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27-Jul-09 12:00 PM CST

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Interested in a Paralegal Career?

Author: Gail L. Armatys, M.S. is Administrator and Co-Founder of the Center. Gail has nearly 30 years of experience in the private school industry and is a trained Mediator, and Christian Life Coach. As a partner in the development of the Center and its programs, she is most interested in delivering opportunity through education to students interested in the law and in helping them find their career, success and satisfaction in the legal profession.

After reviewing hundreds of ads and online commentaries about the various paralegal programs coming available to the public, I feel a need to write. As co-founder and administrator at a private paralegal school I find it disconcerting to read some of the information now available about the paralegal profession.

Although it is great to read all the articles about the growth of the paralegal profession and the opportunity found in the career field, it is unsettling to also read daily how paralegal programs seem to be popping up all over the country to take advantage of this growth. Being an entrepreneur myself, I don’t have a problem with educators and business people seizing the moment to open doors of opportunity to others. But I have to ask myself if that is what they are really doing.

We opened the Center and began our programs over twenty years ago. Over the years, we have gone through all the rigors of state approval, accreditation, and ABA approval. The purpose of all of this is to: provide high quality, specialized paralegal programs, teach them in the shortest time that seems feasible without having to take more-than-enough electives, ensure understanding and skill development, provide successful lifetime placement assistance to graduates, and do it all with oversight to ensure the integrity of the programs and the institution. Our ultimate goal is and always has been to serve students honestly and with excellence and serve the legal community and its clients by providing quality paralegals.

Now, I find that paralegal programs seem to sprout up everywhere. This includes short-term programs taught in continuing education departments of well-known universities so as to appear to be a part of the university curriculum, appear to be accredited, are stretched out over time to appear to be longer, and appear to cost very little because potential students often do not calculate how much they are actually spending per class hour and investing in the lack of student services and curriculum content.

I also find that there are online paralegal courses popping up all over the place taking advantage of the growth market. Again, this causes me concern for the students who attend these classes, for their employers, and for the clients they will serve. Are these online programs providing the depth of study necessary to relay understanding? I am not in any way saying that online education is not a wonderful educational vehicle. In fact, we offer our classes online as well. However, we do not do this without scrutiny by the state, our accrediting body and limitations of the ABA.

To go a step further, I will tell you that the non-ABA approved paralegal programs may indicate to you that there aren’t necessarily any advantages to ABA approval. What they don’t tell you is that just as accrediting bodies review, research and scrutinize the details of an educational institution and its curriculum, ABA reviews, researches and scrutinizes paralegal programs in specific, thus ensuring the quality of the legal courses offered.

So while there are many varieties of paralegal programs now available offering an assortment of curriculum options, methods of instruction, and a vast range of tuition and fees it is in your best interest to ask the hard questions. Make sure the program you attend, in-house or online, is one of integrity in-and-of-itself rather than by association, and that it provides you the opportunity for and personal assistance in acquiring the employment and job satisfaction that you seek.