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Before joining Michelmores in September 2024, I had worked in three other legal roles. I worked as a legal advisor for an insurance company after finishing the GDL, as a paralegal and then as a senior paralegal at another law firm in Bristol. These roles provided me with a breadth of experience which I have found incredibly useful as a trainee. In this article I will set out three of the most transferable skills I learned as a paralegal.
How to interact with colleagues in a professional manner
Knowing how to appropriately interact with colleagues is often one of the most challenging aspects of starting a new professional job. It is especially important as a trainee when you’re looking to make a good first impression. Trainees are expected to bounce between different matters, teams and colleagues straight away. This necessarily means you interact with lots of different personalities early on. Knowing how to approach colleagues for help or build rapport at social events can be a tricky thing to get right. My time as a paralegal allowed me to become familiar with the way law firms and solicitors operate, and the professional way colleagues are expected to interact with each other.
How to manage a varied workload
Every trainee is expected to stay on top of a full and varied workload. However, this isn’t a skill which comes naturally to everyone, and it certainly didn’t to me. My time as a paralegal helped me to understand how important it is to use all the tools available to you. For example, case trackers, daily lists and calendar updates have proved very useful. The good habits I developed as a paralegal have been hugely applicable to my role as a trainee. Effective workload management is a skill I first developed in a different firm, and is something I have built on further at Michelmores.
How to communicate in a clear and effective manner
Fostering positive client relationships is essential to the success of every law firm. One of the best ways to do this is communicating in a clear and concise manner. It is a skill that often gets overlooked, but understanding how to write correspondence to clients in an appropriate and informative manner is vital. Clients want legal and commercial issues explained straightforwardly and in a format which is easy to digest. Not only does this promote positive relationships but also helps build trust, which is key to both winning and keeping business. My time as a paralegal gave me invaluable experience writing professional correspondence and helped me understand some of the nuances of client relationships.
Being a paralegal provided me with some of the foundations I needed to embark on my training contract. However, there are many other skills and habits I have had to develop. No-one is the finished article, and everyone starts their training contact with skills they have already developed and others they need to work on. I don’t believe there is only one route to success as a trainee and neither does Michelmores. It is the diversity of experiences, skills and personalities that not only makes Michelmores the success it is, but also such a great place to work
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