Hey there! I recently graduated from college and landed my first job as a legal assistant. Since I don’t have prior experience in the legal field or any formal paralegal training, I’m feeling a bit nervous about starting. I’m wondering if anyone here has suggestions for things I should study up on or skills I should brush up on before I begin working? Any advice from experienced paralegals or legal professionals would be really appreciated. I want to make sure I’m as prepared as possible and don’t make any rookie mistakes on my first few days. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!
New assistants crash and burn when they don’t get legal deadline rhythms. I’ve watched people spend days perfecting some supporting doc while their I-140 premium processing deadline screamed past them. Game changer for me was learning to ask upfront: what’s urgent vs. what can I polish later? Changed everything about how I work.
My first immigration case? I wasted hours on gorgeous case summaries that nobody touched. What actually saved me was nailing down the firm’s file naming and organization system right away. Attorneys don’t want your analysis of that I-140 - they want to grab it in two seconds during a last-minute filing. Once I got their workflow down, everything clicked because I wasn’t frantically hunting for basic docs when deadlines hit.
Honestly, I wish someone had told me to learn legal research platforms before starting. My first week was tough because I couldn’t navigate Westlaw while my attorney waited for citations. Don’t worry about knowing everything upfront, though - law has tons of specialties and you’ll pick up most stuff on the job. What area of law are you going into? That’d help figure out what’s actually worth studying beforehand.