job description is what they hired you to do for X salary. If you’re looking for a promotion or a bonus, you have to do MORE than what’s in your job description.
Remember, your job description is what they hired you to do and that’s part of your salary. If you want to be promoted from a Paralegal 1 to a Paralegal 2 or a junior paralegal to a senior paralegal, do the job description of THAT person before you have that title.
How to Avoid this Paralegal Mistake
Okay, so what can you do if you’ve already fallen a little bit into this pitfall? I would suggest that you start asking for work that’s not in your lane.
For example, if you’re like the paralegal I didn’t hire because she didn’t do anything except one small part of the litigation cases, then seek out work in other areas.
Ask your attorneys if you can help get ready for depositions or get ready for trial; if it’s been years that you’ve been in that same lane, then go get some outside training in those areas.
If you’re not comfortable speaking up when you notice something could be done better, jump online and search for a course on gaining confidence speaking in the workplace.
If you’re only doing what’s in your job description, start going above and beyond on your projects.
Mistake 2 - Not Building a Professional Network
Paralegal mistake number two – not building a professional network outside the firm. This is one I typically see new paralegals are pretty good at doing right out of school, networking, joining their local paralegal association, and keeping in touch with their fellow students from school.
But then the problem starts after five years or so. Time sets in. You’re busier at work and now you don’t have time to attend those paralegal association events, you don’t have time to attend other things, and maybe you spend too much time online.
Now, you have all these great networking places online, LinkedIn, Facebook groups, Instagram, wherever. But a word of caution is: you can’t build as strong of a network online as you can in person.
Building a network online
If you’re trying to build a network online, because maybe for whatever reason you can’t do in-person events, then you have to do more than just connect with someone on LinkedIn.
That’s not a network. Reach out to them by message, ask to jump on a phone call, and say, “Hey, would you like to have coffee or want to join me for a quick Zoom call or a phone call?” Something to get offline.
Don’t do this when networking online
The other word of caution I would warn about when doing online networking is that before you develop a relationship with someone, you can’t reach out and ask them to do you a favor.
A relationship is more than just connecting. When someone connects with you and agrees to connect with you, that’s not a relationship yet. This is where it gets tricky, right?
People go on to LinkedIn because they want to find a job. And yet, you’re going to go on LinkedIn when you’re unemployed, and you’re going to immediately connect with people and ask for introductions and things like that.
How do I know? Because I have it happen to me all the time. I think at the last count, I have around 6,000 LinkedIn connections.
I might have a mutual connection to one of the other 5,999 connections and someone will see that, and then they’ll connect with me, and they’ll say, “Hey, would you mind making an introduction?”
You can’t do that to somebody you have just met online. Connect with people now to build a network so that when you do need to ask a favor, you’ve been connected for a while.
Expand Your Network Beyond Your Firm
Take the time to build a network outside the firm. If you’ve been a reader for a while, you’ve seen from several of the paralegal interviews I’ve done throughout the last couple of years.
They got to the job of their dreams because of someone they knew, someone they worked with before, or someone they met at a local paralegal event. I know we all get busy, and you might not have a need to make that connection now, but you should make it now. And don’t forget about networking with vendors.
Remember the interview I did with Kim Bookout? It was focused on Paralegal Career Mobility. Kim Bookout advised on how to have career mobility, and it was to be kind to everyone, including the vendors. Because you never know when one of them wants to hire you for a really good paying job. Keep that in mind.
I’ll just close with a quote that I found from Porter Gale, “Your network is your net worth.” Alright, go out there and start networking.
Mistake 3 - Neglect Your Soft Skills
Paralegal mistake number three is to neglect your soft skills. While tech skills and practice-specific skills are important. Trust me when I tell you that soft skills are equally important. You could even have top-notch eDiscovery project management skills, but if you don’t know how to communicate effectively with the attorneys or the clients, you’re going to be limiting your career potential.
You can be the ace when it comes to drafting discovery requests or going to trial, but if you can’t efficiently manage your time, you’re going to be limiting your career potential. If you don’t have good interpersonal skills that will allow you to work well with your other colleagues. Okay, say it with me. You’re going to be limiting your career potential.
Here’s the thing. I’ve met plenty of paralegals over the years who were great at the other skills, but they lacked some core, soft skills that were important.
Were they making good money, and was their work product top-notch? Sure. Were they as successful as the paralegal who also had all the soft skills?
No. Not even close. That’s why I added mindset and behaviors into the litigation boot camp years ago because I was putting together a framework and I asked myself, what did all of the successful litigation paralegals have in common that I could teach to other new litigation paralegals?
Dive into the Litigation Paralegal Accelerator Framework.
Rate Your Soft Skill Levels
Okay, so what are some of the soft skills that you want to have? I’m going to list out the top ones that I hear from what attorneys want and what managers are looking for when they’re interviewing.
I want you to write these down on a sheet of paper and honestly ask yourself, how would you currently rate yourself in each category right now on a scale of 1 to 10?
Write those numbers next to the soft skills that I’m going to list for you below. Then, choose the lowest two and work on those first.
