The first step to starting your own contract paralegal firm is to find your niche. 

Whenever I work with young legal professionals, it is inevitable that one of them tells me they want to learn every area of law. When I hear this I feel like Robert Duvall’s character, the old veteraned L.A. officer,  in the 80’s movie Colors. On their first day working their gang beat together PacMan showed what could either be described as overzealousness or excessive force. In an attempt to get his rookie partner PacMan, played by Sean Penn, to understand the way he should conduct himself, Duvall tells him a joke. “There’s two bulls standing on top of a mountain. The younger one says to the older one: ‘Hey pop, let’s say we run down there and fuck one of them cows’. The older one says: ‘No son. Lets walk down and fuck ’em all’.

That is exactly how you should conquer a career in law. Slow and steady. Get to know one part and build from that. Now that might be a crude way of breaking it down, but in my crazy mind eager legal professionals who tell me they want to learn every area of law, or work in every area of law, look like PacMan did. Further, if you cannot handle a few f bombs, this certainly isn’t the business for you. 

I too have tried to be the jack of all trades, and we all know how that goes. Law is so deep, vast and complex, that it must be studied a certain way. It is akin to math in a sense. We would never try to teach our students Algebra, Addition, Subtraction, Geometry, Multiplication, Fractions and Calculus in one year or even four, and it is not typically done in seven. These are concepts that build upon each other. Law is not much different. 

But by focusing on one niche, you will inevitably learn about other areas of law. Then once you really have your particular focus downpacked, you can proceed to add more areas of expertise and law to your repertoire. If you do it in that order, you will see that having a good understanding of one area of law, can often lead to gaining knowledge in other areas of law. 

I think family, personal injury and bankruptcy law are all areas that are good to start out with. These are popular practiced areas. Experience in these areas can definitely make you marketable to a wide range of attorneys and law firms. However, I recommend you pursue the area that you are most interested in. If it is criminal law, by all means start there. Start with what interests you and even if it turns out not to be what you expected (that’s a veiled warning lol), your interest will drive your education. 

Let’s say family law is of interest to you. Get more specific. Divorce? Juvenile? Custody? If you picked Divorce that seems like we have narrowed it down enough, right? Nah, I think you should get even more specific. Simple, no asset divorce is a great place to start. Then once that is down packed, move onto focusing on divorces with assets and custody disputes. Focus on really understanding the discovery process, then learn everything you can about QDROs, then move onto inheritances, then alimony. You get the drift. 

My recommendation is to focus as much as you can. One attorney told me that they call it practicing law for a reason, and what I hope he meant by that is that we don’t know everything in law. None of us do. We are learning every day. When you focus on one specific area, you are refining your skills to the excellence that your clients deserve. We have plenty of attorneys who use our services just for discovery purposes. Most of the attorneys have other support staff but will send us their discovery so the rest of their support staff can remain focused on the areas they have refined that keep the law firm in order. 

To be frank, I have not met too many paralegals who have succeeded with their own paralegal firm or as a contract paralegal. But the few I have met, have a niche. One of them does nothing but personal injury work representing the insurance companies, another only does trial prep for divorces, and another only reviews medical records for attorneys and basically translates them to layman’s terms. Finding your niche and honing it will help you gain a reputation of authority on a certain topic and for knowing what you are doing. 

If you are not yet ready to start your own paralegal business and are just getting into the legal field, this is still something you should keep in mind. Whether it is being the Queen of Discovery at your own paralegal firm or in a law firm, having a niche gives you paralegal power.