Is a Paralegal career a good path to Law school?

I am a Political Science major with a Paralegal Studies Minor at MSU (a 4 yr university). I hope to work as a paralegal for few years (hopefully 2 or 3) before going to law school. If I work as a paralegal will law schools take into account my experience from work and less on GPA and LSAT? I know a good LSAT score is required no matter what but is my GPA still going to be a major factor after a few years out of college.

Is this a good path to law school? Is it smart to wait and gain experience in the legal field before planning to go to law school?

Charis P

Pursuing a paralegal career for a few years before considering applying to law school is a smart decision and can be an excellent path to law school. There have been and continue to be far too many college graduates enrolling in law schools without any real concept of what a lawyer's career and work entails which is probably the primary reason why there are so many lawyers that are unsatisfied with their careers today.

Being employed as a paralegal in a mid to large sized firm will expose you to the true inner workings of a law practice, give you practical experience that you will never get out of your law school classes and provide you with valuable experience to decide if you want to commit well over $100k to a law school education to pursue a career in law. It's one of the reasons I did it and it served me well in making my decision to become a lawyer and it served some of my friends as well in helping them to decide a law career was not for them.

For first tier law schools your undergraduate GPA will always be a major factor but your experience as a paralegal will also be taken into consideration, especially if you are able to work in motivations like the ones above in your application and/or interview.

In addition, my experience as a paralegal also produced 2 outstanding references from the chair of the corporate department and the corporate paralegal supervisor and I picked up a wealth of knowledge on how to prepare for law school and exams from the attorneys there. One of the attorneys there also gave me extremely useful career advice that served me well in the business aspects of my law practice. I have no doubt that my experience there was integral to my successes in law school and in my career today.

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