Gordon Allardyce isn’t exactly your typical community college student. The 65-year-old started out his career at DaimlerChrysler as an engineer. Mid-career, he earned a master’s in business administration and a law degree.

Although he never formally practiced law, Allardyce found the training “very useful” in his work in regulatory affairs at Chrysler.

When he retired after 41 years with the automaker, Allardyce took on a few engineering consulting jobs, but those didn’t give him the post-career satisfaction he was looking for. “I always had the desire to practice law,” he says, “but after 25 years, that unused law degree was pretty stale.”

That’s when he started looking into OCC’s paralegal program. “In one year, I completed all the core courses I needed for a paralegal certificate,” he says. A fellow student provided just the information he needed to jump start his second career: “A woman in class with me mentioned she was working for a law firm in Troy, Vandeveer Garzia, which was tremendously busy with asbestos litigation. They were looking for part-time attorneys to assist them.” Typically, it’s not all that easy to find part-time legal work, Allardyce explains, but this opportunity was a perfect fit. Many of his core OCC paralegal classes provided him with a thorough review and update of the law. Others taught him practical legal skills “that you just don’t learn in law school.” That combination was a winner for Allardyce who was hired as an attorney in January by Vandeveer Garzia. He currently works two to three days a week, traveling the state taking depositions from clients for asbestos-related lawsuits.