Legal Studies
2025-2026 Program Review

The Legal Studies program at American River College is approved by the American Bar Association and prepares students for careers as paralegals. Our curriculum combines academic rigor with practical skills development and substantive legal training. The program offers both an Associate degree in Paralegal Studies and a certificate pathway for students who already hold a college degree. Courses are taught by experienced attorneys and legal professionals with an emphasis on legal research and writing, litigation support, substantive legal practice areas, and legal ethics. Graduates are prepared for employment as paralegals in law firms, corporate legal departments, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations serving the Sacramento region and beyond.

Disproportionate impact patterns in the Legal Studies program do not align consistently with traditional demographic categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, or first-generation college status. Instead, the program’s data most consistently show disproportionate impacts among students with indicators of economic disadvantage, particularly those at or just above the poverty line. Because many students in the program are working adults with employment and caregiving responsibilities, financial pressures and time constraints often impact academic performance. The program data does not show persistent or obvious disproportionate impact along other demographic categories at this time.

Since our last Program Review, we have used program data to guide several changes aimed at improving student access, retention, and success:

·      Instructional modality – Courses are now offered through a hybrid format which combines synchronous Zoom lecture and asynchronous instructional work. This gives students more flexibility to manage their coursework alongside family or work obligations, while still maintaining academic rigor.

·      Class scheduling – Classes are now scheduled exclusively in the evenings and on weekends rather than during the workday hours. This ensures working students can take all required courses without negatively impacting their existing jobs.

·      Curriculum design – We have added four new elective courses, with each focused on specific practical skills and employer expectations. By prioritizing instruction on Legal Technology, Law and Motion practice, Interviewing and Investigating, and Trial Preparation, our graduates are now better prepared to obtain and succeed in jobs.

We have also expanded opportunities for students to engage with the Sacramento legal community and build professional networks.

For example, we now hold in-person Open House events for students and members of the legal profession. In February 2025, premier legal staffing agency Fujitani Consulting attended the event to discuss job market trends and connect with students. In February 2026, the Sacramento Legal Professionals Association spoke with students about the importance of professional networking and strategies for building those connections. In Spring 2025, we hosted a series of Friday “Lunch and Learn” Zoom sessions where students could engage with legal professionals and learn more about expectations in legal practice.

Finally, we’ve expanded our faculty team. In Summer 2024, five new adjunct instructors were hired. This broadened the program’s depth of expertise and instructional approaches. In Spring 2025, a second full time faculty member joined the program. Now that our program is fully staffed, we are better positioned to strengthen partnerships with the regional legal community, and we are working to develop internship connections as well as an annual resume drop event for students.

All of these efforts are aimed at helping students (especially those without existing professional networks) gain the skills, connections, and confidence they need to succeed in school and after graduation.

Program enrollment has continued to increase over the last 10 years, and enrollment for Spring 2026 is the highest it has ever been. Course success rates remain strong. Over the last five years, course success rates in our program have averaged 78%.

To reduce disproportionate impact for students experiencing economic disadvantage, we will continue to focus on flexibility, access, and workforce preparation.

This includes, but is not limited to:

·     Maintaining the structural and programmatic improvements noted above (including hybrid courses, evening / weekend scheduling, and expanded electives)

·     Standardizing class schedules so students can confidently plan their coursework each semester

·     Building on the “Lunch and Learn” pilot from Spring 2025 to establish a regular schedule for such non-credit professional development opportunities

·     Improving employment pipelines for program graduates, hosting in-person networking events, and establishing an annual resume drop each spring

·     Expanding department connections and student engagement with the Business HomeBase and Reading Across the Disciplines (“RAD”) program to increase student engagement with academic support resources.

Finally, we will continue monitoring enrollment, retention, and course success data to identify changes to, or emerging patterns in, future disproportionate impact data.

The relationships we have worked to build between the Business HomeBase, RAD, and Career Services are critical for reducing disproportionate impact.

The Business HomeBase, in particular, is an incredibly important resource for our students. Continued institutional and administrative support for the HomeBases is essential to maintain equitable access to resources for economically disadvantaged students. Having such effective access to ARC’s holistic network of student support services makes a notable difference in their success. In addition, the dedicated success team, and their focus on academically and professionally aligned resources, activities, and events, has linked our distance students to campus in a way that makes them feel more invested in and supported by the college as a whole.

We have begun coordinating with RAD to funnel more of our students into that program – and we would like to increase that collaboration going forward. RAD is key to improving student reading comprehension, speed, and ability. These are foundational skills some students in our DI population struggle with.

In future semesters, we hope to review the success rates of students in our program both before and after these increased collaborations began.

While program data is available, coordinating and analyzing it to inform equity strategies requires dedicated time and structured processes.

Even though we are now fully staffed, maintaining the program improvements discussed above (particularly the professional development, workplace pipeline, and increased collaboration) requires careful faculty coordination and significant ongoing effort. These take tremendous time for our full-time faculty and will be unsustainable if staffing levels change in the future.

Because our courses are highly specialized, some standard institutional interventions (like embedded supports or general networking programs) don’t fully reach our students. This limits the effectiveness of available equity interventions.