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While three-year law degrees at brick-and-mortar schools are traditional, they’re not for everyone.

The programs are expensive, time consuming and some restrict fulltime students from working more than 20 hours a week or at all at an outside job.

Luckily, there are other options for obtaining a law degree and it’s online.

Recently, online law degrees have gained more clout and popularity as they’ve become better established and continually appealed to students because of their low price and flexibility.

Consider the following:

• In the last seven years, the number of people taking online courses has more than doubled to 3.9 million, according to a survey.
• More than two-thirds of all higher education institutions now have some form of online courses.
• Among business leaders who are familiar with online degrees, more than four in five (83%) strongly believe online degrees are as credible as traditional degrees.

Now, keep those facts in mind while you mull over this next number:

• The U.S. government projects that the demand for lawyers will increase by 11 percent by 2016. That’s an additional 84,000 jobs.
• Online law degrees can offer the same opportunities as regular law degrees, but they come with some perks that you can’t find at traditional law schools:
• Classes are online, through telecommunications or similar to independent work-studies, so you’ll never have to enter a classroom.
• The same areas of study can be obtained online - from bankruptcy law to constitutional law - as in regular law degree programs.
• Getting a law degree online is more flexible and there is no limit on how many hours a week a student can work.
• The cost of an online law degree is drastically less expensive than a three-year law degree program (some online law degree programs cost $4,500 a year and others are roughly $10,000 a year).
• Textbooks and other course materials can be sent electronically, so students don’t have to bear the burden of expensive books and packets.

The requirements for obtaining an online law degree are more relaxed than at traditional brick-and-mortar schools.

While most law students have typically already completed their bachelor’s degree, that is not necessarily a requirement for online law degree programs.

For instance, in California, the minimum amount of education required is that students have at least two years of college-level work, or roughly 60 credit hours. The required GPA is equal to or higher than the one needed for graduating.

Online law degree students are not required to take the LSAT.

Finding an Online Law Degree Program

This part, just like with selecting any other school, requires thorough research. Because of the growing popularity of online courses, some fly-by-night online schools have cropped up in recent years. If you do your homework, however, you’ll have no trouble finding a legitimate online law degree program that is right for you.

Check the following about each online law degree program:

• Accreditations and credentials to gauge the quality of the school.
• The number of full-time faculty, their credentials and experience.
• Courses – and level of those courses – offered in online law degree programs versus those at a traditional law school.
• Percentage of students who complete their degree and sit for and pass the Bar Exam.
• One of the oldest and more established online law degree programs comes from William Howard Taft University. The University opened in 1984 and is registered with the State Bar of California.

Because no online law degree programs are currently approved by the American Bar Association, graduates of these programs are not allowed to sit for the bar exam, except for in the state of California. If you’re going for a paralegal degree this will be no problem, but it makes getting a Juris Doctor more difficult if you’re outside of California.

If you don’t want to live and work in California permanently, consider doing the following:

• Practice law there for at least five years and then apply to take the bar in another state
• Appeal to each state’s bar-admitting authority that you would like to live and work in
• Pass the California Bar Exam and practice law in federal courts of other states

Just like with traditional schools, financial aid and loans are available to students wanting to get their law degree online. Click here to apply.

Also, check with each online law degree program to see what kind of financial aid is offered by their school.

Going Forward

From here, your online law degree is just a click away. Search the web, speak with school advisors and pick the brain of a student who has completed an online law degree program. Good luck!