Jd Degree

I've got a lot...

I usually don't attack people in forums, and was moved to post my first post here due to JD-whoever's blatant attack on others, his ranting and raving but also because of a sense that his words didn't match who he said he was.

His blatant assumption that I want to go to law school for one, and his assumption that I am somehow less than acceptable because I'm not a lawyer (nor do I want to be) are both tip-offs that he is a nutcase or a fraud.

I can understand privacy and not wanting to expose oneself to crank calls and emails if one "outs" oneself in a public forum but...for him to make all this song and dance and not tell what schools he went to make me think he is more likely Santa Claus(e) than a real lawyer.

Anyone can say that they're a lawyer, just as they can say that they got an "A" in Legal Writing while still using "buy" instead of "by" and "too" instead of "to". And he shouldn't need Microsoft Word to tell him that.

 

Thanks Little fauss

I went to WSU when it was a Cal bar school and it served my purposes quite nicely. I worked at a firm just long enought to know that it was NOT what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I now run a financial advisory group, develop real estate , consult, arbitrate with the NASD and am an adjunct at my alma mater's MBA program.

I would respectfully disagree with anyone who says that you need to go through all the hassles of a Law degree simply if you want to practice Law. Maybe the master in Laws is indeed more applicable but a JD is a JD no matter what anyone says as long as you studied for it, it was rigorous and accredited.

My clients feel secure in the fact that I can think like a lawyer when they consult me and while I leave the lawyering to the lawyers the education taught me enough to look out for and keep my clients out of trouble. I can at least ask the right questions.

I am now going to start a DBA at the Swiss Management Center in January. It seems like a great fit for me. Formal RA Accreditation means little to me because I am already in academia and I just want to expand my consulting practice.

Thanks again for the compliment.

 

Re: Thanks Little fauss

Join the club. I was affiliated with a couple firms doing regular contract work for both, and it took me a couple years to realize the same thing.

I've found that makes most clients insecure.

Nothing wrong with that, especially if you're already in academia. I'd want to know if SMC is appropriately accredited by the host country. If so, then I've been told by people who know more than me that that's equivalent to RA. But it's not like it matters, even if you one day dive into FT academia, as I assume the WSU JD would get you doctorate pay in the state of California anyway.

Have you looked into any of the other programs that offer DBAs or other business doctorates at a distance? There are plenty, and I only mention this because I assume you haven't already committed significant time or resources to SMC. England has some outstanding ones: Henley MC, Aston, Manchester. Super prestigious schools. France has Grenoble. Then there are the SA schools, such as Pretoria and University of South Africa. These programs are dirt cheap (as in a couple thousand USD a year) because the USD holds up so favorably against the rand. Then you have Nova in the US, as well as CSU and NCU. But for my money, it's hard to ignore those South African degrees. Wow they're cheap!

You're welcome, it was heartfelt. I also like you because you obtained an advanced degree from one of the two flagship schools in my state: KSU.

 

Gotta give you this much, SMC looks decent from their webpage. Is it actually only 9,200 Euro for the whole program? If so, beats the daylights--at least financially--out of the $40,000+ Brit programs. BTW: I'm not certain that SMC wouldn't be considered RA equivalent in the U.S. Might want to check into this.

 

JDLLM2,

You say:

What is your proof for this?

Nothing you have said supports this conclusion. Just because you live in a certain state and have law degrees from schools in that state does not prove (just because of these two things) that you know things better than someone else from outside of that state. Nosborne could very well know more about California law and about non bar JD degrees than you do even though he doesn't live in your state or studied at schools in your state. You need better evidence than this.

For the record, since you are throwing credentials around as your only "proof" for your positions. Here's mine:

High School - Phillips Exeter Academy (Exeter, NH)
BA - Mathematics - U. of Chicago
MS- Applied Mathematics - U. of Illinois
1st Year Law Student - Chicago-Kent College of Law (Illinois Institute of Technology), one of the 6 ABA law schools in the city of Chicago.

I work as an actuary and am looking for a nontraditional program because I'm being relocated to a city that does not have a part-time evening program.

My educational background is probably better than yours, but I would look foolish if I asserted that my answers about things were better than someone else's just because of my educational background.

The problem with your above posts is that you are just asserting things and are being conclusory. Where's your proof, your argument? Stop simply falling back on the fact that you have several degrees from a Cal-bar or ABA school - this doesn't prove
you're correct or even argue well.

 

Apparently, eight states: Alaska, California, Maine, New York, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming (BG16, 261)

 

Yes, I challenged you, AA degree or not, and you performed as expected, poorly. Honestly, I don't care if you ever went to school, which by the way is highly doubtful given your poor articulation skills. Sir, you can't even write a coherent sentence.


Bottom line is that your HERE on this board for the wrong reason. TROLLING



As was stated earlier, credibility...

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: some people will never get the message

This seems reasonable to me. I understand your position on that there are many things that one can learn in law school beyond bar passage. I only question why a one man shop is unable to provide a similar education to a student as could a correspondence law school with a greater number of faculty.

