The Shift From Employee to Entrepreneur: 4 Mindset Shifts Every Paralegal Must Make to Grow Their Business
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You've started your freelance paralegal business, maybe even landed a few clients or launched a website. But if you're still thinking like an employee instead of a business owner, you're going to hit a wall. A frustrating wall. One that keeps you stuck in low-paying work, undercharging for your expertise, or waiting around for permission to grow.
I lived this shift. I watched it happen in my own career and in the journeys of hundreds of paralegals I’ve coached. This one mindset evolution separates the ones who stall from the ones who scale.
Let’s talk about what it really takes to move from employee to entrepreneur—because paralegals were never meant to stay underpaid, overlooked, or underutilized. We were built for more.
1 . In Employment, You're Paid for the Blend. In Business, You’re Paid for the Best.
We all know, and I’ve beat it over the head in my book enough: in a traditional law firm job, most paralegals aren’t compensated based on the value they truly deliver. Too often, paralegals earn based on the lowest value of tasks the perform. At the very best, they’re paid based on a blended role. A mash-up of high-level casework and low-level admin that dilutes their earning power.
You might be the reason your attorney wins trial after trial. You might manage deadlines, oversee discovery, and build bulletproof systems. But if you’re also the one answering phones, e-filing documents, and fixing invoice typos, your salary doesn’t reflect your strategic value. It reflects the lowest-return task you touch.
That’s exactly the kind of thinking that will sabotage your success when you go out on your own.
In business (whether you're offering a broad range of virtual paralegal services and remote legal support, one-off projects, or starting a solo freelance paralegal business) that logic has to die. You are no longer an employee inside someone else's hierarchy. You are now a business owner. A specialized service provider. A direct solution to a law firm’s problem.
And your pricing should reflect your highest-value work, not the average of everything you can do.
Let’s break this down:
If you offer medical records retrieval as your specialty and you’re fast, compliant, and organized like a machine, don’t undervalue it. That’s not simple admin. That’s legal administrative support that removes bottlenecks and keeps litigation moving. Own that expertise. Charge for it like it matters…because it does.
If you’re the paralegal who preps attorneys for trial better than anyone, then that’s what you lead with. High-stakes support like that deserves premium pricing. There are attorneys out there looking for exactly that level of backup. Be visible to them.
This is where many paralegals go wrong when setting their freelance paralegal rates. They get stuck trying to be “affordable.” They base their pricing on their old job title, their former salary, or what they think an attorney will pay in the EMPLOYEE market.
They ask: How much do freelance paralegals charge? Then they search online, find some wildly inaccurate average spit out to them by Google, and try to match it. But you need to remember, your rate isn’t about fitting in. It’s about standing out. It’s about charging for what you’re best at.
Your rate should reflect results and the return on investment your clients receive. Period.
You're not here to be a budget option. You're not here to be compared to offshore contractors or generic admin support. You’re here to solve specific problems and create space, clarity, and profit for the law firms you serve.
And when you do that well? The right attorneys will pay for it.
So stop trying to be “affordable.” Stop pricing from fear. Stop averaging out your brilliance.
The freelance legal market has more to offer than you think. It rewards clarity, confidence, and specialized value. Position your services around the work that delivers the highest ROI. That’s where your income grows. That’s where your brand builds. And that’s where your freedom begins.
2 . Stop Asking for Permission to Charge Your Worth
Let me tell you about a freelance paralegal I coached.
She had years of experience, knew her stuff, and was absolutely worth $70 per hour. She had the skills, the results, and even referrals to back it up. But on discovery calls, when it came time to talk pricing, she would freeze. Instead of confidently stating her rate, she’d offer a “trial” period at $30 an hour. Her logic? If she could prove herself, surely the attorney would see her value and agree to pay when she increased her prices.
But that’s not a business strategy. That’s asking for permission.
When you do that, you instantly shift the power dynamic. You place yourself in a subordinate role, not a strategic one. You invite the attorney to treat you like a temp, not a partner. And more often than not, you attract clients who love the discount but never plan to pay full price.
