Portland Community College
Since 1960s paralegals are considered to be an indispensable workforce within the legal system because they are constantly providing support to lawyers, corporations, public institutions and other employers. Even if they are prohibited to provide legal advices without a lawyer's approval they handle several other important tasks in the daily legal operations.
There are various categories of paralegals and all of them offer specialized skills. There are probate paralegals that interview clients while conducting the collection, valuing and transfer of assets, corporate paralegals writing employee benefit plans, employment handbooks, agreements, or assisting in intellectual property issues, family paralegals and litigation paralegals. Each of them is providing an important part of the legal team.
Portland's Paralegal program was especially developed to provide the best legal education by teaching you all you need in order to succeed in the legal world.
To obtain an Associate of Applied Science Degree you must have 90 credits and a college level writing class (Wr 121). Usually this is met by students who have a previous 4 year (and most 2 year) degrees.
If you need an advice regarding your career, you can always go to the full-time faculty and career services department.
The Portland's Certificate program requires 45 credits and shares the same prerequisites and advising as the AAS degree.
The Paralegal Program is under continuous evaluation by faculty because they consider every feedback from potential employers, graduates of the program and current students.
After consulting with the Program's Advisory Council, new features are implemented as it follows. In the summer of 2006 the Law library was installed at Cascade campus, the Student-run paralegal club visited their Yahoo! group and new courses and programs were introduced.
This program is communicating permanently with law firms and corporations in order to find out all there is to know about professional developments, job openings and training needs.
