NW Cal Law School development

Regarding earning a non ABA JD and completing STU's online ABA LLM...

The only state I can find that will definitely admit a student with an ABA LLM (non ABA JD) is North Carolina. I received a letter from them stating as much as well as a phone call confirmation.

If anyone knows of other states (I think I've done a pretty thorough search), please post.

 

Saratoga, for one, uses the word "states" when referring to Saratoga grads who also obtain an "ABA accredited law degree (LLM)". I think that's somewhat disingenuous considering, thus far, there appears to be only =one state= (NC) that will =definitely= allow those with a non ABA J.D. and LL.M. from an ABA accredited school to sit for the bar. I further think if, in fact, there are more (particularly many more) states that allow similarly situated applicants to sit for the bar, schools such as Saratoga would actually list such states by name.

 

I can't say I have much faith in the Saratoga strategy. It is based on receiving the LL.M. degree "first" and then "finishing up" at Saratoga with the J.D. This is supposed to fool the Bar Examiners and trick them into letting you sit for the Exam as your "first professional law degree" would have been from an ABA school.

I spoke with the Bar Examiners in my own state and they more or less told me I was insane. Needless to say, they flat out told me the strategy would not work.

Some folks that have done more diligent research than I have claimed a few other states will allow you to at least petition to sit for the Bar if the LL.M. was from an ABA school (I'd like to confirm these myself before making any such claim). A brief chat with the Examiner's in MI leads me to believe (though I'm yet to have confirmed in writing) that the LL.M. might work for there as well.

Another primary concern for some (me included) is the whole path of receiving an LL.M. in Taxation-- a subject of study I, for one, am completely uninterested in. Even though Saratoga claims that there exist a "few" online LL.M. programs accredited by the ABA, the only one that anyone can actually find is STU out of Miami. While they have a LL.M. program in Int'l Human Rights (one I would be interested in), their only online offering is (like the majority of ABA LL.M. programs) in International Taxation. The idea of a year of taxation classes, at the graduate level, plus a thesis, for $20,000+ is not going to work for me.

 

Ph.D.'s in Law

Actually, Nosborne, there are some very interesting Ph.D. programs in Law. The most compelling, in my mind, is the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Ph.D. program, through Boalt Hall, at UC Berkeley.

At least several other RA universities (NYU and Arizona State, off the top of my head) offer Ph.D. programs in Law and Society.

While offered by a fair number of universities in the US, the Ph.D. is Law is much more common in Europe.

 

Matty, that's because the STU program is the only online LL.M. offered by an ABA accredited school. Perhaps they were also thinking of Regent (I believe), but that program was discontinued quite some time ago.