If you’re wondering how to price freelance services or how to increase your freelance paralegal rates, this is where it starts: you must own your number. Not apologize for it. Not shrink from it. Not bury it in a trial period and hope someone will upgrade later.
Yes, there are smart ways to offer entry points. You can create an onboarding package with a small discount off of their invoice for the first month. You can waive a setup fee. You can waive your minimum hourly package requirements. You can offer a two-hour starter block for new clients to test drive your virtual legal assistant support. Those are intentional, limited, and strategic.
But what you cannot do is offer a lower rate, cutting your earning potential in half, “just to get in the door.” That is not an entry offer. That is undervaluing your business and expretise in disguise.
And I get it. This fear doesn’t come out of nowhere. Most of us were conditioned to earn raises through over-performance. Be a good employee. Do more than what’s asked. Eventually, someone will notice. Eventually, you’ll get the recognition or the pay bump.
But in business, no one is coming to give you a raise. You decide your rate. You set your value. You state your terms. And the right clients will respect that. The wrong ones will ghost you, push back, or haggle—and that’s actually a blessing, because they’re not meant for your business anyway.
This is the mental leap that separates freelancers stuck in survival mode from the ones who scale. Confidence in your rate is not arrogance. It is alignment. It is clarity. It is the foundation of your brand. If you walk into discovery calls hoping someone will give you permission to charge what you’re worth, you’re building your business on shaky ground.
So stop asking. Start declaring.
You’re not negotiating a salary. You’re not trying to impress a hiring manager. You’re not proving yourself. You are offering a solution, quoting your rate, and leaving the decision in the client’s hands.
Your worth is not up for debate.
3 . Some Paralegals Sabotage Their Own Freedom
Let’s be honest: many paralegals unknowingly block their own path to freedom. Not because they lack skills, drive, or potential, but because they’re still carrying the mindset that’s been baked into them from years of traditional employment.
They’ve been told there’s a ceiling.
That they should just be grateful to have a job.
That career growth in this field is linear, limited, and capped unless they jump ship and become a lawyer.
This thinking is outdated and it’s costing them.
The reality is, there’s no blueprint for paralegal career growth inside most firms. Roles are often hybridized, responsibilities stacked without extra pay, and promotions few and far between. The “ladder” is often more like a treadmill. And when you’ve spent years being undervalued, underpaid, and overworked, it’s easy to internalize the belief that this is as good as it gets.
But the legal industry is evolving. Fast. Technology is changing the way law firms operate. Remote work is normal. Independent paralegals and virtual legal assistants are becoming essential to modern practice. And yet, many talented professionals are still holding back, afraid to step into business ownership or raise their rates because they’re clinging to the familiar framework of employment.
This is the sabotage.
They don’t believe freedom is real because it hasn’t been modeled.
They hesitate to market themselves as high-value because they’ve only ever been treated like overhead.
They fear being “too expensive” because they’ve been conditioned to keep themselves “affordable” in exchange for stability.
The rules change when you step into entrepreneurship.
You're not limited by internal pay bands or firm budgets. You're not waiting for an annual review to maybe get a $2/hour raise. You're building a business where your income reflects your impact. Where your freedom is earned by how boldly you own your value and how strategically you deliver it.
So if you’re undercharging, hesitating to market yourself, or doubting whether you’re really cut out for this… ask yourself: Are you operating from belief or from baggage? Because the paralegal profession isn’t dying. It’s evolving. And those who recognize that shift—and reposition themselves accordingly—are the ones who will rise. The ones who will break the income ceiling. The ones who will create careers that no job description could have predicted.
You can keep sabotaging your freedom by waiting for someone to grant it to you. Or you can decide: I don’t need a ladder. I’m building the whole damn house.
4 . What I Had to Unlearn from Being a “Good Employee”
I used to think being a “good employee” would translate seamlessly into being a successful entrepreneur. After all, I was efficient, detail-oriented, and always willing to go the extra mile. That’s what made me valuable in every firm I worked at, right?
But once I went out on my own, I realized: the very mindset that made me valuable in a law firm was the exact thing holding me back in business.
