6100 - Paralegal Certificate Program
Course Description
UNC-Chapel Hill’s Paralegal Certificate Program is distinguished by a focus on comprehensive legal-specific skills such as investigating fact patterns, conducting law-related research, and preparing cases for courtroom litigation. This program is great for someone looking to change careers or advance a legal career. The educational training you receive in the paralegal certificate program can be used in a law office or in many other fields such as real property, social services, and government.
For more information, or to add your name to our mailing list, please contact Laura Respess, Program Coordinator, at lrespess@email.unc.edu.
You can also attend an Information Session on January 10, 2024, 6-8 p.m. to learn more about the program. Sign up on our paralegal certificate website.
Course Outline
The Paralegal Certificate Program consists of approximately 300 hours of overall academic engagement (including 190 in-class hours and a minimum of 110 hours for completing assignments) over a period of nineteen weeks. The content is organized into:
Paralegal Skills (one course, 80 in-class hours): Paralegal Skills teaches the basic “nuts and bolts” of being a paralegal, regardless of the type of law firm or legal environment.
Law (five courses, 16-20 in-class hours each): The Law courses cover five major areas of law: Contracts, Criminal Law, Family Law, Real Property, and Torts. Each Law course consists of four to five sessions, and the courses are scheduled throughout the nineteen weeks of the program.
Survey (two courses, 4–8 in-class hours each): In addition to the five Law courses, the Paralegal Certificate Program also includes Survey courses that present overviews of the law in the following areas: Constitutional Law, and Wills, Trusts, and Estates.
Notes
North Carolina State Bar
The North Carolina State Bar has designated UNC-Chapel Hill as a qualified paralegal studies program. UNC-Chapel Hill is a member of the American Association for Paralegal Education (AAfPE). Upon completion of the program, participants are eligible to take the North Carolina State Bar Paralegal Certification Exam. The UNC Paralegal Program is consistently among the highest-ranked programs in the North Carolina State Bar’s report of Certification Exam passage rates. For more information, see North Carolina Paralegal Certification and the North Carolina Paralegal Association website.
Prerequisites
Participants are required to have a minimum of an associate’s degree in order to enroll in the program.
Potential program registrants with international degrees must provide at the time of registration, a copy of an international educational evaluation, if the degree was obtained from a foreign college or university. An evaluation must be from an organization that is a member of the National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES) or the Association of International Credential Evaluators (AICE).