Heald College launches legal assisting program

Heald College, a private nonprofit career college, has launched a Legal Assisting program at its Roseville and Rancho Cordova campuses. This new program offers accredited Associate in Applied Science degrees in Business Administration with an emphasis in Legal Assisting. It gives students a solid foundation to pursue Accredited Legal Secretary certification. Heald College's Legal Assisting program delivers experienced, trained professionals to meet the growing demand for legal professionals in the greater Sacramento area. "Heald College is continuously revising its programs to provide the right skills for the hottest careers in business, technology and healthcare," said Jean Hastie, senior vice president and chief academic officer of Heald College. "The consistent rise in operating expenses is forcing law offices to reduce costs by assigning important tasks to motivated support staff. We launched this program to address the need for well-trained legal professionals who can multi-task to meet a variety of operational needs." In the Legal Assisting program, Heald College students gain an in-depth understanding of the American legal system and the fundamentals of business administration. Heald College classrooms offer industry standard technologies, so students can learn how to access and manage legal information using the same applications they will find in the workplace. Student coursework covers everything from litigation to criminal law to business law."We're setting the standard for career-focused education," said Ed Hardenbrook, campus director for both of Heald College's Sacramento area campuses. "Developing a Legal Assisting program that prepares our students for workplace success and meets the community's need for qualified legal professionals demonstrates our commitment to high quality, practical education." Jim Schenk is one of the lead instructors for the Legal Assisting program at Heald's Sacramento area campuses. He joined the Heald Roseville family in 1999 as instructor of Business Law and Psychology. Before joining Heald, Schenk wrote curricula and taught classes in legal studies at Lincoln Law School, Pacific College of Legal Careers, and Loretto High School in Sacramento. Schenk has been a guest lecturer at U.C. Berkeley's Law School (Boalt Hall) and at U.C. Davis Medical School's Department of Psychiatry. Prior to pursuing a teaching career, Schenk practiced law in California for 25 years as a Criminal Law and Family Law trial lawyer. He holds a JD from McGeorge School of Law of University of the Pacific and a BA in English from St. Mary's College in Moraga. Schenk was honored as Teacher of the Year for the Heald Roseville Campus in 2001."I'm honored to be teaching courses for Heald College's new Legal Assisting program," said Schenk. "Our focused curriculum and student-centered learning environment will help produce the motivated legal professionals this region needs."For more information, call Heald College at 1-800-88-HEALD or visit www.heald.edu.