Here’s what I mean:
As an employee, my job was to carry out the tasks I was given. I got really good at following direction, anticipating needs, thinking ahead, and keeping things organized and moving. That’s not a bad skill set, but it’s incomplete if you want to grow a business. Because business ownership isn’t about doing the work someone hands you.
It’s about being the person who decides what needs to be done.
To scale as a freelance paralegal or virtual legal assistant, you can’t just be the executor. You have to step into the role of consultant, strategist and growth partner.
This is the mindset shift that separates the ones who stay stuck in client churn from the ones who become indispensable.
You don’t grow by waiting to be told what to do. You grow by seeing the bigger picture and guiding your clients through it.
Think about it: attorneys don’t just need help getting things off their plate. They need someone who can tell them what’s clogging the plate in the first place. Someone who can spot the bottlenecks, create systems, optimize workflows, and identify where growth is being stalled.
That’s not assistant-level support. That’s business-critical insight.
This is what elevates your role and your rates. This is how you become more than support— you become strategic infrastructure.
So if you feel like you’re stuck doing task after task, constantly trying to prove yourself through output, pause and ask: am I still operating like an employee in my own business?
Because being good at doing the work isn’t the goal anymore.
The goal is to lead it.
Conclusion
If there’s one thing I’ve learned after coaching hundreds of freelance paralegals, it’s this:
Your skills aren’t the problem.
Your potential isn’t the problem.
The real shift happens when you stop operating like someone waiting to be given a job—and start acting like someone building a business.
That means charging based on value, not task lists.
It means owning your rates without shrinking or apologizing.
It means unlearning the habits that kept you small—and stepping into the role of strategist, leader, and partner.
None of this change happens overnight. But every decision you make is either reinforcing the employee version of you—or carving space for the entrepreneur you’re becoming.
You don’t need to be louder. You don’t need to be flashier.
You just need to trust the quiet power of knowing your worth, showing up with clarity, and leading your business with intention.
That’s how the shift happens.
And once it does? You don’t go back.
PARALEGAL PODCAST FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hi, and welcome back to the Paralegals Should Be Millionaires podcast, Jacqueline Foster here. Today I want to talk about the shift from employee to entrepreneur as a paralegal and how you might still be thinking like a worker versus a leader, and how that's going to keep you stuck. Whether that keeps you stuck from not expanding your business, not jumping into your business, or just stuck in in a income.
Plateau, if you will. I think it's such an important topic to cover because it's the most vital shift that will make or break your success as you move into higher earning potentials, entrepreneurship, autonomy, owning your schedule, all the fun things that come with being a business owner. This is what's going to make or break.
Your success, to be honest, at the, at the very core of what it is. Um, obviously there's so many factors that come into business, making the right pricing decisions, picking your North Star client, figuring out your marketing flow. There's so many things that do come with building a successful business, but let's call this almost the gatekeeper.
It's the gatekeeper on whether or not you are going to be successful. So let's jump in and first talk a little bit about the mindset shift so that you need to make so you can start embodying your worth. Now, paralegals, this is, this is the bones of my messaging in my book. Paralegals should be millionaires.
Paralegals are. Commonly, routinely compensated in the job market for the lowest value task that they perform, or at best, if at all, at best, a blend between the lowest value contribution to the highest value contribution. Now, a disclaimer here, there is no such thing as a, as a low or high. Contribution or valued contribution In terms of business operations?
I mean, obviously some things carry greater weight, but at the end of the day, we know we need everybody from the bottom up to be able to function, not only a law firm, any business for that matter, so there's really no bottom person. However, when I talk and I say the lowest value task, what I am getting at is the lowest ROI task.
So that might be that there is zero return on investment for the law firm. It might be that the task is easily replaced, like the task you are performing could be done by anybody that they could pluck off of the street or out of a different industry. Say, you know, a target associate, somebody with no legal background doesn't require a lot of training.
It's like, here's how you do it, and I'll go perform it. That's what I mean when I say the lowest value task. It's not that it doesn't matter and that it's not needed in the operations of the law firm, but it just doesn't really produce a high high ROI and it doesn't really require an intense level of expertise in order to execute it.
