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nonny · 11mo

Hi! I'm looking for job ideas so I'm asking around since I'm pretty directionless. You've mentioned your job a couple of times and I was wondering if you could describe a little your field? Or even any interesting field/job you might know. I feel like there's so much I don't know and might actually like.

sure! i work in estate planning law as a legal executive assistant. i did pre-law but even before dropping out of college i decided against actually going to law school because of how much attorneys work lmao but i do enjoy being in the field! legal admin is pretty wide-ranging since depending on the practice and the firm you deal with entirely different things at different responsibility levels. some smaller firms will probably have you doing almost everything including paralegal work, and others are super-delegated and you're left only to do calendaring... my firm is pretty in the middle (considered biglaw but my practice group is kinda its own island sometimes, and i deal heavily with legal docs but some docket recording stuff gets put to the paralegals).

in terms of the specific practice i ended up really liking estate planning because even though i get crazy jealous of the clients and their ridiculous money sometimes (we do "high-value" individuals) it's really neat to be part of the continued more personal client relationship that can develop in this kind of area, and learning all the bits of the legal documents that get drafted and signed (wills, trusts, different powers of attorney/proxies, etc) and the situations that come up. like i saw a cryogenics client recently lol and i remember a woman who had a detailed document regarding her horses.

anyway, a heavy part of what i do is related to drafting and helping coordinate signatures on those documents. this definitely depends on the firm and your level of experience, because as a more experienced assistant (~15 years) to a partner/practice group leader in a biglaw firm i handle more than a newbie supporting an associate would, of course. but you'd get some exposure to the legal side at pretty much any level anywhere.

i've also worked in healthcare law and i think that one is super cool because you get to learn a lot about HIPAA! which is seriously misunderstood by most people haha. when i worked in that area the attorney i worked with (smaller office) also taught a medical ethics class and i think you probably get more moral-ethics (vs. just legal ethics) questions in that area of law, which is interesting.

ummm that's all i can think of but if you have any questions feel free to ask! i got lucky and kinda just ended up in law with an internship right out of high school and kept going so i didn't really have to do any Exploring, but i know you're not the only person who has trouble finding a "path," and asking around seems like a great idea!

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