Happy New Year! It is 2012, a brand new year, full of new beginnings and possibilities. Have you made or are you going to make a new year’s resolution? At some point in our lives, most of us have made a resolution or two. Some of the standard ones include losing weight, making more money, getting fit, paying off debt, purchasing a new item, and/or traveling more. Have you considered making resolutions that can have an impact on your paralegal career? Do you remember that old saying “…same things inputted, same things outputted” or “same old, same old”? Why not shake things up this year? Instead of the standard “make more money”, how about making (and keeping) resolutions to ensure that can happen. Everyone has an area or two that needs brushing up on; such as learning a new computer program, getting familiar with social media; learning a new area of law; or taking a class. You know where your strengths and weakness lie. So for example, if your paralegal practice is litigation, maybe you could learn the basics of business organizations or if you work in contracts, maybe you could learn trademark and patent laws. There are many ways to update your skill set and make you more valuable to your (an) employer. Take a few minutes, this first week in the New Year, to reflect on your paralegal practice to see where you could improve your skill set and make you even more attractive and/or productive to your employer. We can all afford to learn something new. Without learning, we stagnate and wither on the vine. This is a NEW year full of possibilities and promise, go and conquer it!
Mississippi Paralegal
April 7, 2012 3:27 pm
I have been working as a plaaaegrl for many years, and I can tell you I have NEVER worked with someone who attended an online program. I don’t think ANY solely online program is sufficient.With regard to the ABA approval mentioned by a previous poster, the ABA’s rules for approval EXCLUDE all solely online programs.If you can swing it, the closest thing to an online program that is likely to be accepted is called a limited residency program. These can be approved by the ABA.You definitely want a regionally accredited school, and if a school tells you it’s licensed by some official-sounding government body, see if you can find out what types of schools the agency approves there’s at least one plaaaegrl school in NY licensed by the NYS Education Department, which sounds good until you realize that agency primarily licenses hairdresser and bartending schools, and there are no ABA approved programs licensed by that agency.Also watch out for programs that claim affiliation with a plaaaegrl organization. Some do so without authority from the organization, and others create their own plaaaegrl associations for the sole purpose of listing membership! There are some sneaks out there because the business of running a plaaaegrl school is lucrative if you don’t have the costs of a quality program.