So backing up here, paralegals are commonly valued based on that level of task. Some law firms try to do better. And creating. When they're creating the hybrid role, they try to come somewhere in the middle. So say, you know, the legal secretary, the legal admin, somebody very entry level is maybe marketed in the $30,000 per year range.
And the high, high, high, high, high level paralegal is more in the 80 to $90,000. Per per year range in their market, they'll create this hybrid mess, which we beat the crap out of. In conversation in my book, they'll create this hybrid mess where, alright, let's just slap them in the middle. They're doing a little bit of both on both ends, so let's offer a $50,000 salary somewhere in that middle range.
Thus is the oppression of the paralegal and the true worth and value that the paralegal brings to the law firm. Again, I beat the crap outta that in my book. I think we all get the picture of what I am trying to say here. So as we're talking about that and that oppressive nature that paralegals have been shoved into where, yeah, you do really valuable work, but you also do this work that's like zero ROI.
For us, it's just an expense, purely an expense. We can't compensate you according to that high value. When you switch into business, that completely dissolves, that mentality completely goes away. You are no longer an employee out in the job market that is hoping to find that job where they're leaning more towards that high value you bring in terms of compensation, you're no longer negotiating.
Hey, I won five trials with, uh, behind. I was sitting behind you when you won five trials this year. I think I could, you know, take a $5,000 raise this year, that would be fair. Or can I get a bonus structure or something? Gone are those days. Um, you have to completely eliminate that out of your mind. And why this is important is that if you don't, and you go to sit down to start your business and you start jotting ideas down on in a notebook, you will not price yourself correctly in the market that is competitive.
Now, let me back up because I just said something very misleading. When I say the market that is competitive, I don't mean that. You have no chance because there's way too many paralegals out there. You're not pricing yourself accordingly, you're screwed. Don't even try. It is a market that is competitive, meaning there are other paralegals out there that are charging the worth of the high, highest level of value that they bring in.
A hundred percent up to the law firm, depending on the business's structure, the paralegal business's structure a hundred percent up to the law firm. If they compensate them according to their pricing for that high level work, and they still have them do. Smaller tasks that don't return and don't provide a return on investment to the law firm that's on them.
And a topic for another day on how you can structure your business as you merge into agency work or team models where you can offer different pricing tiers depending on the nature of the work the law firm is seeking. But let's not go down that rabbit hole. Let's just talk about, say a paralegal that is going out there solo offering services.
When you go out there, you are marketing, promoting, advertising, branding, establishing yourself in the highest value of work you perform. You're not out there stating. I'm so great. I can draft all these complex mo motions. I can prep you for trial like no other paralegal has prepped you for trial. You can even fly me out and I will sit behind your bench at trial.
You're not gonna go out there. And then also another post, say I can handle some e-filing and, um, organizing some case files. Um, and, and I'll charge, you know, it's the same 85 because I can still do this. You're not doing that. You're out there owning your highest. Worth value. Did that come out right? Your highest level of worth, why am I struggling getting that out?
So again, mindset shift that you need to embody your worth in your business. Now let me take a pause here because I know I have a lot of paralegals and as well as legal assistants, entry level paralegals, a couple years like junior level paralegals in my space that are interested in freelancing, and I advocate for that professional out in the business.
World in the entrepreneur space, you are same mentality. When you go to build your business and say you're offering legal administrative support, let's generalize it that way. You still need to charge your worth for the highest value you provide. So if you are scheduling calendaring, organizing files, e-filing things that.
Like I stated before, you can easily be trained onto another employee, but you're also branding yourself as medical record requests are my jam. I will make sure that you never have to feel the pain of chasing down medical records ever again. I know how to contact third parties. I know how to work with clients to get the proper HIPAA release forms.
I know how to. Organize it. I create specific tables to help everybody in your team know exactly what the status, the ETA is on those requests. That's your highest value of contribution. That's where you need to price yourself. So I think ultimately speaking, paralegals end up not, and legal assistants end up undercharging more often than overcharging.
I would say probably 99% of the time this is happening undercharging rather than overcharging. Their services because they are trying to match that employee chaos, employee market chaos that is. Somewhere in between or charging on the lower end to say, I know I'm worth $85 in the complex drafting that I can perform, but the attorney might not want to utilize.
