ABA-Approved Paralegal Programs (2027)

What ABA Approval Means, And What It Does Not

The American Bar Association keeps a directory of paralegal education programs it has approved. The directory describes itself in four sentences worth reading before anything else on this page:

Search current ABA-approved paralegal programs, updated every February and August. Search by: institution, city, state, program director, degree type, or program name. Programs not listed are not ABA-approved. "Online" indicates at least one online program is available.

ABA, Directory of ABA Approved Paralegal Education Programs

Three things follow, and the ABA states each of them itself. Approval belongs to a program, not to a person:

The American Bar Association does not certify Paralegals. Paralegals may not represent themselves as "ABA-certified paralegals," because the ABA's approval applies to the paralegal education program rather than to the individual paralegal.

ABA Standing Committee on Paralegals, Educational Information for Paralegals

A graduate may say they finished an ABA-approved program. A paralegal who wants a credential of their own takes a certification exam from a professional association or, in a few states, a program run by the state bar.

Approval is not accreditation either. The ABA's guidelines forbid the word: "Programs may not use the term 'accreditation' to refer to approval by the American Bar Association" (Guideline G-501.B). Accreditation is what the school as a whole holds, and an approved program must sit in a school accredited by one of the institutional accreditors the ABA accepts. And approval is voluntary, so a program missing from the list has not failed anything; it may simply never have applied.

Where approval carries practical weight is in rules that name it. California's statute lists completion of an ABA-approved program as one route to using the title paralegal, and California has 32 approved programs, more than any other state. NALA's Certified Paralegal exam accepts graduates of approved programs under its first eligibility category, and NFPA's exams accept certificates from approved programs as qualifying education.

How A Program Earns Approval

The ABA's House of Delegates grants approval twice a year, on the recommendation of its Standing Committee on Paralegals, against written guidelines last revised effective January 1, 2023. A program has to have run for two years and have graduates before it can apply, and approval lasts seven years before the program applies again. The guidelines set out what an approved program contains:

• Sixty semester hours in all, including at least 18 of general education and at least 18 of legal specialty courses: courses developed for paralegals that cover substantive law or procedure and teach practical skills. A student who already holds a bachelor's degree, or an associate of arts or science, is treated as having met the general education and the total, which is how a certificate for degree holders qualifies on its legal courses alone.
• No short certificates. Short-term and stackable certificates of fewer than 18 legal specialty credits are not approved program options, whatever school offers them.
• Some live teaching, even online. Every student must take at least nine semester credits of legal specialty courses through synchronous instruction. Live classes over video count, so a fully online program can qualify, and a program advertising an online option has to say so.
• An accredited school. The program must be offered by an institution accredited by an agency the ABA accepts.

A List That Is Getting Shorter

The ABA counted 262 approved programs in December 2019. The directory held 220 on September 30, 2026. In its four meetings from February 2025 to August 2026, the House of Delegates withdrew 11 approvals at the schools' own request and granted two new ones, to Front Range Community College in Westminster, Colorado, and the Center for Advanced Legal Studies in Houston, Texas. Approval itself is not winding down: the ABA has posted program fees for 2027 and continues to review programs. Seven states have no approved program at all: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, New Mexico, North Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia.

What The Approved Programs Award

The ABA lists the awards each approved program offers. 166 list a certificate (or, at 2 Wisconsin technical colleges, a technical diploma), 167 an associate's degree in one of its forms (AA, AS, AAS or the AAB some Ohio and Michigan colleges award), 56 a bachelor's degree and 3 a master's. Most programs offer more than one, so the counts overlap.

29 approved programs have no paralegal awards in the federal completions data. That is expected rather than suspicious: IPEDS counts only credit-bearing awards, and many of these programs sit in a university's extension division or law school and award a non-credit certificate. They are as approved as any other program on the list; they simply cannot be ranked on federal figures, which is why they are compared on their own published facts on the post-baccalaureate certificate page.

ABA-Approved Programs You Can Take Online

The ABA marks 35 approved programs "Online", meaning at least one of the program's offerings can be taken online. The federal record shows 55 approved schools with a paralegal program that can be finished at least partly online. The flag covers any online option in a program, and the federal record covers what each school reports for each award, so the lists overlap without being the same list. The online paralegal programs ranking covers the approved programs that can be completed at least partly online by the school's own page or, where the page says nothing, the federal record, priced at the out-of-state rate.

Closed And Paused Programs On The List

The ABA's directory is updated twice a year, and a school can stop admitting between editions. Each school below says on its own page that a program has closed or is not admitting new students. It stays on the ABA's list and in the tables here, with a note, and the program the school names is not ranked.

• Bronx Community College, Bronx, New York: Not admitting new students

  NOTE: The Paralegal Studies program is not currently accepting new students.

  Read October 2, 2026, Bronx Community College page

• Central Penn College, Summerdale, Pennsylvania: Not admitting new students

  Please note: This program is not currently accepting new enrollments.

  Read October 5, 2026, Central Penn College page

• Community College of Aurora, Aurora, Colorado: Certificate not admitting new students

  The program is not accepting new students this academic year.

  Read October 1, 2026, Community College of Aurora page

• Daemen University, Amherst, New York: Bachelor's not admitting new students

  Enrollment in the four year paralegal BS program has been temporarily paused.

  Read October 1, 2026, Daemen University page

• Eastern Gateway Community College, Steubenville, Ohio: Closed

  Effective September 30th, 2025 the college is permanently closed.

  Read October 1, 2026, Eastern Gateway Community College page

• Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York: Not admitting new students

  Note: No longer accepting new students.

  Read October 8, 2026, Nassau Community College page

• South Puget Sound Community College, Olympia, Washington: Not admitting new students

  IMPORTANT NOTE: SPSCC is no longer accepting students into this program.

  Read October 1, 2026, South Puget Sound Community College page

• Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois: Not admitting new students

  The following programs are suspended from enrollment of new students. The most recent catalog year for each program is listed below.

  Read October 1, 2026, Southern Illinois University Carbondale page

• University of Oklahoma Law Center, Norman, Oklahoma: Program ending 2026

  The University of Oklahoma Law Center’s Paralegal Studies Program will remain ABA-approved through the end of 2026. Students currently enrolled or admitted to the program must complete all program requirements by the end of 2026 to graduate.

  Read October 1, 2026, University of Oklahoma Law Center page

Every ABA-Approved Paralegal Program, By State

All 220 programs on the directory dated September 30, 2026, grouped by state. "ABA approval" shows the awards the ABA lists; the next columns are the school's federal record for 2023-24. Choose a state to open its programs. States with a page of their own link to it inside the section, where each approved program is ranked, and a school's name links to its entry there; in every other state a school's name opens its own program page.

Common Questions About ABA-Approved Paralegal Programs

Sources For The ABA-Approved Program List

• ABA directory, September 30, 2026
• IPEDS 2023-24: awards, tuition, graduation rates