Paralegal interviews

Anyone else here have experience of being a paralegal or having sat these interviews?

I have been to quite a few now, I have some prior legal and blue-chip commercial experience but it's been very competitive. It means nothing when they have equally good candidates (even if you have achieved impressive things) all going for the same roles. Eg. For one role I interviewed for there were over 600 applicants, 44 were interviewed, 18 were given an offer. So, 2% acceptance rate and about 7% interview rate.

I often get an interview based on the strength of my application, but the interview for me is the stumbling block. I have not come up with an effective method of being successful more often than not. I have sat quite a few interviews by now.

How many interviews do people usually sit before getting a place? I have heard some horror stories, like 30 interviews before getting a place. It was always told to us in law school that getting a paralegal gig was relatively easy, not been my experience I'm afraid.


The way the interview usually goes is:

1. Firm fit, why the firm (pretty easy to answer if you have done your research)

2. Skills/work history (with skills being a kill driver as to why they reject you over the other person). Now, if the other person being interviewed has more experience one is going to have to sell this part quite hard, i.e. being able to exceed expectations of the job description via efficiencies or whatever metric. For example, some departments really value time efficiency and pride themselves on that.

3. You ask questions. I have learnt that it is better to always ask questions at the end.


Last point, sometimes you know within the first five seconds whether the guy on the other side of the table just does not like the look of you and is disengaged. I have never got a job offer before from someone that has reacted that way within the first few seconds.

Sometimes, it is just down to luck on which interviewer you get, and that really goes for all level of jobs you interview for. So for all that money spent on buying train tickets... I advise buying a railcard.

My daughter gave up applying for Training contracts after doing her GDL at the University of Law as the process was so competitive, but some of her friends did the LPC and yes, really struggled to get paralegal jobs, let alone tranining contracts. The few that got paralegal jobs then got stuck in them for years as there are so few TCs...law is a brutally competitive career and so many lies are told about it. Law schools should be ashamed of themselves for telling students that it's relatively easy to get paralegal jobs, and Unis should be ashamed for recruiting so many people onto law degrees that have almost no chance of getting a TC due to poor academics

I would not invest £12,000 on an LPC without assurance of a training contract at the end. I have thought about other sectors to go into and the money I saved up from my jobs and side income would be useful. For example, I have thought about learning how to drive a forklift truck, or going into the oil sector as a bolting technician with bolting certs. I have started building networks into these areas.

I think we need to invest more into careers services across the whole education system. If you don't have insider information or contacts who know the reality of the situation, then you are going to be missing a lot of information from which to make the best decisions.