Do they have enough complex drafting? What if they need all these other things? And now $85 is way too much to pay for the e-filing. That's the wrong way to approach your business, and you are completely undercutting your worth. Not only personally. For yourself, not only for your earning potential, but also for the perceived value in the market.
Backing up to what I stated before in a competitive market, meaning it's not about the one that is. The cheapest and the loudest gets the client absolute polar opposite, to be honest with you. Well, I shouldn't say polar opposite 'cause it's not like the most expensive and the quietest will always win win either.
It's about the person that has and the business that has priced their services correctly in accordance to the value they provide. There's no, what's the catch? Remember in my book I talk about this where I say, if you go online and you. See a service, a virtual paralegal, a remote paralegal service, and it claims I can do this, or you can get a, a dedicated remote paralegal for $12 per hour.
You immediately know that the value is going to be that of an offshore contractor. Not to say they don't have their place in the industry or their place in the business world, but comparing that to the value you provide, you are not going to be matching that $12 and they, in their brains, the consumers are perceiving that correctly.
So to recap it all, not only when you stay stuck in that employee, I'm an employee figuring out my value somewhere in the middle. What's affordable? What's this? Staying in that mindset versus. Appropriately charging the top value of your worth. I am not getting that outright the top, what the top level of your worth is.
The number one thing that you do that is price the highest pricing it up there. And again, you can always work your way backwards. I'm not saying, oh, I charge too much and drop my price. What I'm saying is you can always work your way backwards as your business evolves. If you go to. Expand into an agency, expand into a team model.
You can start to offer different pricing tiers for different kinds of services, but right out of the gate, make sure you are valuing yourself based on that top level of worth that you perform in tasks. Okay, so number two. The shift from employee to entrepreneur. You need to learn to stop asking for permission and start making decisions.
So asking for permission. Paralegals, I. Uh, let me actually start this with an example. There was a paralegal in my course that had gone through the roadmap or part of the roadmap. They were through the pricing part of the roadmap, pricing her services that had asked my thoughts on, you know, I want to charge 70 per hour, something like that.
But I am concerned that, you know, attorneys aren't going to want to commit to me up front. I'm assuming attorneys are going to be cautious spending that dollar amount when they don't know the quality of my work. So maybe off the bat I should be offering a two month discount, a two month waiver of minimum commitments.
And I understand the strategy that was there. It's the mentality that, well, if I can get them in the door and I can prove myself, then it'll be a no brainer. They'll hire me for my hourly rate. But what you're doing there is asking the attorney permission to charge your worth. You're asking your consumer, your client permission.
To charge what you want to charge for your services. No, you're not doing it directly, but you're doing it indirectly by giving them a taste at a discounted rate, hoping they'll see your value, and then they'll continue to pay for your services at $70 or at full price. Don't get me wrong, there's absolute.
Smart business strategies to offer a hundred dollars discounts for the first month, $200 discount for the first month, um, or discounts if you engage in X length of contract. Yes, those are marketing strategies, client relationship strategies, retention strategies, wholeheartedly implement them in your business, but get out of the mindset that you need to.
It's not about. Getting outta the mindset that you need to prove your worth, absolutely, you need to prove your worth, but you already determined that your worth is $70. So if your worth you determined is $70, and you go on the discovery call and say to the attorney, but I'll do it for 30 for two months, you're asking for them to determine that your worth is $70 by trying it at the 30.
Now I know how that can sound a little bit confusing. It's like, how could it hurt to give them a little preview? First and foremost, who knows if your client's going to, they might find you're valuable at $30 or maybe because you offered $30 for two months. So they're like, great, I'll pile work on her, get caught up, and then I'll, in their mind, they're like, I'll just cancel when she raises her prices.
That is very common. Number two. You are not portraying confidence in yourself by boldly stating what your hourly rate is. Now it is absolutely acceptable, depending, especially if you're a solo to state. You know, my monthly minimum packages are 20, but for the first month, I know things are slow to ramp up.
