Is a J.D. a doctorate?

I'm stretching a point here but I've got some backup. Here's an article from the NY Times that indicates that the third year of law school is not that useful, students should be allowed to take the bar exam after two years, etc. Doesn't this strongly suggest that there are some within that very field who think that a JD is just another Masters degree?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/opinion/practicing-law-should-not-mean-living-in-bankruptcy.html?ref=education

 

The third year of law school is widely considered to be worthless. Let's just suppose, for the sake of argument, that law schools agree to this proposal, and make the third year of law school optional. So the traditional "4+3" year plan for college+law school would become "4+2".

Now let's also consider that some law schools, like Kansas, already consider the final year of undergraduate study to be optional.
This is called the "3+3" plan.

And now, what if those two options were combined?
In that case, it would be a "3+2" plan, and you could complete college and law school in five years total.

And in that case, you could almost treat the first degree in law as a bachelor's degree.
Maybe you could call it something like the "Bachelor of Laws", or the LL.B.