Best Online Bachelor’s in Law and Legal Studies Degree Programs for 2023

Best Online Bachelor’s in Law and Legal Studies Degree Programs for 2023

By James Barham

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

Find top-ranked online bachelor’s in law/legal studies degree programs to prepare students to work as mediators, detectives, and criminal justice administrators as well as pursue related graduate degree programs.

Top 10 Online Law and Legal Studies Bachelor's Degrees

University of Arizona

66%

University of Cincinnati

60%

Loyola University Chicago

52%

University of Central Florida

48%

University of Memphis

47%

Hampton University

43%

Liberty University

40%

Webster University

38%

Campbell University

38%

Eastern Kentucky University

34%

Liberty University

99%

Mississippi University for Women

99%

Eastern Kentucky University

98%

West Texas A&M University

97%

Christian Brothers University

97%

Keiser University

96%

University of Memphis

95%

University of Massachusetts Global

93%

Stevenson University

91%

Utica University

89%

University of Central Florida

31 to 1

Purdue University Global

28 to 1

University of Massachusetts Global

22 to 1

University of Cincinnati

19 to 1

Regent University

19 to 1

Western Carolina University

17 to 1

Liberty University

17 to 1

University of Memphis

16 to 1

Bellevue University

16 to 1

Missouri Western State University

16 to 1

Loyola University Chicago

$47,808

Stevenson University

$38,168

Campbell University

$38,160

Christian Brothers University

$34,820

Hampton University

$29,312

Webster University

$28,700

Utica University

$24,214

Liberty University

$22,713

Keiser University

$22,000

Mississippi College

$20,364

Utica University

$32,464

Keiser University

$29,632

Loyola University Chicago

$18,990

Regent University

$15,590

National University

$15,480

Campbell University

$14,041

Webster University

$13,500

University of Cincinnati

$13,224

Hampton University

$13,099

Christian Brothers University

$12,928

University of Massachusetts Global

17%

Utica University

21%

Missouri Western State University

22%

Bellevue University

23%

Christian Brothers University

25%

Stevenson University

25%

West Texas A&M University

26%

Wilmington University

26%

Keiser University

27%

Purdue University Global

28%

University of Central Florida

36%

Regent University

41%

Mississippi College

49%

National University

55%

Webster University

59%

Loyola University Chicago

77%

Western Carolina University

79%

Hampton University

80%

University of Cincinnati

85%

Campbell University

87%

Christian Brothers University

11 to 1

Webster University

12 to 1

Wilmington University

12 to 1

Utica University

12 to 1

Mississippi University for Women

12 to 1

Loyola University Chicago

14 to 1

Mississippi College

15 to 1

Stevenson University

15 to 1

Eastern Kentucky University

15 to 1

Keiser University

15 to 1

Western Carolina University

$1,000

University of Central Florida

$4,478

West Texas A&M University

$6,211

Missouri Western State University

$6,900

Mississippi University for Women

$7,756

Bellevue University

$8,310

University of Memphis

$8,352

Eastern Kentucky University

$9,452

Purdue University Global

$10,080

University of Cincinnati

$10,099

Western Carolina University

$4,435

West Texas A&M University

$5,086

Missouri Western State University

$6,840

University of Central Florida

$6,916

Mississippi University for Women

$7,656

Liberty University

$7,847

Stevenson University

$8,340

Purdue University Global

$8,730

Wilmington University

$9,000

University of Memphis

$9,378

Key Takeaways

An online legal studies degree is an entry point for diverse career opportunities in the area of criminal justice, particularly in law firms, federal government, and other elements of the American legal system.
The best legal studies programs provide online students with satisfactory to excellent student support services as part of their thrust for academic excellence.
Choosing the best legal studies program should include careful considerations of the costs and financial aid available.

Table of Contents

Featured Programs

Exploring the Online Bachelor’s in Law and Legal Studies

Students in online bachelor’s in law and legal studies programs aspire to become legal professionals, among the highest-paid group of occupations. The nation’s Bureau of Labor Statistics explains that legal occupations earned $82,430 in median annual wage in May 2021; in comparison, the median annual wage for all occupations was $45,760.

The growth in employment among legal professionals is also faster than average at 10% (2020-2030). Students pursuing law and legal studies bachelor’s degrees can look forward to about 131,000 new jobs and 110,000 openings for replacements over the 10-year period. Legal assistants, legal secretaries, and court reporters are a few of these occupations.

Preparatory Degree for Entry into Law Schools

Note that many legal professionals must pursue more advanced education beyond a bachelor’s degree. Judges, hearing officers, and lawyers, for example, possess either a professional degree or a doctoral degree. Lawyers spend a minimum of three years in law schools accredited by the American Bar Association.