I'll go. 10 hours or 10 hours will be my minimum. Or we could play it week by week for now until we hit that one month mark and then we can determine the package. Again, that's smart business client relationship retention strategies, but to again, jump in and say, when they ask, what does this cost? Well, I'm $70 per hour, but um, I know you're probably concerned about working with me, so I'm gonna lower it to $30 for the first month.
That does, that does not, you are asking the attorney permission to charge your rate. I know it's such a subtle shift from business strategy to owning your worth or business strategy to not asking for permission to charge. You have to set internal boundaries around the value that you have determined.
You bring to the table and what that value is worth. You have to set healthy boundaries around it that are amendable in terms of evaluating if a client is worth trying to. Uh, ease into a package, like I stated, lower monthly minimums for the first month, or I have a $200 discount to help with some onboarding costs, you know, so you don't have to feel you spent money getting me into systems and all of that.
Absolutely utilize that. Never undercut. What your hour is worth. Never. That's like going back into the employee market and them offering you a salary that is $20,000 lower than what you feel this job should be paying you and taking it, hoping that they'll give you a raise when you ask for one, or hoping that you can threaten to leave and they'll increase your price.
We're done with that. We are done with that. You opened up a business. To take charge of your financial reality, backtracking and still allowing the consumer of your business services the client to 100% run the show asking for permission to charge more. Not going to fly. So make sure as a business owner, you get out of that I'm negotiating my salary or I'm letting them trial me out at half the cost.
Don't do that. Find that very fine line between smart business strategy, retention and client satisfaction strategy, and also maintaining your worth and not under communicating your worth. Going back to the conversation, if you have a person out there that's, if you're charging way too little, the perceived value of you is immediately going down.
If you say $30 per hour for complex work, that paralegals out there are charging 70 per hour. You don't look like a bargain. You look incompetent. And I know that sounds really. Harsh for me to say it that way, but it just doesn't line up. You don't look like a serious business owner. You don't look confident.
Continue that confidence from the day you set your pricing through that sales call with your attorney. One more thing to mention on that. Don't assume they're going to be seeking some sort of discount or some sort of percentage off or some sort of trial run. Don't assume that if they ask for one.
Absolutely use your business strategy to help make them more comfortable, to engage your services. In the beginning, you have confidence that you will make them happy, and you are going to execute all of your promises. Give them immediate impact to their bottom line. Solve their problems. You have that confidence at that point when they're showing hesitation, provide them with some peace of mind of a hundred dollars off or two hours free to get started.
Just to feel me out. Don't ever discount for two months a month, or more than five hours, to be completely honest with you. Okay, next topic on the employee to entrepreneurship. Mindset shift number three, why do some paralegals sabotage their own freedom? So this is obviously a layered conversation. I just realized on the YouTube version that my camera is a little crooked.
It's all right. So this is a layered conversation, right? We talked about the mindset shift that you can start embodying your worth for the highest value tasks that you perform. We just talked about learning to stop asking for permission, start making decisions, basically. Own that worth and carry it through.
Don't shell up when you start to get imposter syndrome, or you assume. If the attorney is thinking something or they won't pay that, or this or that. Stop. Stop doing that. Now we're talking about how you sabotage your own freedom, first of all, because number one and number two have not been checked. But number three is because we, again, going back to the paralegal oppression that I talk about in section one of the book is.
You've been fed a lie that there's no true career growth as a paralegal. Now, actually, it's not that there, that's not really a lie because there isn't, in the traditional sense, a very common expected path for paralegals to hit that a hundred thousand dollars. Mark, we're seeing it more and more in the employee job market, and I do believe it's because of all these paralegals that have, since the pandemic gone remote, opened up their own businesses.
They've raised the perceived value of a paralegal in the job market as well. As we get into that more senior level, bigger law firms, higher revenue law firms, bigger cities, all of that. So we're seeing more of the a hundred thousand dollars out there in the job market. However. Those do exist and they're very hard to come by.
So because of that, we've been taught as paralegals to sit down, shut up, be thankful you have a job. And when we've accepted that as. What we signed up for, it's what we signed up for when we became a paralegal. You know, we didn't do our research. We didn't really look at the job market out there. We took our recruiter's word for it, and that said we were gonna come outta college making $70,000 a year.
