Any paralegals in the house?

[meerkat]

I'm currently looking into getting certified as a paralegal by taking some online courses but I wanted to get some outside opinions first. Currently my position overlaps a bit with the duties of a paralegal - drafting and reviewing contract documents - and I thought that pursuing paralegal certification would give me a more attractive resume. The course I'm looking at pursuing is through LegalStudies.com and then would be through a specific university when I'm actually signing up, but the syllabus looks like it's pretty standardized. The course will cost $1,289 plus $457 in books (per their bookstore, I'll be shopping around a bit of course. Is textbook rental a good option here or would I be better off owning some of these?)

I've also read online that it's possible to get a paralegal position without actually having a certification. Would the certification give me a pay bump, and would it be enough to justify dropping that much money on training? My work might cover $500 worth of the tuition but that still leaves me paying well over a thousand dollars when you factor in the cost of books.

[Jrr85]

I'm currently looking into getting certified as a paralegal by taking some online courses but I wanted to get some outside opinions first. Currently my position overlaps a bit with the duties of a paralegal - drafting and reviewing contract documents - and I thought that pursuing paralegal certification would give me a more attractive resume. The course I'm looking at pursuing is through LegalStudies.com and then would be through a specific university when I'm actually signing up, but the syllabus looks like it's pretty standardized. The course will cost $1,289 plus $457 in books (per their bookstore, I'll be shopping around a bit of course. Is textbook rental a good option here or would I be better off owning some of these?)

I've also read online that it's possible to get a paralegal position without actually having a certification. Would the certification give me a pay bump, and would it be enough to justify dropping that much money on training? My work might cover $500 worth of the tuition but that still leaves me paying well over a thousand dollars when you factor in the cost of books.

Probably depends on your market, but to my knowledge, no state in the U.S. licenses paralegals, meaning you don't have to have any certification to be a paralegal.  All of the best paralegals I have worked with were trained by the attorney they first worked for and had no formal certification.  But there might be some clients that require that anybody billed as a paralegal have some sort of formal certification.  I have heard of one insurance company taking this position, but don't know if it's common because I don't deal with insurers a lot.

[arebelspy]

Completely unhelpful here, but the thread title made me think of a joke.

What do you call the two undocumented immigrants working at the law firm?
Paraillegals!

:)