A bachelor’s degree in law and legal studies is among the best undergraduate degrees to get into the best law schools. Prospective students will also be required to pass the Law Admission Test (LSAT), a standard measurement of readiness for law school.

The education and training acquired in the best bachelor’s degree in law and legal studies programs is an excellent preparation for the LSAT.

But even if you don’t proceed to law school and become a lawyer, you will benefit from earning a bachelor’s in law and legal studies degree! You will acquire technical skills in reading and researching legal documents, providing legal support services, and interpreting legal concepts and principles. Your critical thinking, analytical thinking and communication skills will be better because of your online education, too.

Preparation Is Key to Success

Academic rigor and excellence are part and parcel of the online educational experience in law and legal studies bachelor’s degree programs. Students must read and understand voluminous learning materials, understand relevant legal documents, explain legal concepts in oral recitations and written assignments, and even engage in legal debates.

Effective time management is key to success, and students are encouraged to use student support services whenever necessary. Tutoring services are great for keeping up with the challenging coursework, and writing services will improve your writing skills.

Be sure to use the library and IT help desk services, too. Academic advising services are a must to create your program of study.

Indeed, being prepared before getting into law school will make the experience more enjoyable and productive!

Online bachelor’s in law and legal studies programs may also require internships and capstone projects for students to complete. Internships are hands-on learning experiences in a legal environment, such as in an entry-level paralegal capacity. Capstone projects demonstrate a student’s knowledge of legal principles and their real-world applications.

Admission Requirements

Online bachelor’s in law and legal studies programs have highly selective admissions criteria because of the nature of the legal profession. Prospective students should possess either a high school diploma or an associate degree, minimum, as well as submit:

A completed application
Official transcripts from schools attended
Standardized test scores
Letters of recommendation
Essays with specific formats recommended by the program
Current resume

Many online programs also interview prospective students who have been shortlisted to determine their suitability.

Cost and Financial Aid

Law and legal studies degree programs have among the most expensive tuition structures, a cause for concern among prospective students. The tuition costs ranged from $22,000 to nearly $75,000 per year, and it doesn’t include other fees like technology fees.

In-state students may pay lower per-credit costs than out-of-state students but there are online programs that charge the same per-credit fees for all students.

Due to these costs, prospective students must look into the financial aid options in law schools offering bachelor’s in law and legal studies programs.

Frequently Asked Questions About Law/Legal Studies Degrees

Earning a bachelor’s degree in law can help foster negotiation, problem-solving, and public speaking skills, preparing graduates for success in a variety of careers.

In about four to five years, students can complete the roughly 120 required credits either online or in person.

Students will study legal writing, ethics, and legal theory as well as current issues in law, best practices in negotiation, and the ins and outs of litigation. Programs may also allow students to choose a concentration, like business or environmental law.

Upon graduation, individuals will be prepared to work as mediators, detectives, and criminal justice administrators as well as pursue related graduate degree programs.

Learn more about how to major in law.

Best Online Bachelor's in Law Degree Programs

How do we determine the best online law bachelor's degree programs?

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.

What Goes into our Online Bachelor’s in Law and Legal Studies Ranking Process

These 10 online bachelor’s degree in law and legal studies programs are offered by regionally accredited colleges and universities. Regional accreditation is considered the highest level of accreditation because it’s proof of compliance with academic standards of higher education.

Many online programs also have programmatic accreditation from the American Bar Association and other legal research and legal professional organizations like the National Association of Legal Assistants.

We also considered the overall reputation for academic excellence, learning outcomes and graduate outcomes for the list of law and legal studies programs. Students and graduates alike attest to the academic rigor of the coursework, from the general education courses to the major courses.

The pursuit of academic excellence means graduates are prepared for the challenging legal, civil litigation, and criminal law work of legal professionals.

Such emphasis on academic excellence is supported by the impressive legal expertise of the faculty members. Lawyers, judges, and mediators with years of legal experience share their knowledge and skills with students.

Student success is also influenced by the quality and quantity of student support services. Tutoring services, writing services, access to the IT help desk and digital libraries, and career services are great examples.

Median Salaries of Similar Careers in the U.S.

The following graph depicts the average salaries of similar occupations to Lawyers in the U.S.

Source: U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

Annual Salary

62350Arbitrators, Mediators, and Conciliators

62730Judicial Law Clerks

104160Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers

142520Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates

148030Lawyers

Best Online Bachelor’s in Law Degree Programs

Online Legal Studies Programs Looking for You

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.

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Image Source for Purdue University Global