Drew story minded, when I came outta college making $12 per hour, all of that has been fed to us in this really limbo industry. Profession of paralegal that. We're sabotaging ourselves and our own freedom. By staying stuck in that mindset and not recognizing how the industry is evolving rapidly. We constantly talk about AI in the law firm.
We're seeing more and more software development companies coming up with different case management systems. Draft document, drafting systems, out marketing systems, all the things you can possibly think of to automate law firms in waves we'd never seen before. And more and more every single month.
Paralegals going independent and claiming their own career growth ladder. We are sabotaging ourselves by staying stuck in that employee mindset. And not looking at the entrepreneur mindset, which is opportunity voids in the market, demand in the market needs of attorneys that go beyond just this salaried hybrid mess that they call like a paralegal slash legal assistant.
So that's a really quick one I just wanted to touch on is getting outta that mindset that the hybrid mess. Is the standard in the industry. It's slowly phasing out. It's no longer competitive in the market. More and more paralegals are leaving their full-time jobs to. Start their own businesses, and as a result, attorneys and law firms are having to be more strategic with their job ads, with their roles that they're hiring for.
With the positions, with the salaries. How can we offer better positions to, it takes a lot. Once a paralegal is doing really well on their own at 120,000, $150,000 a year, solo entrepreneur, it's hard to pull 'em outta that and say, Hey, come back and work for us for 60 grand a year. Right. So get yourself outta the mindset that this old way of the paralegal world is, is still the norm.
Yes, it's still there, but I think that standard is quickly changing. All right, number four, and this one is a little more. Personal conversation, I am talking about me personally was what I had to unlearn from being a good employee and I pondered on this for a while to make sure that it's making sense. A good employee, I guess from an employer standpoint.
Is many times a yes man. Now, don't get me wrong, there are employers out there who hire different levels of professionals and they want them to come in and be like, tell me what to do. I would say that the majority of paralegal roles out there, the attorneys want somebody that just does what they're told the first time and.
Again, this is difficult for me to get out in words because obviously there comes a time when attorneys need paralegals to think independently, to think ahead, to not be micromanaged, right? Let me draw the contrast between a good business owner once you become that a good business owner. A do this man, a director of saying, do this, that can tactfully hide behind an over the top client experience, forward professional.
So let me unpack that a little bit. This typically is established in the discovery call and then executed thereafter. In the discovery call, you're not in a job interview. You're not trying to just say everything the, you think the attorney wants to hear from your coaching, from, uh, your job. You know, you've looked up job interview best practices, how to respond, how to prep in a discovery call.
You are more, you are no longer an employee. On the other end of that conversation, you have become a consultant. A strategist and a growth partner. So with those three added layers to your persona, to your relationship with this attorney, on the other end of the call, you have shifted out of I'm just a yes man.
I'm just here to do the work and make your life better. Like I said, of course, there's times when paralegals, you know, in the employ employee role, need to think ahead, need to create case management systems, need to forecast issues that could arise. Don't wait for the attorney to tell you to follow up on that discovery request, what have you.
What I mean is that yes, ma'am, that just comes to work nine to five and does what they've been told to do. And that's being told what to do could be think ahead. I need you to take lead. When you get on that discovery call, you shift out of that mindset and you sit more in that consultant strategy strategist, growth partner chair.
So when you're on the other line, you're listening to this attorney. Their frustrations, their needs, their gaps in their support staff system. You're paraphrasing back to them all the things that they've identified they need, and then you're taking it one step further to now establish, I am your yes man.
I will get all that done. And now look what else you gain from me. I know better ways. I know how to fix growth gaps. I know how to fix bottlenecks and unclog them. I know how to create feedback loops for your law firm where things don't get m mixed, missed on under the table, what have you. I know how we can grow together.
You start to add little things, you know, as you know, we might wanna start with a 20 hour package as things get busier, you know, I know this practice area has a busy season during, you know, the fall or something, whatever. We can increase that just to make sure you stay above water and then decrease ebb and flow.
