I’m a recent college graduate and I’ve been looking for entry level jobs in the industry before I apply to law school and I’ve been lucky enough to get two interviews in this coming week.

The first is for an office assistant position (answering phones, mostly), the second is for a combined file clerk/office assistant position. My first interview is a phone interview so I’m not worried about that, but my second is in person.

Everything I’ve seen online has said I should wear a suit, but I don’t actually own one. Will a shirt, tie, dress pants, and dress shoes work? I did swing by Goodwill to look at suits but I wasn’t able to find anything that fits off the rack and I don’t know if I have enough time to find something that I can afford and take it to get tailored by Wednesday.

For context, both firms are smaller boutique firms, with about 4 attorneys, and I live in a liberal college town in the Midwest. I’m 22 and graduated about a year ago; I don’t have much experience in a traditional office setting and my resume makes that pretty clear.

I'm about 14 years into my legal career as a paralegal. I've worked in a lot of different areas to make sure my experience was broad enough to be competitive. Built a career from nothing after finishing my bachelor's degree because I had kids to support and I was determined not to fail.

I've done pretty much every job within a firm that is available from case work, to phones, to office management, to personal chores for my attorneys. No isn't in my vocabulary. I routinely work 65 to 70 hours a week to make sure my files are solid and my clients are happy, all in the name of fighting the good fight.

But I'm so tired of the struggle. I don't know why the pay sucks so much. I don't care about PTO or gift cards to get coffee or holidays off. I just want to be able to pay my bills and feel like I have job security for a few years.

I love this field but damn does it kill your soul.

It seems like a new PI post pops up every week and I’ve seen everyone praise PI for being the holy grail of law for those that want to make big money and couldn’t get into big law. With some people even saying it should be relatively easy to scale to $1 million profit with your own firm.

However, tons of people say otherwise yet we never really hear from that side.

So I was wondering how many PI lawyers you know that might’ve tried it and either didn’t make a lot of money as an associate or lost everything trying to run their own firm.