Depending on what it is, maybe it’s just getting some free advice on YouTube on how to improve that skill. Maybe that leads you to a book to read on the topic, or a short video course or something. But just do that. It’ll help.
Once you take some time developing these skills, go back and re-rank them. If they’ve moved up higher and you’ve got the other lower two that are two different soft skills, then work on those.
Put it on your calendar, though. Fifteen minutes every Saturday. Spend time reading or watching videos on that topic. Then put another date on your calendar, let’s say in 60 days. Do a status check on the list. Now, how would you rate them? Then, look at the lowest two, where are they at, and what are you going to work on for the next 60 days?
Important Soft Skills
Here’s your list. Now, one word of caution, this is not an exhaustive list. This is just a list of what comes to mind for me from what I’ve seen and heard.
Verbal Communication Skills
The ability to interact with clients, attorneys, colleagues, everyone. Now, that could be confidence in your communication skills as well, right?
Maybe you don’t feel as confident when you’re communicating with the attorneys in your office. Then be specific when you’re looking up videos.
How to speak more confidently at work.
How to be more confident at work.
Check out the 7 C’s of Paralegal Communication here.
Problem Solving Skills
Here are some tips on how to be a problem-solving paralegal.
Dig even deeper if this is a skill you ranked on the low side.
Attention to Detail
Oh yeah, you knew I was going to go there. That would have been number one on the list if I was doing this list in the order of importance.
Learn about how this is the one skill that can make or break your paralegal career.
Time Management
You can find 3 pro tips for paralegal time management here.
Go dig deeper if this is one of your low-ranking scores.
Critical Thinking
I’d pair this together with analytical thinking skills, but I also think working on your problem-solving skills is naturally going to start to improve critical thinking and, and analytic thinking.
Work on your problem-solving and critical thinking together if either of them ranks low.
Leadership Skills
I know you might think that leadership skills would only be necessary if you were moving into management, but that’s not true.
Leadership skills will help you with your inner office interaction with your colleagues. It’s going to allow you to lead a project and project manage it better.
Check out these paralegal project management tips.
Organization Skills
Can you look at a compilation of documents or data and use your organizational skills to come up with a plan on how to easily locate the information that you’re going to need later on?
Do you automatically just default to organizing everything chronologically? Sometimes that makes sense, other times it doesn’t.
But organizational skills are not just, I keep my desk neat and tidy. It’s more your mind’s organization skills.
Accountability and Responsibility
I’ve said this for decades, attorneys don’t want to hear excuses. Even valid ones.
They just want to get their work done correctly and on time. Did you hire a vendor who caused something to get filed and served late? Did you delegate work to a colleague and then turn it in with their errors on it? It just doesn’t matter to the attorney how it happened or who did it. They just want it fixed.
When they call you in their office to discuss whatever got messed up, go with facts and a plan for how that’s not going to happen again. If you delegated a portion of a project to another paralegal and they messed something up, that’s on you. You should have checked it better. So accountability and responsibility.
Okay, I don’t want this list to be too long and overwhelming, so I’ll stop at these eight. Put them on a list, give yourself an honest current ranking, and then get to work on the two lowest rankings. You’ve got this!
Mistake 4 - Focus on Your Years of Experience
Paralegal mistake number four – Focus on your years of experience INSTEAD of what you’re capable of doing.
I’ve met thousands of paralegals over the years, and I can tell you with 1000% certainty that the number of years of experience has absolutely nothing to do with how good they are at their job.
I’ve also met plenty of paralegals who have 30 years of experience on their resume and they don’t know how to do some of the things that a paralegal down the hall can do with only 4 years of experience.
I’ve also met many paralegals who didn’t have a degree or even a paralegal certificate, but they learned so fast how to perform at a level that was well beyond their years of experience.
I give you all of these examples because I think part of the problem with focusing on your years of experience is when you’re a new paralegal, you could get a bad case of comparisonitis. Is that even a word? Yup. And someone wrote a book about it!
Here are the top 7 tips for litigation paralegals this year.
Shift Your Mindset
When you’re looking at the senior, more experienced paralegals in the office and comparing yourself to them, you’re in the gap.
If you’re in a mindset of thinking “When will I ever be as good as them at my job?” Or, “I can’t wait for the next five years to go by so I can finally not be a newbie paralegal.” Don’t do that!
Don’t call yourself a newbie paralegal. You’re a paralegal. Your mindset is everything.
If your internal messaging that you have on repeat says things like:
I don’t know what I’m doing
I might make a mistake
I am scared I’m going to mess up and get fired
Guess what’s going to happen?
Well, you’re not necessarily going to get fired, but you sure won’t be confident.
Here’s the messaging that I want you to have on repeat going forward:
It absolutely does not take a decade or two to be a rockstar paralegal. I am capable of learning everything I need to know to be a great paralegal.
That’s it.
Say it out loud and repeat it when you need to.
Now, go make yourself a list of the skills you need to acquire so that you can be a rockstar paralegal right now. Not a decade from now.