You become more than just the yes man, and you start to become the do this man tactfully where you sound like you're simply a growth partner. For this law firm and when you can perfect that and then properly execute it as the paralegal live up to your promises. That's when you build lifelong relationships with clients, that's when clients start referring you to their colleagues.
That's when you start creating a true personal brand in the industry as word of mouth spreads, as people comment on your posts. Jessica is totally the real deal. She's helped my law firm do X, Y, Z, uh. Testimonials on your website stating, I don't even wanna write this testimonial 'cause I don't want everybody to know out there how great Jessica is as a paralegal and a partner in, in my staffing, um, solutions.
So I know that that maybe sounds like I was just adding a filler, but that is huge. Humungo, like if I could pick one, it's that one right there. Well, they're all important, but that one right there. Because the moment I stepped out of that mentality, right, I had my first client where I was the yes man, the, yep, I can get that done.
Yep. I can get that done. Oh, I need it on a flat fee. Yep. I can structure a flat fee. I was the yes man. Yes man, yes man. Trying to get the job as I merged out of that. I came into a do this man tactfully, hidden behind exceptional client experience, exceptional consulting strategists, growth partner vibes.
Once I was able to do that, that's when the spark lit and I was closing sales calls at 98% conversion rates, and I was getting referrals out of my ears that first year, and I hit that a hundred thousand dollars mark. By that first year, I believe, because of that, and I hit the TH 500. Thousand dollars mark by year three because of that initial change.
It's what lit the fire of growth in my company. It's what took me from just a freelancer taking some orders, trying to make some side income, trying to get the groceries paid for, trying to get my house out of foreclosure to I'm growing a damn business. I am growing a business, and I am creating an expertise around what it is that I do.
It's powerful. So meditate on that. Think about it, write it down. How can you go from just offering medical record retrievals to a consultant strategist, growth partner? Okay. Jot down little ideas. I'm not saying you have to start advertising those as services, but it's how you communicate. It's how you get out on social media.
It's how you demonstrate your value behind just the doing. It's the bettering, it's the growing, okay, man. I've been holding that coffin this whole time. I'm still dealing with my seventh sickness of the year. Um, yeah. So that is it, the four. Shifts you have to take to get out of employee and intro into entrepreneur pants if you will start embodying your worth.
Number one, stop asking for permission to charge that worth. Don't sabotage your own freedom by staying stuck in the mentality that there's no true growth. For a paralegal, unless you get lucky and unlearn how to be a good employee and start learning how to be a good growth partner. Those are my four things.
And yeah, let me know by the way, I am going to open up Ask Jacqueline, um, again, anything. I used to have a form and then it became hard to track. I have a better way so. I want you to ask me questions. I want you to inspire my next podcast episodes. I need help as somebody who just wrote like, I think it was 70 some thousand words into a book on this topic.
I feel like I've said it all and I feel like I'm rehashing. Uh, things over and over again, and I'm trying to get more creative with my, uh, content and get more back to my authenticity and just having conversations with my community now that I've got the book out of the way and I feel like I can breathe and I have space for clarity and creativity.
Um, so make sure you come join the app that is, can be found in the description below. Um, in the app, it's our private. Community area, so I'm not gonna open up the forms anymore on my email. It just got really hard to track. What I'm gonna do is just monitor the app. Um, I might even open up and ask Jacqueline, I don't know yet.
Check it out. You'll see it if I do come join the app and. Yeah, ask me anything and I would love to answer it in a podcast episode or maybe just jump on a one-off video for you. I would love to get your questions or just drop 'em in the comments below if you don't wanna go through all of that. Also, if you are interested in starting a freelance paralegal business, I do have a free starter course waiting for you as well in the links below.
And finally, one last thing, paralegals should be millionaires. The book is available for purchase on Amazon in all formats, audible, Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. So make sure you go grab it, and if you have grabbed it and read it and loved it, please go leave me a rating. People are so slow to leave ratings I've sold.
Tons of books and I only have four ratings right now from the date of this podcast. I think it's June 11th or 10th, 11th, so make sure you go do that. I would really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. As always, make sure to subscribe, follow whatever you need to do. Come find me on socials. I appreciate your support and until next time, have great days ahead of you.