Vantaggi
Paralegals will learn A LOT in a short amount of time. If you take a job here, you'll know more about immigration than several of the young lawyers who manage you. This is the place to become an immigration ninja. The HR team is crazy proud of their free bagels on Fridays and cocktail parties every third Thursday of the month. They will mention this several times during recruitment.
Svantaggi
Paralegals do all of the work for young lawyers who got their degrees at second-rate schools, can barely spell or write, don't know jack about any of their cases, and spend their time on Facebook. Anything that goes wrong is blamed on a paralegal, whether or not he or she touched the case. Managers don't know the names of anyone on their teams and often spend time working from home, communicating with one favored lawyer and leaving all other assistant managers, lawyers, admins, and paralegals out of the loop. Favoritism is insane. Raises are promised but never materialize. The workload can be intense and lawyers often break under the pressure, then snap at the people who work under them. Questions about cases are discouraged. Everyone would give up the stupid free bagels if it meant they could be paid more, which would make up for the poor treatment. Lots of yelling, lots of crying amongst the lawyers. Lots of talk about how "we're a team!" but lawyers literally do not acknowledge paralegals in the hallway. Lots of nonsensical bureaucracy surrounding cases. Managers often have no idea why cases have been going sideways and implement useless rules instead of talking to people who have prepared the cases to see why foreign nationals are having trouble completing questionnaires or understanding our visa preparation instructions (usually because of poorly-worded language in the instructions the lawyers drafted).