Since 1976, when the National Association of Legal Assistants (NALA) began sponsoring the certification exam, more than 12,000 paralegals have obtained the professional designation “Certified Paralegal” (CP).
Obtaining a certified paralegal certificate is a voluntary certification process that might enhance a CV, but it is not a prerequisite for admittance into the field. So, why should a paralegal think about obtaining certification? or perhaps consider enrolling in an online paralegal course?
This post will cover everything you need to know about paralegals and paralegal online courses for students seeking certification.
Who Is A Paralegal?
A paralegal is a valuable part of a legal team who has a broad understanding of the law and legal issues but is not a licensed attorney. Paralegals are responsible for a wide range of administrative and legal tasks. They are frequently associate members of the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives and work with solicitors, barristers, and/or chartered legal executives (CILEx).
A paralegal’s job is to assist lawyers in their work, and they can specialize in a particular field of law.
What Is the Role Of A Paralegal?
The paralegal profession has evolved in leaps and bounds during the previous four decades. Most lawyers couldn’t tell the difference between a legal secretary and a paralegal in the beginning.
The job description and demand for paralegals evolved into what they are now as more paralegals entered the labor market and law firms realized the importance of a well-educated and skilled paralegal.
Paralegals are an important aspect of delivering high-quality legal services. While paralegals are generally responsible for administrative tasks, they often handle a large portion of a lawyer’s burden and have a deep understanding of the law.
Typically, paralegals are employed in law firms and operate in a certain department. Duties will vary per department, but may include some or all of the following:
- Negotiations
- Legal research
- Management of the case
- Calculating legal deadlines and filing required documents
- Drafting pleadings, responding to documents and making discoveries
- Making contact with clients and holding meetings with them
- Document analysis and summarization
- Fact-checking
- carrying out legal studies
- Taking care of business
Why Should You Take Paralegal Courses Online?
There are numerous benefits to taking a paralegal online course. You can earn a certificate in paralegal studies in a variety of ways. You have the option of attending a traditional campus, enrolling in a hybrid program, or enrolling in an online paralegal certificate program.
If you’re one of the many students juggling employment, school, and family obligations, a paralegal online course with a paralegal credential may be the best option for you.
- During the workweek, you have a lot of freedom.
- You can vacation and finish your coursework at the same time.
- You can save money on gas, parking, and commuting.
- If you or someone in your family is sick, you don’t have to go out in bad weather or skip class.
Where Can You Take Paralegal Courses Online?
Do I need a paralegal certification and why?
The legal realm has outgrown its confines. The uncontrolled profession isn’t just limited to a few registrations and licensing regulations. However, there is sufficient room for a professional credential to thrive and meet the requirements of employers. This is when having a paralegal certificate comes in handy.
There is no doubting that obtaining a paralegal credential is essential for furthering one’s legal knowledge and expertise. A paralegal is an essential member of any legal team, assisting with a wide range of legal activities.
He or she not only assists attorneys in the preparation of legal cases, but also manages and organizes papers, summarizes reports, conducts research, and performs a variety of other responsibilities.
Any law firm’s paralegal is its beating heart. Paralegals now have the same amount of responsibility as entry-level lawyers and legal secretaries. This is one of the reasons why paralegals and legal assistants have become critical to the success of law practice.
Aside from that, the necessity for paralegals has grown in recent decades as the demand for internet-aware people has increased, as has the prevalence of incarceration.
As a result, a paralegal has emerged as a viable long-term professional option for those who wish to pursue it. In this regard, a paralegal studies certificate is the only option to begin or continue a satisfying job in a legal team.
Managing Paralegal Courses and Certification Online
One of the most appealing aspects of paralegal online courses is that it is nearly often entirely online, with little or no on-campus requirements. Several programs also offer hybrid or mixed options. When looking for a paralegal certificate, think about what works best for you: asynchronous or synchronous classes, project timeframes, group work, and so on.
Depending on whether the program is full-time or part-time, and whether your certificate is self-paced, online paralegal online courses and certificate programs can take anywhere from four months to two years to complete. Many programs have a fixed sequence of fundamental courses that you must complete to receive your certificate, but you may have the option of selecting electives in areas of law that interest you.
