Best Online Associate in Paralegal Studies

Badge for BEST ONLINE ASSOCIATE'S IN PARALEGAL STUDIES

Published: Jul 6, 2021
Updated: Nov 22, 2023

Find top-ranked online associate in paralegal studies degree programs for students wanting to either continue in their legal education or gain employment as paralegals or legal assistants for a variety of private and public entities.

Top 10 Online Paralegal Studies Associate Degrees

University of Cincinnati
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Liberty University
Eastern Kentucky University
Purdue Global
Tallahassee Community College
Keiser University
Northwest Mississippi Community College
University of the Cumberlands
Hinds Community College

University of Cincinnati
University of Alaska Fairbanks
Liberty University
Eastern Kentucky University
Tallahassee Community College
Keiser University
Purdue Global
Navarro College
University of the Cumberlands
Central Texas College

Liberty University 99%
Keiser University 97%
University of Cincinnati 86%
University of the Cumberlands 83%
Eastern Kentucky University 64%

Purdue Global 26 to 1
Carl Albert State College 25 to 1
Hillsborough Community College 23 to 1
Tallahassee Community College 23 to 1
Northwest Mississippi Community College 21 to 1
Navarro College 21 to 1
Kirkwood Community College 19 to 1
University of Cincinnati 18 to 1
Liberty University 18 to 1
University of the Cumberlands 18 to 1

Keiser University $23,248
Liberty University $22,511
Hodges University $15,500
University of Cincinnati $10,656
Purdue Global $10,080
University of the Cumberlands $9,875
Eastern Kentucky University $9,544
Luzerne County Community College $8,200
University of Alaska Fairbanks $7,659
Missouri Western State University $7,200

Keiser University $30,032
Hodges University $15,750
University of Cincinnati $13,224
University of Alaska Fairbanks $11,535
Eastern Kentucky University $10,008
Purdue Global $9,472
Liberty University $7,893
Missouri Western State University $7,110
University of the Cumberlands $4,282

Ocean County College
Tompkins Cortland Community College
Luzerne County Community College
Yavapai College
Western Piedmont Community College
Central Carolina Community College
Herkimer County Community College
Carl Albert State College
Hodges University
Hillsborough Community College

Western Piedmont Community College
Carl Albert State College
Luzerne County Community College
Central Carolina Community College
Northwest Mississippi Community College
Herkimer County Community College
Ocean County College
Kirkwood Community College
Hodges University
Trinity Valley Community College

Eastern Kentucky University 64%
University of the Cumberlands 83%
University of Cincinnati 86%
Keiser University 97%
Liberty University 99%

Hodges University 10 to 1
University of Alaska Fairbanks 11 to 1
Tompkins Cortland Community College 11 to 1
Western Piedmont Community College 11 to 1
Central Carolina Community College 12 to 1
Central Texas College 13 to 1
Hinds Community College 13 to 1
Keiser University 15 to 1
Luzerne County Community College 15 to 1
Eastern Kentucky University 16 to 1

Trinity Valley Community College $1,170
Navarro College $1,620
Hillsborough Community College $1,931
Tallahassee Community College $2,002
Western Piedmont Community College $2,432
Central Carolina Community College $2,432
Yavapai College $2,680
Carl Albert State College $3,000
Northwest Mississippi Community College $3,200
Hinds Community College $3,500

University of the Cumberlands $4,282
Missouri Western State University $7,110
Liberty University $7,893
Purdue Global $9,472
Eastern Kentucky University $10,008
University of Alaska Fairbanks $11,535
University of Cincinnati $13,224
Hodges University $15,750
Keiser University $30,032

Table of Contents

Featured Programs

Frequently Asked Questions About Paralegal Studies Degrees

An associate degree in paralegal studies is a great starting point for individuals interested in working as legal assistants or paralegals.

Paralegals play an integral part in the legal system, conducting legal research, drafting legal documents, and managing client and witness interviews.

Degree completion takes about two years, and most online and on-campus programs require 60 or more credits.

