There is the opportunity cost of working as an LAA and being paid an LAA salary instead of applying to law school right away. I don't think working as an LAA is necessarily bad idea to get exposure to legal work. It will just be very limited since LAA work is mostly administrative. I would NOT recommend taking a volunteer position for a job that should be paid. Those type of employers are, more likely than not, red flags and are unlikely to treat you well.  Most lawyers never worked as LAAs and many don't come from lawyer families. There are law-adjacent jobs if you get a law degree and decide not to be a lawyer.

Also an Applicant (now admit), but ‘sort of’ went down the path you’re describing here.     As someone who is currently in a senior/managerial position in a legal adjunct role that has dealt with hiring decisions, this stuff is going to stick out like a sore thumb. You’re gunning for entry-level positions with an overqualified resume. A prospective employer may see this as a flight risk and if you’re mentioning your law school aspirations in your cover letter or interviews, then there’s little-to-no chance you’ll be hired. Part of hiring entails mitigating the risk for turnover, since it means wasted resources and time on training. This is especially true for smaller firms (not too sure about mid to large firms though).    My only advice is to be mindful of this potential pitfall with your professional profile.    I’d also echo @Yogurt Baron’s comments too - there’s no “outside of the box” advice for law school. Just sit the LSAT and prepare application packages.

If you'd like to be a lawyer in Canada you should avoid that program. 

I gotta echo the good Baron here, my first impression upon reading your post is "this person's very odd".  That's not meant to be an insult! But I think it is a big part of why you aren't finding success in your job search (in addition to the factors mentioned above).  My advice is to take it easy. Come off as less intense and maybe work a bit on how you communicate in writing.  Also, don't get so defensive when you get advice you don't like. Someone spent a lot of time crafting a helpful and informative response. Respect their time and expertise (they know the industry and especially the areas you're applying to) and don't try and argue with them. 

No - waiting on my final MA grades still! I emailed them before i was accepted and they said that your application would be reviewed regardless if your final marks were in yet.

1. "Work in collections, and then the law is a "natural career progression". It's really not. I mean, you can switch careers anytime. I could become a beekeeper tomorrow. But a job in collections does not inexorably, or "naturally", progress into a career in law. That's just odd." The answer to this lies in myself expanding onto "why law? : "I was equally drawn to the field out of deep curiosity for such studies, apprehension for legal intellectual work demand, possibility of a profound dive into one career field for life." Such type of education as a BA in arts and a specific work background in collections could sometimes converge logically into an interest in law. Journalistic background can spark interest in law, as can the exposure to the collections case management (through seeing some legal intricacies within collections).  2. I am trying to test out more practically my interest in the legal field, therefore decided to start with a gradual exposure, not "an all in" and the highest level of responsibility possible. It is a big choice to be made, so for me it requires time and direct exposure to the field. That's why I am using this route and not going into "LSAT+law school+" yet. I want to test waters by being an assistant in a law firm or working as a court and client service representative with a choice still being in the making. There are threads with stories of legal assistants even on this forum who pursued their law degrees following this type of work. I am not sure which "oddness"/inconsistence you are targeting here.  And fortunately, firms that did interview me did not feel I was spamming and there was enough qualifications present to interview in the first place. It is possible to get into such role without relevant education, just harder.   I agree that volunteering side might be of an odd turn, but not for all. Thank you for commenting. 

Yeah, there's a lot going on here. I'm just responding because I suspect few others will. There's some sort of communication barrier, for one thing - I don't feel like I fully understand what you're saying. I don't mean to be unkind here. But the best advice I can give is that you seem to have a very odd and indirect approach to pursuing your goals. The "legal field" is not a temple which one "enters". You develop the skills to get the job you want. Getting jobs is not always easy, but in most cases, it's very simple, and you seem to be having some trouble with the notion that you can just go from A to B. You're saying, "Well, I'm at A, and I'm trying to get to B, so obviously I went to J, so now how do I get from J to T?" And it's, like, you don't? You just go from A to B?  If you would like to be a lawyer, the path is extremely clear: write the LSAT, apply to law school, gain admission, attend law school, pass the bar. The steps couldn't be clearer. If you don't have the grades or the LSAT, it might be difficult, but it's clear how you do it. You don't do it by getting a job as an assistant in a law firm. That's actually a completely unrelated job. I know very few lawyers who were ever legal assistants. If you'd like to be a paralegal, again, there's a career path for that. I'm a paraprofessional serving lawyers. There's, again, a very clear career path to get my job: you get the relevant education, develop the relevant experience, and then apply for the job, and then you get the job, because you have the education and the experience. How it doesn't work is: 1. Work in collections, and then the law is a "natural career progression". It's really not. I mean, you can switch careers anytime. I could become a beekeeper tomorrow. But a job in collections does not inexorably, or "naturally", progress into a career in law. That's just odd. 2. Applying for jobs you presumably aren't qualified for (lawyers want paralegals who are certified paralegals, and legal assistants who are experienced legal assistants) to "receive a significant legal exposure". For one thing, if you're spamming out 140 job applications to things you're presumably not qualified for, that's not going to end well. I could apply for ten million jobs as a brain surgeon and I'm never going to get one. Second of all, you don't need a job as a legal assistant to become a lawyer. Plenty of lawyers are 24 and have never worked at a job before graduating from law school. Not only are you beating your head against a wall, you're beating your head against a wall that's completely unrelated to what you want to do. 3. Volunteering at what would ordinarily be a paid job is...look, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to speak to the legalities of it, but it is an extremely bizarre thing to do in most industries. If a law firm that's declined to hire you gets a letter from you saying, "I'm so interested in you that I'll work there for free!", they will think, "Well, this person is extremely bizarre." Being thought of that way is not usually the key to success. Offering to volunteer at a law firm as a legal assistant as a way of becoming a lawyer is just...it's strange. Did you get your job in collections by saying to the boss, "Hey, I really want some exposure the world of collections, so I would love to be a custodian in your building to help me work my way up to working in collections, and if you won't hire me, I'll clean your toilets for free"? No. Because that would be weird. You got the job by having skills the job called for. You want to be a lawyer, go do the things you need to do to become a lawyer. "Volunteering at a law firm as a legal assistant" is...the maximum amount of not being one of those things.