Why Work Should Always Be Related
[00:00:00] I read your articles regularly, giving your views and commitment to work as a lawyer, would it makes sense for a junior qualified lawyer six months PQE to be a claims handler in a marine insurance company for the sake of getting relevant Shipping and Marine Insurance law, working experience for a couple of years. Would it be viewed as a downgrade if chooses paralegal?
So there are two questions. The first is if you want to work in a very niche field, which is Shipping and Marine Insurance law then working as a claims handler for an insurance company. I don't know if being a claims handler is going to be a legally related thing, but if it is related then that would be good.
I don't think working as a paralegal is a good idea. I think that if you're an attorney, you want to be an attorney. If this is going to give you Marine Insurance law experience, Then that's great, but if it's not, then that's a problem.
I don't know the answer to that question, to be honest with you. So you need to think about that, how it's related.
Attorneys should not be paralegals.
Cause why is someone going to hire a paralegal? Who's got a hire an attorney as a paralegal. It does not lead to advancement.
Attorneys come to the U.S. All the time from foreign countries and get LLMs.
[00:01:00] It's not a good idea to work beneath, to work in a position beneath your skillset just for the benefit of working in the U.S., because, it will be difficult to get out of that. That goes for anybody, any type of job you're thinking about. It's also not a good idea to start your first job in-house especially with respect to an in-house job that is not practicing law.
I'm not sure what's going on with you here, but I would recommend that. Of, try to get a job in a law firm in your home country, practicing law first. The reason law firms are good is law firms are accountable, their businesses and accountable for results to paying clients.
And so they just they tend to provide a little bit different quality of a different type of work many times than then you may find in a law firm necessarily, in an in-house or government type job.