The time it takes to complete work for paralegal online courses varies per institution, but a rough rule of thumb is that you’ll spend around nine hours per week on a three-credit course—three hours accessing class materials online and five to six hours studying or doing projects on your own.
The legal system, legal research, writing and communication, litigation and procedures, document preparation, law office ethics, and more will all be covered in basic courses in all programs. Some schools cover real estate law, family law, criminal law, and other particular topics as part of their core curriculum, while others offer these and other areas as electives.
Communication and interpersonal skills, legal technology, organizational and research abilities, and the knowledge to assist attorneys within the United States’ legal system are the major competencies taught in online paralegal education.
Students will learn about the tasks that will be expected of them as legal assistants, such as researching facts and laws for cases, organizing and filing documents, writing reports and correspondence, assisting lawyers in cases, and communicating with clients, courts, and others through online paralegal programs.
What Can You Do With An Online Paralegal Certificate?
As previously said, certified paralegal schools provide specialized training for individuals interested in working in a variety of legal disciplines. If you aspire to be an ecologist, a certificate in environmental paralegal studies, for example, could open up a lot of doors.
Similarly, the law has an impact on everything, including medical facilities, insurance, and other medical fields such as medications. Nursing paralegal certificate programs are open to anyone with a nursing degree.
There’s no denying that paralegal certificate programs can help many persons who wish to work as paralegals or who want to change careers. The curriculum also benefits a variety of sectors and gives a fantastic opportunity for those seeking law school.
What Should You Consider Before Applying For A Paralegal Online Course?
Before applying for a paralegal certification program, consider the following factors to see if it is a good fit for your goals:
- Do you wish to pursue a post-baccalaureate or technical certificate program?
- Do you wish to enroll in a program that will prepare you for a specific career path?
- Have you taken a paralegal course as part of your undergraduate studies? If so, what is the new ground covered by this paralegal program? Is it allowing you to broaden your horizons?
- Do legal studies provide opportunities for legal study, written analysis, technological advancements, and substantive law?
What Are The 20 Most Popular Paralegal Online Courses?
This 16-week course comes in 16 modules.
Throughout this online short course, you’ll work through the following modules:
MODULE 1: Introduction to South African Law
MODULE 2: Sources of South African Law
MODULE 3: Classification of South African Law
MODULE 4: Introduction to the Legal and Paralegal Profession
MODULE 5: Private Law and Civil Law Procedure
MODULE 6: Criminal Law and the Law of Criminal Procedure
MODULE 7: Business Law
MODULE 8: Law of Evidence
MODULE 9: Courts and Alternative Dispute Resolution
MODULE 10: The Constitution and the Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Law
MODULE 11: Human Rights
MODULE 12: Legal Comparison and Perspectives on the Law
MODULE 13: Legal Language and Reading
MODULE 14: Legal Writing
MODULE 15: Legal Argument, Logic, Interview, and Oral Advocacy Skills
MODULE 16: Legal Research Skills
This course instructs you on how to carry out the numerous procedures and functions associated with the legal profession. Sign up for this short course to learn how to understand the highly essential tools that can help you enhance your legal career.
Thisfree online e-learning theory and practice course will provide you with an overview of research-based e-learning approaches for creating effective e-learning courses. You will have the knowledge and confidence to create high-quality online courses at the end of this course.
This lesson is part of a series called “Beginner English” that will help you grasp the fundamentals of telling time and planning events. It teaches time-related grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, as well as ‘prepositions of time,’ ‘what’ or ‘when’ queries, and fundamental terminology to make it easier to describe events and create plans.
This short paralegal online course is for people who have little to no knowledge of the legal system or what paralegals do and wish to learn more about this field.
Through this short course you can learn the following:
- Find out how to work as a paralegal.
- Learn the fundamentals of being a good paralegal.
- Work as a paralegal and learn how to deal with the reality of the job.
- Find out how to make a career plan.
