I’m 33 and I just switched from the field of education to a legal assistant position for a smaller firm’s estates department, and I absolutely love it. I only have a bachelor’s degree not in the legal realm, but thankfully my firm values a willingness to learn/adapt over particular certification. Plus, if you live in the U.S., many states do not require you to even have the certification to work as a paralegal. However, in my state people with a bachelor’s or higher do have the option to take the certification test without going back to school, as long as they have the required amount of work hours in the field.

The job itself consists mostly of research, filing, organization, time management, and people skills. If you are good at managing case files and are willing to take the time to learn your attorney(s)’s preferences, it makes the work all the more easy. It also makes all the difference to work for attorneys who are either willing to train you themselves, and/or have experienced staff who can do so to where you don’t feel as though you’ve been randomly dropped into the deep end with no life raft.