This or That-Academic/Career Plan

Communications PR person here, I would Nth downing st: Neither of these will really secure you the job. I think it's also important to note that crisis PR is a real niche in the sector; you will almost certainly need solid experience in PR with an agency or in-house before you can really think about moving into this area - a qualification want really add a lot, they will want experience. Further, I know many PR people who specialise in crisis management, but they don't do it exclusively - there are very few people who do it exclusively. In an agency, this plays out that you are the crisis management person (this person is usually senior and older; it sucks but clients like someone who projects a mein of tranquility and being a veteran). When a crisis comes up you are often put on the account, or given accounts likely to have crises, but you still do a lot of non-crises work, sometimes pre-emptive, sometimes just regular PR. In-house, this means you will be the PR person on the Crisis Management Group, and the de facto manager for crises as they come up. You will liaise with executives and probably agency people working on it as well, but you will still be spending a lot of time doing "regular" PR. As a corollary of this - and downing st memo may well disagree with me, on this one. My experience is in Australia and in relevant Australian sectors - but I would urge you to consider what kind of organisations have need of regular crisis management PR, and why they are prepared to pay so much for it. These are not childrens hospitals and charities. They are companies like British Tobacco, Exxon Mobil and Shell, resources companies, organisations accused of malfeasance and/or malpractice. And they will more often than not be asking you to - if not lie (and you will probably have to lie) - at least misrepresent their actions and priorities. You will be representing impersonal, corporate interests that have possible broke several laws, and helping them cover their tracks, pretend their priorities are different, and doing so more often than not in direct contradiction to the public interests and what is arguably morally right. As I say, this is just my experience, downing st may have another. I would personally hate to specialise in crisis management: emotions are high and people are very touchy; it's incredibly time-sensitive and you are under huge pressure to deliver; you are typically spinning (let's face it) colossal fuck-ups of one stripe or another, and PR is not like the memory-wiper from Men In Black - you will often get blamed if there's bad press or not a 180 turn-around; few organisations are truly regretful about what they have done and you are creating a false impression to the public about what the org knew (they may ensure you yourself don't know the real story), what they did, what they are going to do about it now. Tough gig.

I work in-house doing crisis communications and I urge you to seriously consider what Smoke wrote. It is indeed very stressful. Most of my colleagues have to leave the crisis comms role after less than a year because it is very hard on your mental and physical health. I'll be leaving soon myself. Don't do either program. You don't typically start in PR doing crisis comms; even with all the degrees in the world, no reasonable company would trust you until you'd executed on a reasonable number of non-crisis-related campaigns. Get your start by interning, volunteering, and working at an agency in a "coordinator" or "associate"-level position, then work your way up.

Experience in communications and PR matters more in the field than degrees or certificates. It would be a better use of your time to get internships at organizations where you are interested in working or in your specialty. Most career paths, from my experience, go unpaid internship, internship, entry level job, job that requires slightly more experience, etc. What types of organizations interest you? smoke has a good point but I had a different interpretation. When I think of crisis management, one thought that came to mind was working for an organization like a city's department of emergency management. I work at a for a major international nonprofit in a mid-level communications position and I run a monthly networking happy hour with 900+ members. I can't think of any communications professionals with a law degree. I'm sure peers who work on Capitol Hill have law degrees but I definitely don't think it's necessary. Focus on getting job experience. Then work on getting more experience. After that, try to get more experience.

I should also say this: I don't know anyone who works in PR who did not complete a 4-year university degree. And I know a lot of flacks. So my above advice assumes you've got that under your belt.