- Learn how to use technology to reduce the cost of litigation.
- Increase the scope of your current knowledge.
This course will introduce you to the intriguing function of legal assistants in the day-to-day operations of a legal department, office, or team.
- Effective Legal Office Administration
Students will learn about legal document preparation, litigation, contracts, torts, criminal law and procedure, family law, business law, real estate, estate planning, guardianship, and bankruptcy in this course. In addition to these themes, the course focuses on paralegal staff’s prospective career and certification paths.
This paralegal online course will introduce you to the fundamentals of technology and how it can be applied to the legal profession.
You will have received the resources to become a Legal Tech professional and will be able to build and implement a Legal Tech Plan for your organization by the end of this course.
In this course, A2J Tech experts will teach you how to conduct interviews and how to insert answers as variables into the text of questions or documents. The interviews can present consumers with PDF, RTF, or DOCX documents, which they can download or email, based on the information gathered.
The English Legal System Course covers a variety of topics, leading to a comprehensive grasp of the legal system as a whole. The course covers legal sources, the legal profession, and the judicial system.
Through this course;
- You’ll learn about the various forms of legal manipulative techniques (both by lawyers and other stakeholders)
- You’ll study particular instances of how each sort of manipulation might be employed in legal settings, such as the courtroom.
- As a lawyer or someone else involved in a legal situation, you’ll learn how to protect yourself from each of these sorts.
- You’ll learn how to combine different sorts of manipulation in legal situations, such as in court.
This course improves business and legal English vocabulary, as well as legal reading and listening skills. This legal English course is for intermediate English learners who want to quickly expand their legal vocabulary. While reading and learning about significant themes in contract law, you can improve your legal vocabulary.
You will obtain a better understanding of important words used in the English legal system by taking this short course.
You will learn how to efficiently employ punctuation in your writing.
You will learn how to write English letters.
You will get an understanding of the fundamentals of establishing concise commercial contracts.
You will have received significant information and experience in writing proficiently in Legal English and Business English by the end of this course.
The IRAC approach (Issue – Rule – Application – Conclusion) is an essential skill for answering issue questions on law school exams. It gives pupils a logical and obvious structure to follow while answering issue questions. However, the majority of students are not completely familiar with what this skill asks of them, which leads to poor exam performance.
Legal English is a branch of English that deals with legal topics and how to communicate them effectively.
The three different aspects of legal English are covered in this video course:
- English proficiency in general
- Specific legal knowledge and abilities
- Ability to communicate
Learn how to use English articles, prepositions, and punctuations in this course to improve your legal English skills. You’ll learn some legal jargon as well.
The course covers a wide range of topics, including courts, crime, and dispute, law and crime, state courts, arrest to arraignment, trials and juries, appellate courts, and legal terminology. The course serves as a springboard for a prosperous and promising career in the legal profession.
If you’re looking for a way to improve your writing skills, this course is for you
- Are you concerned about your future?
- Feeling pessimistic about your profession as a whole?
- Are you finding law school or your first legal job frustrating, if not impossible?
- Do you have any doubts about your suitability for the job?
- You have the impression that you are not like other lawyers.
- Do you want to know if you can still be yourself while working as a lawyer?
- Do you want to know if being a happy lawyer is possible?
- You want to make a change in the legal system but aren’t sure how to do it.
This paralegal online course has all that is required of you to achieve this.
Experts from the Bench and Bar, including Hon’ble Judges, Senior Counsels, and members of Agarwal Law Associates, will instruct and train you (ALA). This course is meant to speed your comprehension through experiential learning, which means you will experience, study, and comprehend every stage and element of a typical civil suitcase, from pleadings to proceedings to trial to appeal.
Conclusion
Overall, becoming a paralegal is a fantastic choice for persons who wish to work in the legal industry. The preceding information covers the most important components of this career and the paralegal online courses available for you. These courses are worth it in their entirety and as such should be considered as having high prestige.
References
- Udemy – Paralegal Professional
- Coursera – Paralegal
- Alison – Paralegal Courses
- GetEducated.com – Online Paralegal Certificate
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