And if you’re in litigation, I put together a template that has a lot of those skills in a table format that you can download below.
A Paralegal Resource For You
Free Strategy Guidebook for
New Litigation Paralegals
Are you ready to fast-track your litigation paralegal career?!
Our free guidebook reveals three powerful strategies that will set you up for success in your journey. If you’re ready to seize this opportunity and thrive as a litigation paralegal, sign up below, and get started now!
Mistake 5 - Quit the Profession Because of One Bad...
I saved the most important or biggest pitfall I see for last and it’s tragic. Paralegal mistake number five is to quit the profession because of one bad… Fill in the blank. Attorney, firm, practice area, etc.
I’ve interviewed so many paralegals and the one thing that I hear most often, is how they’re currently in the paralegal job of their dreams, but they had to kiss some frogs first. It wasn’t like that right out of school. It wasn’t immediate.
Look, there are some crappy paralegal jobs out there. I’ve read some of the stuff on these social media sites. And the stuff that these paralegals have to put up with daily is just horrendous.
I can see how it could happen. How you could just say, “That’s it. I am not cut out to be a paralegal. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
I don’t like it, but I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be that way. Not all firms are like that. It’s not like that at every firm. Sure, attorneys are notorious for having big egos and being difficult to work for. I’m not saying that it was a walk in the park with every attorney I ever worked for.
Get strategies for working with a difficult boss.
Not every attorney is as bad as the one that you’re dealing with, if you’re on the fence about maybe wanting to quit the profession. You’ve paid a lot of money and put in a lot of time to get that paralegal certificate. That’s no small feat. Don’t give up on all of that just because of one bad attorney, one bad firm, or one bad practice area.
Assess the Real Issue Before Making a Change
Ask yourself, is it the type of work? And if you say, no it’s the attorney. Well, if you like the actual physical work that you’re doing, the types of cases that you’re working on, or transactions that you’re closing, But you just don’t like the attorney that you work for, then if you’re at a big enough firm, maybe you could switch to another team.
Or is it that you’re working 12-hour days and weekends and have too much stress? Maybe it’s the practice area that you’re in.
Here are some paralegal tips for overcoming stress and anxiety.
Or maybe it’s because that particular attorney stresses people out. I think the last I checked, there were somewhere around, 1 million attorneys in the US. Maybe it’s even more. Maybe 1 million law firms. Maybe, I don’t know. Anyway, you’ve got so many options.
I did a blog on alternative paralegal careers, just different things you could do with your paralegal certificate. Most of those, though, were pretty much requiring you to have had some level of experience and acquired some paralegal skills throughout the years.
But, what if you could just switch to another firm? And I know that’s a big decision to make, but look, if you are miserable and stressed out to the point where you’re considering whether or not you might want to quit the paralegal profession, just give it a try and switch firms, or switch practice areas, or dump the attorney.
Free Guide for
Personal Injury Paralegals
Are you ready to be a rockstar personal injury paralegal?!
Our free guide shares the 8 steps you need to take to get you there. If you’re ready to start standing out at your firm, sign up below, and get started now!
Mistake 6 (Bonus) - Not Being on LinkedIn
The bonus mistake is to avoid not being on LinkedIn. Being on LinkedIn does not mean you’re looking for a job.
Why did I choose this one for the bonus? This is a major pitfall for new paralegals.
I hear too often, “Yes, I have a LinkedIn account, but I haven’t done much with my profile.” or “I haven’t logged in for so long. I don’t even remember my password, and I haven’t updated my profile in five years.”
LinkedIn is the number one professional networking tool that you have available to you and it’s free of charge. The last thing you want to do is wait until you’re unemployed to build your professional network when you have such a powerful tool available to you for free.
More than just a networking tool
There’s a treasure trove of information available to you on LinkedIn. There are LinkedIn groups specific to legal professionals. And even more specific to subtopics within the legal industry. For example, there are groups specific to litigation paralegals, eDiscovery topics, HR professionals, and so much more.
You can also use LinkedIn to research companies and people. You can get access to publications. Watch a live stream training on LinkedIn, keep in touch with people you went to college with, and find new job opportunities on LinkedIn.
If you’re thinking you don’t have time for LinkedIn, then I would say give up one of your other social media apps and replace that time spent watching TikTok videos or scrolling Instagram feeds with time on LinkedIn.
Your career will thank you. Do things that will increase your paralegal career security. If you’re already on LinkedIn, connect with me there. I’d love to keep in touch and celebrate your career accomplishments with you.
Meet the Author
Ann Pearson is the Founder of the Paralegal Boot Camp, and host of the Paralegals on Fire! Podcast Show, and passionate about promoting the paralegal profession.
Ann spent 20 years working as a paralegal manager and a litigation paralegal before opening the Paralegal Boot Camp in 2010.
Ann’s training programs focus on adding immediate value to a paralegal’s career and bridging the gap between what a paralegal learns in school and what they actually do on the job.
Visit the About Us Page to learn more about why Ann started the Paralegal Boot Camp.
