DEFINE YOU
Being an Air Force Paralegal By Staff Sergeant Rachel Barr
I still remember the night I called the Air Force Recruiting hotline. I was in my car, sobbing, feeling like a miserable failure and wondering what I was doing with my life. A situation to which many who sign the dotted line can likely relate. There is no doubt that without the Air Force Reserve, I would not be where I am today. I’ll briefly back up to about seven years ago. I was living in southern Minnesota working in the cattle breeding industry. I had dropped out of college to move out on my own, and to say it was a struggle would be an understatement. Although I loved working with the farmers in that industry, I knew I had to go back to school. It was then I decided to pursue an associates degree in paralegal studies. (How I went from farming to the legal industry—that’s another story.) Right before I was about to finish my paralegal degree, I realized how competitive the job market was, and how hard it would be for me to break into an industry to which I really had no connection. Enter—the United States Air Force Reserve. My father is a retired Master Sergeant from the U.S. Air Force, my mother served as an Air Force avionics systems specialist, and my stepfather served time as an active-duty Air Force member as well as an Army National Guard member.
24 N ATIONAL PARAL EG A L R EPO RT ER ®
Military service runs deep in my family, but I was not convinced it was for me right after high school. But after life put me through the ringer the first few years after I graduated from high school, I started to seriously think about what the military could do for me. Returning to that night I called the hotline—all I remember was that it was night time, and I was shocked they actually answered the phone. The person I spoke to gave me the name of a local recruiter in my area, and within a week I was in her office. Every thing that has happened to me since that night is, without a doubt, attributable to the United States Air Force. I signed my contract on 1 October 2015. At first, I was afraid because I was still working on my paralegal degree, but the Reserve gave me the flexibility to choose when to leave for basic training. I was able to finish my degree, and not only that, but because of the education I had, I was able to sign my contract with a guaranteed position as a Paralegal in the Air Force JAG Corps. Because I enlisted with the Reserve, I knew long before any of my active-duty counterparts what my job would be, where I would be going
for technical training, and how long tech school would last. Furthermore, I enlisted into a Traditional Reserve Unit. I already knew where I would be assigned, as do all Reserve and Air National Guard paralegals when they enlist. This gave me tremendous peace of mind throughout the process. Technical training was held at the Air Force JAG School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. There, my class was able to work side-by-side at various times with attorneys, receiving instruction from them; we even got a chance to watch the attorneys do a mock trial demonstration.
