Should I defer T6 school to work as legal assistant? Forum

[solidsnake]

If you were deferring to take on a high responsibility job at a hedge fund or PE shop, then this is probably a good idea; Work experience tends to help one perform better in law school (less entitlement, etc.) But for an ordinary legal assistant job, well that's just grunt work. Might as well save the grunt work for after you graduate, when at least you can make six figs doing it.

[Doodsmack]

Not to raise this thread from the dead, but as a paralegal (aka legal assistant) at a big firm for the last two years (also was a Poli Sci major) I can tell you there are some advantages to going the job route:

- You won't be clueless about the law going into law school.
- You can rack up some savings with all the overtime you will work.
- General work experience, IMO, makes you a more grounded person coming out of law school than if you had gone through seven straight years of book learning.

[memaha]

I would say take the job- you get to make money, save some of it up hopefully, and get some (even if it is menial) work experience.
The only concern I have is if any of the firms put a minimum time requirement onto the contract. If there is a two year commitment, I wouldn't choose the job because that is just pushing ur legal career even further back and you might not be able to defer that long.

[Kiersten1985]

I'm more curious to know why your SO would leave a hedge fund to go to law school...

Personally, working as a legal assistant before law school is probably one of the best decisions I ever made; however, I'm at a huge BigLaw firm and that's where I want to end up after law school. Huge clients, prominent cases, etc. Well worth it for me.

I think the biggest issue is that you plan to scale back in your 30's, in which case you won't make it very long in BigLaw. Not sure if that's your goal but if it's not, I don't see why being a legal assistant would be necessarily worth your time. I think the biggest benefit is the ability to determine if law is really what you want to do.