Classes can include the Fundamentals of Law, Litigations, Wills and Trusts, Introduction to Constitutional Law, Legal Writing, Bankruptcy, and Probate Procedures.

After graduating, students can either continue in their legal education or gain employment as paralegals or legal assistants for a variety of private and public entities.

Learn more about how to major in law.

How do we determine the best online paralegal associate's degree programs?

Methodology

Pursuing your degree online doesn’t mean you need to settle for an inferior school. Today, most universities and colleges offer online degrees, and many respected schools are seeing significant growth in their numbers of online students.

The people affiliated with a school are ultimately what make it great. This is why influence — i.e., the academic impact of faculty and alumni associated with a school — gets at the heart of what is truly best in education. The combined influence score of a college or university’s top academic influencers is the best indicator of academic excellence. For our online degree rankings, we focus on the academic influence of faculty and alumni in the specific disciplines we’re ranking.

If you are serious about finding the best online colleges, you should be asking where the most influential professors are teaching, and whether their graduates themselves are advancing the school’s reputation for academic excellence. Most ranking sites rely on an opaque combination of reputation surveys and arbitrary performance metrics. Influence, as measured by our InfluenceRanking engine, provides a ranking that is free from bias, insulated from manipulation, and reflective of real-world educational outcomes.

Best Online Associate’s in Paralegal Degree Programs

Career Outlook for Students with Paralegal Degree

Go to Degree Finder tool

Legal Assistant/Paralegal

Degree Level: Associate's

Location: The U.S. (Private Schools)
Avg. Cost of Degree*: $4,384
Avg. Expenses*: $13,998
Avg. Starting Salary*: $35,499
Avg. Salary after 4 Years*: $39,427
Avg. Cost Recoup Time**: 6 years
Job Growth: 3.42%
Number of Jobs: 467,900
* denotes ‘annually’
** denotes ‘at 15% of annual salary’

Career Salaries

Career	Job Growth	Avg. Salary
Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners	2.82%	$66,272
Legal Support Workers, All Other	0.19%	$62,642
Paralegals and Legal Assistants	4.18%	$56,003
Interpreters and Translators	4.37%	$54,791
Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers	1.77%	$50,853
Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants	-21.81%	$46,029

Average Career Salaries

Bottom 10%	Median	Top 10%
$38,487	$57,001	$88,394

Promising Job Markets

State	Cost of Living	Avg. Salary
#2 New York	5% higher than average	$78,571
#3 Virginia	5% higher than average	$69,009
#4 Iowa	9% higher than average	$63,031
#5 Michigan	15% higher than average	$56,892
#6 Minnesota	4% higher than average	$63,277
#7 Georgia	13% higher than average	$56,834
#8 Illinois	7% higher than average	$59,969
#9 Missouri	16% higher than average	$54,232
#10 Massachusetts	24% higher than average	$79,618
#11 Delaware	2% higher than average	$64,933
#12 Mississippi	18% higher than average	$51,524
#13 Ohio	14% higher than average	$53,608
#14 Washington	7% higher than average	$66,257
#15 Colorado	3% higher than average	$63,935
#16 Pennsylvania	5% higher than average	$58,420
#17 Texas	10% higher than average	$54,721
#18 California	26% higher than average	$75,781
#19 Kansas	9% higher than average	$54,649
#20 North Carolina	11% higher than average	$52,767
#21 Idaho	7% higher than average	$54,554
#22 Nevada	5% higher than average	$61,109
#23 Alabama	13% higher than average	$50,097
#24 Arizona	5% higher than average	$54,294
#25 Connecticut	18% higher than average	$67,020
#26 Nebraska	6% higher than average	$52,638
#27 New Mexico	7% higher than average	$52,119
#28 District of Columbia	49% higher than average	$82,984
#29 Oregon	11% higher than average	$61,315
#30 Arkansas	16% higher than average	$46,620
#31 New Jersey	13% higher than average	$61,942
#32 Rhode Island	20% higher than average	$64,765
#33 Tennessee	14% higher than average	$45,667
#34 Wisconsin	7% higher than average	$49,548
#35 South Carolina	8% higher than average	$48,710
#36 Louisiana	9% higher than average	$47,770
#37 North Dakota	average	$52,940
#38 Maryland	18% higher than average	$61,614
#39 Indiana	11% higher than average	$46,201
#40 West Virginia	11% higher than average	$45,757
#41 South Dakota	7% higher than average	$47,365
#42 Vermont	13% higher than average	$57,490
#43 Oklahoma	13% higher than average	$43,987
#44 Florida	6% higher than average	$47,392
#45 Kentucky	14% higher than average	$43,113
#46 Maine	9% higher than average	$54,475
#47 Wyoming	2% higher than average	$48,903
#48 Alaska	23% higher than average	$60,982
#49 Montana	3% higher than average	$47,934
#50 New Hampshire	13% higher than average	$55,463
#51 Utah	4% higher than average	$47,239
#52 Hawaii	40% higher than average	$64,103

