The Paralegal Advanced Competency Exam (PACE) is offered by the National Federation of Paralegal Associations (NFPA) to test the competency level of paralegals (or legal assistants) who have at least two years of experience and meet a few other, educative preconditions.

In general, the target audience of this exam is experienced paralegals who want to extend their authority in the current workplace or to get a different job with higher requirements in another law office or organization.

A good score in the PACE exam gives them an opportunity to get into high-quality offices, which set a passing grade in the test as a precondition for entering the organization. By taking and passing this test, they eliminate several barriers that could prevent them from growing  and developing in their career as professional paralegals.

PACE is a two-tier exam:

• Tier 1 – addresses general legal-ethics issues. If needed, a specific state laws section can also be developed.

• Tier 2 – addresses specialty sections.

The National Federation of Paralegal Associations (NFPA) and the American Institute for Paralegal Studies (AIPS) have an online review course for the PACE exam, which can be found on their website.

The Requirements

To take the test the paralegal must meet one of the following requirements:

• Six years of experience – The paralegal must have an associate’s degree in paralegal studies from an institutionally accredited paralegal school or an ABA approved paralegal program.

• Three years of experience – The paralegal must have a bachelor’s degree in any course of study (obtained from an institutionally accredited school).

• Two years of experience – The paralegal must have a bachelor’s degree in any course of study in addition to graduation of an institutionally accredited paralegal program.

A paralegal will not be eligible for the PACE exam if:

• The paralegal has been convicted of a crime.

• The paralegal is under suspension, cancellation or termination of the paralegal certificate, registration, or license by an entity.

Locations and maintenance

You can choose one out of 200 Sylvan Technology Centers that are spread across the U.S. You should sign up for the exam according to your current residence (or future residence if you are planning to move anytime soon).

As for maintaining the credential, you will need to keep on learning, just as in the case of the Certified Paralegal exam. Twelve hours of continuing legal studies are needed every two years, while at least one hour is devoted to ethics.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2011 at 9:24 am and is filed under Getting the certification. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.