Articles From the Team

What does the ideal Paralegal profile look like?

At least once a day, I receive a call from a candidate who has just graduated their LLB or LPC and aren’t necessarily looking for a new role, but advice on what they need to do, what experience they should gain, to ensure they are attractive to future employers.

For this reason, I’ve decided to dedicate this month’s blog entry to explaining in full, the qualities, grades, experience and competencies my clients look for when they hire.

This of course, varies massively depending on the exact position, so I’ve distinguished into the three key types of candidate my clients ask me to pipeline for.

Document Review: • Firstly, if you are a native speaker of any language, you stand a pretty high chance of being able to secure yourself some highly paid, if a little unpredictable, document review work. • Let’s assume you don’t speak a language, the work will involve reading through/ listening to extremely high volumes of usually quite dull subject matter, searching for contentious terms which might be relevant to the case in question. • The ideal candidate will be educated to both LLB standard (2:1 minimum) and LPC level, and ideally will have gained some document review experience, either from a doc review centre, or a firm. • As previously mentioned, it’s much easier to secure work if you speak a language, but either way be prepared to provide your chosen agency with an obscene amount of compliance. – firms often request these up front with submission of your CV. • For roles such as these you ca expect to earn between £13 to £22 per hour plus overtime.

Paralegal: • The candidate who will usually secure the highest paid paralegal roles with the best firms will have a 2:1 or 1st at degree level , • Often the client will specify that the LPC is an essential, although this is not always the case. • Dependant on the position and firm the client will request between 3 months and 2 years experience in a specific area of law, (most common are commercial litigation, corporate M&A, real estate finance, real estate and employment). • Salaries can vary a great deal depending the size of the firm and the area of law, £22,000 to £28,000 is fairly typical for a large to medium UK firm whereas in a US firm salaries of £28,000 to £35,000 are not uncommon.

Career Paralegal: • Career Paralegals are in rising demand in recent years, with Candidates with between 4 – 10 years experience in one particular area of law becoming increasingly valuable to firms. • Candidates like these are able to bride the gap between Paralegals and Solicitors, acting as a senior supportive figure in teams, who are often highly skilled and knowledgeable, but for some reason or other do not plan to train. • Typical Salaries for someone at this level sit between £35,000 to £45,000.

To discuss Paralegal roles please contact Stephanie Clark at BCL Legal.