Top Industries

Industry	Avg. Salary
Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners	$66,272
Legal Support Workers, All Other	$62,642
Paralegals and Legal Assistants	$56,003
Interpreters and Translators	$54,791
Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers	$50,853
Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants	$46,029

Data from The Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Department of Education College Scorecard, The Department of Education NCES, and The Council for Community and Economic Research.

Online Degree Frequently Asked Questions

If this is your first time taking an online course, the experience may require a time of adjustment. Although you’ll typically learn the same material and take the same exams as your on-campus peers, going online will require greater independence and responsibility than going in person. You’ll be accountable for your own time management, for harnessing the online educational technology that you’ll need to use, and for completing the course requirements, such as listening to lectures, learning lessons, reading texts, and handing in assignments. This means you’ll need to create a suitable workspace for yourself, maintain a realistic schedule, and take the initiative in building relationships with your instructors and classmates. With online college, your goal is to find a balance between independence and engagement.

No. The only part of online education that’s easier than campus-based education is ease of access: all you need is a computer and an internet connection for online education. But even this seeming advantage of online education can be misleading: what’s easier, studying online with your computer and internet connection from your home where you need to cook, clean, pay rent, and maintain a job? Or studying on campus in a dorm where all your living needs are handled by the school, and college staff are there to help you every step of the way?

If you take the commute to campus out of the equation, campus-based education is easier. All the support structures available on campus for students, especially with real people to help you in person, are not there online. The demands on you as an online student will largely be the same as for your campus-based counterpart, but without the same helps.

In general, your online courses will present the same material and test you in the same way as traditional in-person courses. In many cases, you’ll even have the same instructors as your on-campus counterparts. In fact, if you are adjusting to the experience of independent learning with remote educational technology for the first time, online college may be considerably more challenging than campus-based college. For a few insights on how to manage this new online experience, check out our 10 Tips for Adjusting to School Online.

Accreditation is especially important when it comes to online college. This is because the online education landscape is a mix of highly-reputable non-profit institutions on the one end and less-than-reputable for-profit institutions on the other end. Accreditation gives you the power to identify the more reputable actors in online education. Accreditation is a stamp of approval from an independent accrediting agency indicating that a college or university is meeting standards of quality and credibility. School-wide accreditation falls into two major categories: regional and national accreditation. Regional accreditors generally hold jurisdiction only over schools in the states comprising their region, whereas national accreditors hold jurisdiction over schools in all states. Regional accreditation is widely regarded as a more rigorous standard of quality and credibility than national accreditation.

Attending a college or university that is not regionally accredited could limit your opportunities. For students seeking an online education, we strongly recommend that they opt for regionally accredited schools. Regional accreditation ensures eligibility for federal loans and grants, ensures your college credits can be transferred between schools, and ensures that your degree credits can be accepted if you wish to earn an advanced degree. For more on this important topic, check out our What is Accreditation and Why Does It Matter? College & University Accreditation Guide.

As long as your online college degree is regionally accredited (see the previous point), you should have little difficulty transferring most of your credits or credentials to another regionally accredited undergraduate school. Every school carries its own standards and procedures for granting a transfer of credits. In many cases, you will encounter some bureaucratic haggling in which some of your credits will be transferred and others may be refused. However, provided that you have attended an online school with recognized regional accreditation, you should be in good shape in transferring your credits earned online.

