When hiring in-house paralegals, how much of a plus do you give to candidates with big law experience? Firm name vs. practice area? Trying to decided between 2 offers (both big law, one ranked higher than the other and also more than double the head count) and considering where I want to be for possibility of pivoting to industry.
One is in compliance, regulatory the other in IP, patent.
I don’t care about firm name. In-house experience is best. If they don’t have that I look for the closest match in skills
Seconded! Relevant experience is what's most important.
I wish we could hire a paralegal. At the moment, the only option would be if they worked for free.
Definitely practice area. In my view, paralegals (the best) are usually quite specialized. It doesn’t matter what firm they come from, it is much more about the kind of work they do. For example, you wouldn’t likely hire a general litigation paralegal from a top firm over a specialized trademark paralegal from a lesser fit to do trademark work.
Pro
Yeah - in-house experience is way more helpful than Big Law. And I think they, of the areas you listed, compliance would be more desirable to a hiring manager in-house
Given my (small) company’s needs, I’d prefer someone with extensive in house experience as a patent paralegal. They can learn the other areas easily enough and become a generalist.
I’d expect bigger companies to have paralegals with more specialization.
Despite my title, I manage our in-house immigration and HR/employment compliance teams. We generally hire from big law or other large companies.