JD or not?

Michael Lloyd,

I have experience in the healthcare field. My background is- 10 years experience as a clinical engineer/biomedical engineer working for the hospital, ISO (GE Clinical Services), and now for an OEM. I have also had the title as Y2K Coordinator and SME on the medical equipment track in West Central Florida for the largest hospital organization in the nation.
I currently have an AA in Biomedical Engineering, an AA in Computer Science (from an RA school) and a BS from California Coast. I also hold several computer certifications. When I looked in Risk once before, I found out that there is a Risk Management Course and Certification but I was looking for something that would put me above the others. Any advise???

 

I agree with Nosborne on this one. There is too much competition among those who have ABA/RA degrees (such as between Tier 1 vs Tier 2 grads, etc.) to place those who do not have an ABA/RA JD out of competition altogether for any realistic job.

As for Tom's 2 choices:

1. To research and/or teach in the field of law.
2. To work as a law librarian, paralegal, or consultant

No law school or university is going to hire someone without the "standard" qualification, an ABA/RA JD: even schools like Concord hire exclusively accedited professors, usually from Tier 1 schools.

As for #2: much the same. As for being a consultant, with the glut of JD's from accredited schools, who would you want to pay your money too? Why spend the rest of your career at a disadvantage?


If the JD is for "personal enjoyment" its simply not worth the drudgery (as Nosborne pointed out), exasperation and cost. There's better and more enjoyable ways to throw away10k (or much more).

 

Mr. Randell, you are clearly an experienced and talented biomedical engineer, and I have spent many happy hours in biomedical electronics after we sequester a malfunctioning machine to figure out what happened.

I am afraid that none of your extensive education, training and talents, even though in the healthcare field, necessarily translate directly over to the profession of healthcare risk management. A law degree on top of this would not add much from the standpoint of breaking into risk management.

Your situation is not dissimilar to say, a medical technologist (ASCP), trying to break into a job as a heart bypass pump technician. He or she has all the experience, education and training pertinent to medical technology, but does it translate over to bypass pump technology? It is a major paradigm shift you are trying to accomplish.

I don't know what certification course you were citing, and let me know the specifics if you want an opinion. The national society of healthcare risk managers is at www.ashrm.org , and you can find more information there.

Were I in your shoes, the chances of direct entry into healthcare risk management are not good. You primarily need experience, rather than additional training. I would think about doing forensic work in medical product liability cases, for either the plaintiff or the defense. Perhaps you can then cultivate contacts in the legal, medical or insurance communities that can help you get a related job to start building experience. Think about contacting some of the major malpractice insurers to ask about working as a claims rep.

I would first try a side entry to build experience and try to get into the risk management field that way. As it stands right now, your resume, although stellar in your field of biomedical electronics, would most likely not pass the HR screen for any risk management positions.

Regards,

Michael Lloyd
Mill Creek, Washington USA

 

Your arguments are quite cogent, but I wasn't talking about why one would earn a JD from an unaccredited law school; I was talking about why one would earn a (presumably accredited) JD if s/he had no intention of taking the Bar.



Cheers,

 

Which schools are tier 1 or tier 2?
According to Hahvahd grads, there's HLS and then there's everybody else...

Nosborne JD, U of New Mexico, a tier 42 school...

 

Tom has often asked why one would learn law without sitting for the Bar. I, like many others on this board, have the desire to learn law but not to practice it. However, after some personal research and reflection, I have changed my mind.

I desire to learn law, but I now want to sit for the Bar after I am finished. From being able to handle my own simple, personal legal affairs, to harrassing my HOA for all their moronic decisions, to becoming more valuable conducting third-party vendor due diligence audits at work (I do now in a non-legal fashion), there are many reasons to sit for the Bar.

Yes, none of the above absolutely requires me to be an attorney, however, I would be able to annually volunteer some free community legal work to back up my JD with actual legal experience. Thus, not wanting to practice law full-time, I could still call myself a practicing lawyer to some degree with some actual experience to back it up. This also adds to my practical legal learning outside the classroom and books.

I feel this looks better and adds more utility than my original intent to get a non-Bar JD for the sake of simply just learning the subject of law and not being able to much else with it when completed.

So, thanks Tom for being persistent with your questioning!

Christian

 

One last reason for avoiding the non-Bar J.D. The one credential that can "validate" an unaccredited J.D. is membership in a state bar. Bar membership can make entry into an LLM program easier even if one's J.D. is a little "dicey". I imagine that it would also help the non ABA grad to find work teaching at the undergrad level.

Nosborne

 

One thing to bear in mind is that there are law schools that are RA and not ABA that qualify people to do all sorts of legal work *depending* on where you want to live and what you want to do.

Locally, we have a non-ABA law school that has trained many, many local private-practice lawyers, district attorneys, public defenders, court commissioners, and judges. It is a quite accepted credential locally. One reason is that the nearest ABA school is a couple of hundred miles away. 25% of practicing attorneys in our area graduated from there.

They are not an ABA school and, to my knowledge, have shown no interest in becoming so. They are residential, though. This, by the way, is in a city of 400,000 and over 1,000,000 in the greater metropolitan area.



Tom Nixon

 

I believe that the University of LaVern is RA but not ABA. Its law school is approved by the California State Bar Examiners. As a result, a student can earn his JD full time in three years (resident) and does not have to take the Baby Bar.
I am sure that there are others.
Nosborne

 

The Massachusetts School of Law is RA but not ABA-accredited. They sued the ABA about being denied accreditation, and it's my personal opinion that they got RA to bolster either their lawsuit appeal or their re-application to the ABA (I can't think of any other reasons for a stand-alone law school to go for RA-only).


Bruce

 

I believe RA alone will qualify their students for Federal student loan programs.

David L. Boyd

 

Thing about resident RA but non-ABA law schools is that they are not necessarily a financial bargain. LaVern gets right at $60,000 in tuition for its JD. Well, that's a lot to pay for ANY JD, IMHO, let alone a JD whose utility is noticeably limited.

Nosborne