Basic legal education

April 16, 2023 10:41 AM

I need a basic education in contract law while working full-time - is a part-time, online paralegal certificate what I'm looking for?

I have to work with contracts as part of my job, but I don't have background in contract law, and neither do most of my co-workers. It is out of my hands (my boss' decision), so please no commentary on that. I'd like to get some background on contract law to better understand what I'm working on. I found an online, part-time paralegal certificate program from an accredited and local-to-me University's extension school in the US. The University has a well-regarded law school, and the faculty for this extension certificate program are from the school. It looks like this is for people with a high school diploma who want to become a paralegal. My work would most likely pay for this.

In general how are these programs regarded? Should I be considering a different type of program or classes to learn about contract law? A certificate is nice, but really the goal is to use this in my current job.

posted by Toddles to Education (7 answers total)

Best answer: It depends on what you mean by "work with contracts." More information on that will help the answers here. If you are talking about negotiating and writing contract terms so that they will be interpreted and enforced by a court in a particular way, that is not really what paralegals do and I doubt that those skills would be taught in a paralegal program. If you are talking about something more like "contracts administration" - like keeping track of various contracts and what they require, perhaps making sure that contracts have the key company language in them, etc., I think there are probably business school type programs and certificates in this area. Here is some information on that.
posted by Mid at 10:56 AM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Could you provide some more information about what you mean by "work with contracts"? There's a wide variety of possibilities.
posted by lookoutbelow at 11:39 AM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: To answer the questions, I think what I do is what Mid is describing in the link - which is contract administration, however I also develop contract language as well - though typically not for an entire contract. I'm thinking that contract administrator is the right path - but would love to hear if that is not right.
posted by Toddles at 11:48 AM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: Well, the only thing law students learn about contracts is usually 1L contract law (a single semester), which is mainly theoretical. Everything else a lawyer would learn by exposure to the particular type of contract. So really what you need to so is study every clause of the contracts you work with and understand what the language is for. Identify the boilerplate (parts that don’t change) and the parts that are negotiated (price, delivery date, etc.)
posted by haptic_avenger at 2:34 PM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I don't recommend paralegal training for that. The vast majority of it will not help and it likely won't cover all of the material you're after.

This might be something where a more bespoke process of defining what you want to learn and how you might do so might suit you better than a formal program. The substance of contracts and important considerations vary entirely by industry and there are only so many general insights you can gain. Generally speaking though, I think contract administration is the right area to explore, but I would try to learn from materials related to the same industry you are in.
posted by lookoutbelow at 3:43 PM on April 16, 2023

Best answer: Thanks for clarification - I would search your local schools for "business administration" and "contracts administration"-type curriculum. Paralegals are more oriented towards keeping specialized legal files and generating legal documents/forms, but there is not really a "business" component. I think what you are talking about is more business-oriented and you should focus on business programs. I can't say a law program would never have this type of education - it might - but I think you want to avoid "paralegal" as a search-term or headline concept.
posted by Mid at 4:20 PM on April 16, 2023

I wonder if something like this Business Law Fundamentals from the UCLA extension program might be a good starting place?
posted by metahawk at 9:27 PM on April 16, 2023 [1 favorite]