Law Shelf (NCCRS)

Law Shelf

The National College Credit Recommendation Service (NCCRS) is a third party credit evaluator that evaluates learning that occurs outside of a college. Only when a provider has a partnership with a college should this college credit be considered transferable. Unlike ACE/Credly, NCCRS college credit is held directly with the provider. HS4CC List of NCCRS Partners

BOGO deal exclusive for HS4CC families!

Use the code HS4CC at checkout to Buy One Course and Get One FREE

Law Shelf courses are completely free! You only pay if you want to take the final, proctored exam. The exam cost is based on $20 per credit, and is required if you want college credit for the course. If you don’t take the exam, you can still award high school credit on your homeschool transcript.

A typical Law Shelf course is worth 3 college credits ($60), so with the BOGO code you’ll choose 2 course for $60 which brings your cost per credit down to $10!

5-COURSE MULTI-PACK $180

10-COURSE MULTI-PACK $300

There is no age restriction, no application, and no transcript required.

Law Shelf is worth college credit because of their evaluation through NCCRS. Acceptance of NCCRS credit, in general, is limited and is really only a good idea when you’re using one of the company’s partner colleges. Law Shelf has seven partners (as of 07/2022) all regionally accredited (the gold standard) making this small list all good choices.

Partner Colleges

  1. Excelsior College (NY) Equivalency List
  2. Thomas Edison State University (NJ) Equivalency List TBA
  3. Purdue Global (IN) Equivalency List
  4. University of Maryland Global (MD) Equivalency List
  5. Troy University (AL) Equivalency List
  6. American InterContinental (TX/GA) Equivalency List
  7. DeVry (IL) Equivalency List
  8. Touro University (CA) Equivalency List
  9. University of Phoenix (AZ) Equivalency List

College Course List

Several of the courses are evaluated as “upper level” but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get upper level credit. Check each partner college’s equivalencies listed to learn exactly what these credits will transfer in as. If the partner doesn’t provide a list, you may want to email the partner college’s Registrar for clarity.

  • ACC-101: Basics of Accounting
  • BUS-101: Business Organizations
  • BUS-111: Basics of Bankruptcy Law
  • FIN-201: Corporate Finance Law
  • CRM-101: Basics of Criminal Law
  • CRM-102: Search and Seizure
  • CRM-201: White-Collar Crime
  • ADR-301: Alternative Dispute Resolution
  • LIT-101: Basics of Civil Litigation
  • LIT-301: Discovery in Civil Litigation
  • LIT-401: E-Discovery
  • LIT-302: Evidence
  • COM-211: Consumer Protection
  • COM-201: Commercial Payments
  • COM-303: Cyber Law
  • COM-304: E-Commerce Regulation
  • COM-302: Insurance Law
  • COM-401: Secured Transactions
  • CON-101: Basics of Contract Law
  • COM-301: Sales of Goods
  • ELD-501: ERISA and Pension Plans
  • ELD-302: The Probate Process
  • ELD-502: Trusts and Estates
  • ELD-301: Wills and Testamentary Trusts
  • ELD-401: Social Security and Medicare Law
  • EMP-301: Protections for Employees
  • EMP-202: Workers’ Compensation
  • EMP-201: Labor Relations
  • EMP-101: Employment and Employment Benefits
  • DRL-201: Family Support and Child Custody Law
  • GOV-301: Administrative Law
  • GOV-202: Basics of Environmental Law
  • GOV-203: Basics of Immigration Law
  • GOV-102: Basics of Legal Ethics
  • GOV-201: Civil Rights Law
  • GOV-204: First Amendment Law
  • IPL-401: Patent Law
  • IPL-402: Trademarks
  • IPL-201: Copyright Law
  • HLT-201: Health Insurance Law
  • HLT-202: Health Records and Privacy
  • HLT-203: Legal Considerations in Drug Development
  • RPL-301: Oil, Gas and Mineral Rights
  • RPL-101: Law of Real Estate Transactions and Mortgages
  • TAX-101: Basics of Federal Income Taxation
  • TOR-301: Intentional and Negligence Torts
  • TOR-501: Medical Malpractice
  • TOR-502: Product Liability Law
  • TOR-302: Mass Torts

Proctored Exam

A Law Shelf course requires passing a final exam in order to earn college credit. The final exam is open book and requires a proctor fee of $20/credit (most courses are 3 credits). Unlike a lot of remote proctoring, these exams are NOT proctored via video webcam, they are instead proctored using Voice Proctor.

You’ll need to set up your Voice Proctor account at least one day before you want to take the exam. This process and link is integrated into your Law Shelf course.

From Voice Proctor’s website “Before the student can take exams using the Voice Proctor™ system, the student registers his/her voice print on the Voice Proctor™ servers using the Voice Proctor™ website in conjunction with a standard telephone. Schools have the option to have the initial voice print registration call made in front of a webcam and to have the student display a government-issued ID during the call-in session. The webcam session can be recorded and stored by Voice Proctor™ and is accessible to the school’s records department at any time. The initial call is the only time a webcam is used within the Voice Proctor™ testing environment.

