Paralegal & Criminal Justice Combination Program
As this is one of our combination programs, you will find that there are two different course descriptions; one for each portion of the program:
Criminal Justice:
The Criminal Justice program provides a comprehensive understanding of the American justice system and its occupations. This program contains many topics regarding traditional justice issues such as effective policing, courts, causes of crime, prisons, sentencing, probation, and the types of crime. Legal standards and current events are used to explain ethical conduct, the usage of various criminal policing tools, and the challenges of balancing security against liberty. Learner’s study: the prevalence of DNA technology & electronic surveillance, U.S. citizens’ constitutional protections, non-traditional occupations, and Social Media Career Tips. Participants determine where their skills and interests are best suited for acquiring professional job satisfaction and career success. With 24-hour access to course materials, many innovative tools encourage active learning. Videos, miniessays, and short lessons test further knowledge. Class Discussions keep learners connected and participatory. Freedom of choice among some coursework allows students to focus on their areas of interest. Each student is easily able to monitor their course completion status. By the end of the course, many of the assignments and discussions become resourceful tools for local employment searching, protections against cybercrime, and blatant professional misconduct avoidance.
Paralegal:
This course is the core of the Paralegal Associate program. Students will learn the paralegal profession’s past, present, and future, including the paralegal defined, educational options, techniques for marketing skills, and career opportunities. Instructions on ethics and professional responsibility, the organizational structure of the legal workplace, and office culture and politics will prepare students for the challenges of today’s paralegal. Students receive a formal introduction to the law by examining sources of American law, the court system, alternative dispute resolution, substantive law in its various forms, administrative law, and government regulation. Legal procedures and advanced skills involving civil litigation and trial procedures, criminal law, conducting interviews and investigations, using primary and secondary sources for legal research, and the emerging technology of computed assisted legal research, in addition to legal analysis and writing, provide valuable insight and a solid foundation for the future legal assistant.
Program Outcomes
- Identify the impact of crime on victims and society as a whole.
- Formulate elements of a crime from statutes
- Describe the role of law enforcement officers, effective policing strategies, and constitutional issues that arise in policing.
- Explain the pretrial and trial process, the purpose of each stage, and the role of judges.
- Discuss the potential criminal sentencing options available for adults and juveniles, including incarceration and probation.
- Review the conditions and purposes of prisons and jails.
- Demonstrate how technology is used to commit and investigate crime.
- Discuss the role of paralegals in the legal system and their basic duties, including skills like legal drafting, client billing, and conducting interviews.
- Identify how technology tools, including legal databases and libraries, electronic discovery, and case management software, are utilized by paralegals.
- Describe how the U.S. courts are structured, what the sources of U.S. law are, and how these laws are used to conduct effective legal research.
- Demonstrate how to initiate civil litigation and the role paralegals play in the civil trial process.
- State the rights criminal defendants have and the procedures used to protect those rights.
- Identify ethical rules in the legal system and how they apply to paralegals’ conduct.