From Technology Journalist to Paralegal

In addition to my paralegal certificate, I have a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and Public Information. I started out my life after graduation as a journalist, but realized quickly that working in law would be more fulfilling.

I've been fascinated by law since I was 13. I thought I was going to be a lawyer, because I enjoyed researching and finding both sides of an issue. I enjoyed public speaking, which would be an asset in the courtroom. At the same time, though, I loved to write, and I wanted to be able to tell other people's stories. I wanted to write stories that would explain current events and issues to the average person. In high school, I wrote for the school newspaper and even took Spanish so that I would be prepared for a career as a journalist in Los Angeles. I spent a year writing for a citywide teen newspaper, L.A. Youth. By senior year, I thought journalism was what I wanted, so I enrolled at Emerson College in Boston as a print journalism major.

My love for the law never faded, however. In my third year at Emerson, I took Journalism and Legal Issues as an elective, a course that focused mainly on First Amendment-related issues. The professor taught the course in the Socratic method. I did really well in that class. I loved reading and discussing the cases, and I even kept the textbook, More Speech, Not Less: Communications Law in the Information Age. My term paper was written on Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988) and its effect on student press freedoms, a topic that had fascinated me since junior high.

After that class, I seriously thought about going to law school. I bought an LSAT prep book the summer before my final semester at Emerson (I graduated a semester early). I researched schools. Everything I was reading about becoming a lawyer appealed to me. I'd still get to write, I'd do a lot of research, and I'd be using my brain. I also spent that summer temping in the legal department of a corporation that owned shopping malls, and the contracts, the land surveys, and the work that went into securing the purchases and sales interested me.