Whether you’re a lawyer and would like to take a break without straying too far from your area of education and training, or if you simply want to have a taste of this field as someone who did not study law, there are careers you can look at. The following are five such jobs that are related to law but aren’t being a lawyer.
1. Legal Assistant
This is one of the fastest-growing teams of professionals in the legal field. As a paralegal or legal assistant, you will find work helping out clients who would like to reduce the legal costs that they would incur if they worked with an attorney. You can expect to be billed at a rate that’s between 25% and 50% of the hourly rate of an attorney. Without a law degree, you are prohibited from negotiating fees for services or giving legal advice. It’s estimated that at the moment, less than 1% of all civil lawsuits end up before a jury, and you can expect to have a lot of work if you work under a law firm that’s even moderately busy.
2. Trial Consultant
As a trial consultant, you will rely on legal technology to help a jury understand concepts that are otherwise complex. You can also help attorneys put across important themes that need a deeper understanding than average. This profession helps with legal technology in a courtroom and draws from the fields of law, sociology, and psychology. If you enjoy technology and would like to get close to the legal field as well, this is a profession to think about.
3. Mediator
Mediators are also called conciliators or arbitrators, and their services are experiencing more demand of late. They help people to settle their legal disputes without having to get into the courtroom. As litigation costs climb ever upwards, the field of alternate resolution of disputes expands. This has come a long way, with some states even requiring that before certain civil cases can proceed to trial, they should first attempt resolution by using an arbitrator. Mediators can also help people during the probate period as personal representatives who typically oversee the process from the start to the end.
4. Court Reporter
Court reporters do the job of recording trials and hearing speeches, statements, testimony, and law proceedings. They create a verbatim record of the spoken word. Also called stenographers, they use specialized equipment to transcribe court proceedings at rates that exceed 200 words per minute. They also perform real-time reporting and broadcast captioning for webcasts. As there are fewer people entering this profession, the ensuing shortage has led to a boost in salaries for the position. If this is something that you feel interests you, then it’s a good idea to look into it.
5. Legal Technology Support Specialist
Finally, you can become a legal technology support specialist who is skilled in both hardware and software that’s specific to the field. Your job in this capacity will be to troubleshoot any software and hardware that fails, stay aware of innovations in legal technology and make recommendations to the firm for which you work. You will also respond to questions and requests from the staff that is related to technology and find ways to improve the security, quality, and overall efficiency of the services that are provided. As far as physical equipment goes, you also need to know things like the most advanced shredding machines are capable of producing pieces of paper that impressively measure just 3 mm x 9 mm.
Go through this list to see if you can find a law-related job that you feel you would like to do. You may find your calling here, so be ready to put in some effort as an entrepreneur when you decide to try.