In most cases, as long you graduate from a well-regarded, regionally-accredited online college, prospective employers won’t look sideways at your degree. In fact, unless you attend an exclusively online college or university, there will likely be no specific indicator on your degree, transcript, or resumé differentiating your school from its brick-and-mortar counterpart. This means that your employer will likely only differentiate between an online and in-person degree if you mention this distinction.

Some employers may express the concern that because you did your degree online, you may need to transition from an online education experience to in-person workplace experience. But in an age of Covid, that concern seems much diminished. The fact is that much employment these days is remote. And collaboration increasingly happens online over Zoom. Many employers will therefore view your online degree as evidence of valuable 21st century professional skills such as independence, self-motivation, time management, and tech savvy.

If you are a student who thrives on the dynamic energy of in-person discussion, who requires the physical surroundings of a classroom to feel engaged, or who considers the social aspects of education to be of equal importance to the actual content of your courses, online education will be less than ideal for you (though depending on your circumstances, it may also be the only viable option).

While there is much in traditional campus-based education that can be substituted or simulated through the online medium, some students may find that there is nothing that can replace the conversation, collaboration, and motivation that occur in an actual in-person classroom setting. As you transition to online education, one of the biggest challenges you will likely face in getting the most out of your online classes is overcoming this difference between “real reality” and “virtual reality.” Fortunately, we’ve got some great Tips for Online Education Beginners.

The advantages of online classes are many. Above all, online courses give you the freedom and flexibility to attend class from anywhere that works for you, whether you’re at home, in a coffee shop, or in a quiet conference room at work. In many cases, you’ll also enjoy the convenience of asynchronous learning opportunities-educational experiences that you can complete at your own pace and on your own schedule. This may include pre-taped lectures, ongoing chat-board discussions, and 24/7 access to digital materials. And of course, just as there are some learners who prefer the energy of a live classroom, there are those who learn best when working in their own personal space, free from distractions. If this sounds like you, you might find the solitude of online learning to be a major advantage.

Whether you’re just getting started on your college search, you’re looking for survival tips on your way to a bachelor’s degree, or you’re preparing for the transition into grad school, we’ve got guides, how to’s and tons of other valuable resources to keep you moving forward in your educational journey.

Do you have a question about this topic? Ask it here

Best Online Associate in Paralegal Studies

Top 10 Online Paralegal Studies Associate Degrees

Featured Programs

Frequently Asked Questions About Paralegal Studies Degrees

Why get an associate in paralegal studies?

What do paralegals do?

How long does it take to get an associate in paralegal studies?

What classes are required when getting an associate in paralegal studies?

What can you do with an associate in paralegal studies?

Best Online Associate’s in Paralegal Degree Programs

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at University of Cincinnati

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at University of Alaska Fairbanks

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Liberty University

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Eastern Kentucky University

Online Degrees

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Tallahassee Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Keiser University

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Northwest Mississippi Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at University of the Cumberlands

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Hinds Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Central Texas College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Missouri Western State University

Online Degrees

Concentrations

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Navarro College

Online Degrees

Concentrations

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Trinity Valley Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Kirkwood Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Hillsborough Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Hodges University

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Carl Albert State College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Herkimer County Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Central Carolina Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Western Piedmont Community College

Online Degrees

Concentrations

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Yavapai College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Luzerne County Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Tompkins Cortland Community College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Paralegal degree at Ocean County College

Online Degrees

Career Outlook for Students with Paralegal Degree

Legal Assistant/Paralegal

Degree Level: Associate's

Career Salaries

Average Career Salaries

Promising Job Markets

Top Industries

Online Degree Frequently Asked Questions

What can I expect from an online college course?+

Is online college easier than campus-based college?+

Why does accreditation matter in online college?+

Will I be able to transfer my online college degree?+

Will employers respect my online degree?+

What are the disadvantages of online classes?+

What are the advantages of online classes?+

Resources for Online College-Bound Students