Voice Proctor™ uses a standard telephone to record voice responses of students at random points during exams by asking them to verbally explain answers given to previous questions. These responses are stored on the Voice Proctor™ servers and can easily be compared with an original voice print that the student gave when he/she signed in to the Voice Proctor™ system for the first time.”

For any given exam, schools have the OPTION of setting how many proctored events will occur and for which students. Proctored events can take 4 different forms:

  1. The system calls the student at the beginning of the exam and asks the student to read a passage that appears on the screen.
  2. The system calls the student at a random point during the exam and asks the student to verbally answer a previously answered exam question.
  3. The system calls the student at a random point during the exam and asks the student to verbally explain why a given choice on a previously answered multiple choice question is incorrect.
  4. The system calls the student at a random point during the exam and asks the student to verbally answer a “challenge question” which is a derivative of a previously answered question using altered fact patterns.

NON-College Course List (Free)

Courses on this list are entirely free (no proctored exam) and result in a digital badge that you can display on your social media profile. You can also use these courses for high school credit.

  • Business Operating Agreements
  • Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Nonprofit Organizations Law
  • Securities Regulation
  • Stocks and Stock Transfers
  • Debtor and Creditor Law
  • Criminal Sentencing and Appeals
  • Counterterrorism Law and Policy
  • Negotiating and Drafting Contracts
  • Social Security
  • Employment and Employee Benefits
  • Leaving a Job
  • Alimony and Child Support
  • Child Custody and Visitation
  • Freedom of Speech
  • Freedom of Religion
  • Education Law: Responsibilities and Protections
  • Acquiring Copyright Protection
  • Copyright Enforcement and Defenses
  • Medicare
  • Fair Housing Act
  • Landlord-Tenant Law
  • Real Estate Transactions
  • Residential Mortgages
  • Land Use and Zoning
  • State and Local Taxation
  • Vicarious Liability (Liability for the Torts of Others)

HS4CC PARENT AMY WRITES THIS ABOUT HER SON’S EXPERIENCE:

“LawShelf is a fairly new opportunity for earning affordable college credits. My son is pursuing a BSLA degree at Excelsior College. He’s enrolled at Excelsior and has transferred in 56 credits so far. The most recent 3 credits he earned were through LawShelf. LawShelf offers course equivalency lists for 7 partner schools including Excelsior College, Thomas Edison State University, Purdue Global, University of Maryland Global, DeVry, Troy University, and American Intercontinental University. The classes on these equivalency lists are guaranteed to transfer to the partner school. The classes are free to take and if you wish to take the voice proctored exam, they at only $35/class (not per credit). My son and I looked through the list and he is very interested in the classes offered. In fact, he wants to take all of them and transfer several to Excelsior for credit. He decided to start off with the Basics of Criminal Law class. The classes are broken into modules. This particular class has five modules and two case studies. The modules are fairly short videos and each has a corresponding, optional quizzes. I highly recommend having your learner take the quizzes before progressing through the modules. The quizzes don’t count toward the grade in the class, but they help ensure competency and full understanding of the material. Building that foundation is important since the modules build on learned concepts and vocabulary. Also, the protected exam contained several of the questions (verbatim) from the quizzes according to my son. He printed the quizzes and circled the correct answers to have in front of him for the open book proctored exam. The case studies were longer than the modules and each was about an hour in length. They fascinated my son and he watched them over breakfast. They also have optional, corresponding quizzes. He printed these too and filled them in to use for the exam. My son also copy/pasted the transcripts for each module and case studies into a single document so he could easily use control-F(ind) during the exam to review material to help him answer the exam questions. The exam is open book/open notes and they even allow you to use google. The goal is for the learner to know how to find the data and interrupt it into concepts they can apply to real-life scenarios. The initial proctor setup requires a valid government ID. We went to SOS to obtain one for my son but only had the paper ID at the time he was ready to take the exam. I wrote to support and they allowed him to use the paper ID along with a homeschool ID. The process was fairly simple. He had to use his webcam to hold up his IDs and he had to read a passage that was displayed on the screen. He’s dyslexic so that meant a couple of mistakes the first two times, but the verification allows you to re-try the recording of yourself reading the passage. Honestly, they wouldn’t have cared about the mistaken words, but he did. It’s just trying to sample the voice. Once he submitted the voice proctoring setup, he received an email the next day stating he was all set and could take the exam. He kept his phone near him during the exam and it called him at one point to have him read a passage on the screen. I’ve heard it sometimes asks a question, or to explain one of your prior answers. The correctness isn’t important…just the voice. In the end, you receive a score that gives you a percentage and you’ll be notified in email when you can claim your badge and request a transcript. Transcripts are sent through Parchment, so we paid the $5 to have it sent right away, although you can gather up credits and have them all sent at once instead if you prefer. The class videos and case studies were very interesting for my son and he’s excited to take more classes through LawShelf. He completed this first one in a week.” -Amy S. (HS4CC Parent in Michigan)