Do you have clear career goals? It can be extremely difficult to pick one direction and head into it. Even people who have already been working at professional levels for many years of their lives find that they may want to “try something new”. This can be scary and can make you hesitate to explore all of the options. And this is why something like an online paralegal certificate is a great opportunity.
Instead of committing fully to the time and effort necessary to train as a fully certified paralegal, the online paralegal certificate training lets someone determine if this is indeed the field for them, and what pathways to follow in that specific field too.
For example, you might decide that paralegal work sounds interesting. You might even know a few paralegals and think that their work is well suited to your current interests or needs. Rather than giving up your current career or job, you might enroll in an online paralegal certificate program and find out a bit more. This would let you see what the work of the paralegal is about, and how it would fit into any experience you might have in healthcare, government work, business, or general law and legal work.
You would complete your training with the online paralegal certificate, and this would open the door to a larger degree in your chosen area of expertise. For instance, you might move into a bachelor program in paralegal studies and get fully certified to work in your chosen area, but you could take it into a much larger field such as a master degree program in legal studies, etc.
The thing to keep in mind is that the certificate program has enabled you to get a taste of the work without making a full-blown commitment to the field. There are not many career paths that offer such flexibility and freedom. When you see that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics points to legal and paralegal jobs as those with a higher than average rate of growth, and a field with tremendous opportunity, it makes it even easier to see that now is the time to pursue a certificate program in paralegal studies of any kind.
Working in the online format also means that you can shape your schedule to fit your needs, and that is a wonderful opportunity as well.
