Legal Secretarial course - to study or not to study?

[PopcornPants]

Hi ? wondered if any legal eagles can help. I was thinking of doing a legal secretarial diploma via distance learning through the Institute of Legal Secretaries or CILEx Law school. I worked 12 years as a PA in corporate finance within investment banking ? tough environment but I was good at what I did and was sad to leave but couldn?t hack it after having DD (now 4) even part time as it was quite stressful at times juggling baby/commute/long days. I also have a 2:1 degree (long time ago). I changed to working as a PA in a school when DD was 2. My current role is full time all year round (not term time only) ? if it were term time I probably wouldn?t mind it so much. Can?t change my hours and they won?t even look at offering me flexible part time/job share in this role. Am finding that I am just working to pay the nursery and not spending enough time with DD. I am not very happy here at all ? it?s really not what was sold to me at interview and I have found some of the other admin staff here really cliquey and rude and unhelpful. To cut a long story short, am now expecting another baby after xmas and I want to stretch my employment options open as much as possible for when I do eventually go back to work. Would love to be a sahm but financially can?t afford to. I?d love to go back to banking/financial PA work part time but jobs are few and far between and it would mean commuting again - difficult with 2 dc's. Have seen lots of part time legal secretarial work going both locally and with a short commute. The adverts say they want legal experience but when I ring the agencies involved to ask more info, they stipulate the experience and that they wouldn?t be able to help me into these roles as I don?t have a legal secretarial background. Should I consider spending £100?s on doing a distance learning legal secretarial course or are these courses a waste of money? If a course is a good idea, which course would you recommend? Would I be better off (after having baby and ready to go back to working) to just trying to get a job somewhere in a small legal company to get some experience and take it from there? Phew?.sorry to ramble!

[Holliewantstobehot]

Marking place as i am considering this too!

[SlumberingDormouse]

Seeing as you have a degree, you could consider studying postgraduate-level chartered secretarial exams with the ICSA. They're not hugely expensive (about £250 per module including text book). The whole qualification (8 exams unless you get any exemptions, which you might) is quite a slog; I'm doing it at the moment. However, I think they also do smaller stand-alone modules which might be useful. Worth looking into maybe?