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Flanagan. “Our program is designed
to help technical and non-technical
professionals.”
“In the coming years, a plethora of
jobs will open up, whether they be entry,
mid-level or high-level, for those whose
skills overlap in the security, privacy, and
compliance world,” Flanagan adds.
Cybersecurity Paralegals:
Career Forecast
“Students from Loyola’s Cybersecurity
& Data Privacy Law Program will be
the first lawyers trained wholly in
cybersecurity law,” says Ghiradelli. And,
he explains, as more lawyers settle into
this specialty, they will need paralegals
who are schooled in the area to work
alongside them.
Paralegal Michelle Tabb is on course
to meeting the need after beginning
Loyola Law School’s Master in Legal
Studies program with a concentration on
cybersecurity and data privacy. A native
of Los Angeles, California, she received
her bachelor’s degree in paralegal studies
from National University in Los Angeles.
Tabb’s employment in the legal field
spans 28 years, including 15 years as
a paralegal. She began the program in
the fall of 2016, with the goal of gaining
specialized legal knowledge about
privacy frameworks, the cybersecurity
legal landscape, federal and state
statutes, data breaches, and policy
considerations.
“With so many job opportunities
available and the vast need to fill them,
cybersecurity is definitely providing
booming intellectual and lucrative career
opportunities for paralegals,” says Tabb,
a part-time student who will graduate in
May 2018. “Contributing to monitoring
and protecting society’s information and
community online is very gratifying.”
Julia Dunlap, president of the
American Association for Paralegal
Education and director of business
and legal education at UC San Diego
Extension, says most employers
looking to hire paralegals in the area
of cybersecurity want them to have
advanced technology skills. “Paralegals
will need to understand how to maintain
and recover large amounts of data,”
says Dunlap. “More and more, paralegal
training programs are incorporating this
type of instruction in their curriculum.
“Every state and the American Bar
Association has changed the rules of
professional responsibility to which
attorneys must adhere to, requiring not
only knowledge of how to
maintain
client confidentiality electronically, but
also expanding the duty of competency
to include technological literacy,”
adds Dunlap. “Despite these expanded
rules, the need to protect client data
often falls on the paralegal. Paralegals
who seek out education in areas like
computer forensics and technology
will double their career opportunities.”
With all this in mind, Dunlaps says,
UC San Diego Extension created a twopart
online E-Discovery and Litigation
Technology Certificate to bridge the gap
between “what an entry-level paralegal
student is taught about technology in
traditional programs, and what a high in
demand paralegal should know.”
Mowery too sees new roles for
paralegals emanating from cybersecurity
concerns. “Internally, they play a vital
role in protecting our data by following
the firm’s procedures,” says Mowery. “In
the event that a client has a breach, the
paralegal can work with the client to help
identify what information may have been
stolen and to aid in the efforts to make
sure the client takes certain steps to
fulfill all its legal obligations.”
Mowery says he’s done presentations
at the firm demonstrating that
cybersecurity is no longer a discrete area
of the law, adding that “all practice areas
are now affected, and all attorneys must
help clients be proactive in protecting
their data.”
Flanagan says paralegals can learn
about compliance on the job, but
programs like the Master of Legal
Studies offered at Drexel’s
“…cybersecurity is definitely
providing booming intellectual
and lucrative career opportunities
for paralegals.”
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