Law firms were the major employers of paralegals untill a few years ago when the need for paralegals in the legal departments of different organizations came to the fore. A professional paralegal should be able carry out his or her duties whout the supervision of a lawyer.
Today many paralegals can also be employed by Government offices, both the private commercial companies and NGOs. NGOs, private commercial companies and Governent offices now compete in the hiring of paralegals to handle their legal departments, where they take charge of legal issues, the drawing up of contracts for the company, researching and interpreting legal imports of steps to be taken by the organization and overseeing the legal aspects of the company's pension plans etc.
You are only considered a qualified paralegal if you have obtained your degree from an American Bar Association approved paralegal training institution, school or university.
To be a qualified paralegal you have to obtain your degree from an accredited school, university or a paralegal training institution that is a member of the National Federation of Paralegals and also approved by the American bar association. The American bar association is the lawyer's body that designs and supplies the paralegal training curriculum to the paralegal training institutions. There was no basic qualification for being employed as a lawyer's clerk. However, the situation has change drastically. There are banking paralegals, immigration paralegals, insurance paralegals etc. These postions are held by paralegals who were trained and qualified eminently in the specific laws governing those aspects of human endeavor.
Yes, it is only proper that as a paralegal who desires to practice in a particular paralegal field you should be trained to have a proper knowledge of the laws governing that area of human endeavor.
Your overall knowledge must correspond with the particular paralegal field you intend to work in. Though this does not mean that the firm employing you may not organize some sorth of in-house-training to acquaint you with your responsibilities. Only the parealegals who are trained in an accredited parealegal institution are given certification by the National Association of Paralegals. If you are well trained as paralegal you should know the professioinal ethics and also be at home with doing all that is required of you as paralegal. All paralegals who got good paralegal education know the ethics governing their profession and are also cable of handling all legal issues thrust upon them by their work. A competent paralegal will not find it difficult to draft a legal document of any type. I remember years back when as a lawyer's clerk I carried out legal researches by reading loads of hardcover law books in the library; today all legal systematic investigation to establish facts can be done online faster. Face it, without futher proding you should also know that you have to have enough knowledge of both oral and writen English to be able to practice successfully as a paralegal in this country.
There are lots of paralegal institutions both offline and online from which you can get all of the above qualities of a succsssful paralegal. Please make sure that your choice is an accredited paralegal training body approved by the American Bar Association. Employers do not favor degrees from unapproved institutions. .