Rice University Paralegal Certificate Program

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “employment of paralegals and legal assistants is projected to grow 28 percent between 2008 and 2018, much faster than the average for all occupations. Private law firms will continue to be the largest employers of paralegals, but a growing array of other organizations, such as corporate legal departments, insurance companies, real-estate and title insurance firms, and banks also hire paralegals. Corporations in particular are expected to increase their in-house legal departments to cut costs. The wide range of tasks paralegals can perform has helped to increase their employment in small and medium-size establishments of all types.”

Advantages of Our Program

• Complete your studies and be ready to start or grow your career in five months. 
• Receive hands-on exposure to the research and practical skills that distinguish a great paralegal from an average one. Each participant will follow a mock client through the process of litigation, basing all research and writing assignments on the client. You will prepare legal documents for your mock client that will form a portfolio you can show to a potential employer to prove that you have the competencies in demand for good paralegals. 
• Gain overviews of many areas of law, extensive practice in legal writing, and hands-on exposure to legal research including visits to a local law library, Lexis and Westlaw. 
• Receive many study tools to help you maximize your learning opportunities - customized texts, hands-on workbooks, and online study tools that include practice exercise questions, lecture notes, quizzes and mock exams. Please feel free to test drive our online materials and experience the support that the Rice program provides. 
• Choose between two program formats - traditional classroom and Web-delivered. Both formats employ the same curriculum, designed with input from attorneys and paralegals.  
• Learn from practicing attorneys and professional paralegals. 
• Study with peers who are educated at the same level as you are (Rice’s program requires its participants to have a bachelor’s degree). 

Career Support

The legal community has embraced graduates of the Rice Paralegal Program by hiring them and, in many cases, returning to hire others as new classes complete the program. Rice provides career support to paralegal students in a variety of ways including instruction on preparing your resume, job search methods and interview skills, exposure to search firms, posting of student resumes on Rice’s website, and publishing jobs for Rice students, which are provided by law firms and corporate legal departments.

Learn about career support for Rice Paralegal Program participants here>