I am not sure about which current correspondence law schools are one man operations, although my understanding is that Saratoga was at the time of its closing and West Coast was at its beginning in 2002 (whether additional people have been hired I am not sure). I believe that there is a greater chance for problems with one man operations, however, I am sure that even some of the much larger schools have a significant potential for trouble.

If you are against the California correspondence system of legal education, then this makes complete sense to me. I am not crazy about the statistics of most of these schools, but am glad that this is an option for students in California to sit for the bar.

Although this probably won't happen in the near future, I would love to see the ABA support distance education. It seems to me that with the rapid advancement of technology that attendence in a traditional law school could adequately be replicated by live streaming lectures and direct interaction over the internet.

I don't believe there is any possible way to prove this, but I would be willing to bet that the screening process at ABA schools contributes greatly to the higher passing rates on the bar.

 

I can take a wild guess...

 

I love it! Mene, mene, tekel, parsin. The handwriting on the wall in Daniel 5:25-28

 

Question for Dude

How's the University of London LLB going? In 2003-2004 I completed the first year of Graduate Entry Route B passing Contract, Criminal and ELS.

It was a LOT of work.

 

Off the subject, but listen to me, hear me out here: if you want a great career in law after you graduate, go into intellectual property, take the patent bar after you finish the regular bar. Big firms are salivating over people like you with tech-oriented degrees from prestigious schools. Especially if they have some enginneering and such in their backgrounds. I can't imagine you didn't touch on this at least somewhat in Applied Math. It also might not hurt to take some DL summer courses in between semesters in law school (don't try to do it while taking law classes) in some grad engineering program. You may already know that there are some tremendous schools offering online engineering degrees, such as Stanford, Columbia, G-Tech, Wisconsin, so it's doable.

Go into IP law--you will have a secure career.

Great resume! (course, that doesn't mean you know more about X than anyone else )

 

One of my former classmates in the BSc/MSc program in chemistry got tired of the lab and went to law school when he was about 32 years old. He went into intellectual property/patent law with a local IP firm in Seattle. He has carved out quite a profitable niche for biotechnology IP work. His master's in chemistry really gives him an advantage in working with the scientists.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: some people will never get the message

The biggest concern I'd have with the tiny correspondence schools is the incentive to turn the education into a glorified (or not even glorified) four year bar review course. Imagine you run "Dude's College of Law" in Bakersfield, you've poured a lot of yourself into it, years of time and effort, you've probably mortgaged the house to finance this endeavor. Your graduates' bar passage rates are tanking, the state of California wolves are clawing at the door.

What are you going to do?

You're probably going to do what you can to pump the passage rates up, forget the rest, forget the nuances of our system of common law, the craft of learning how to think like an attorney, the case method approach, etc. Oh, you're going to continue titling classes by names that appease the accreditors, but what's it's going to be, at bottom, is one long bar review. And that really wouldn't be teaching anyone how to practice law--there's more to it than that. If it's done right, it's about a way of thinking, not just mastering those crummy little questions on the test.

By the way, I have a pet theory as to why the Cal bar is so exquisitely "difficult". My notion? It's not that difficult, it's just that California is full of non-ABA law schools that graduate many without the acumen to practice law or pass the bar. As these are thrown into the mix, it draws down the passage rates. I'll bet if you average the passage rates of all ABA law schools there, you'll find that the rates are just about what they are in every other jurisdiction in the country. Just a guess.

I don't disagree with legal correspondence education per se. I think the University of London program, from what I've read and heard, is the bomb. It sounds like Nosborne is getting a thorough workout in it, and even though he has bizarre notions about the role of the judiciary, he's no mental midget. All I want for correspondence education is a higher standard, the UoL standard, perhaps far higher than the one that exists for Cal-only schools. Also, It'd be nice if they required some sort of internship with these programs, so all prospective lawyers have at least rubbed shoulders with some other attorneys and seen how it works and how they think before they sit for the bar.

I agree with you totally, I don't think there's any reason the theory and--to some extent--practice of law cannot be learned at a distance by the technologies you cite. I've made those arguments here on this forum. But there is a glut in the market, and the ABA wishes to remediate this if they can. There's your reason they are such purists about the first law degree not being available at a distance (yet they allow DL learning for the LLM). It's about economics, not standards.

Like I said above, I think you're absolutely right.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: some people will never get the message

Hi little fauss,

The overall CA bar passing rates for Feb 05 and Jul 05 were 40% and 48.8% respectively. And if you looked at the statistics of ABA only bar exam takers, the passage rates improved a bit but not by that much.

Feb 05 Jul 05
CA ABA Approved 46.4% 59.7%
Out-of-State ABA 43.8% 53.3%

I think these rates were still much lower than the ones for other states. Please correct me if I was wrong.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: some people will never get the message

Exactly how do we measure the standard of the UOL external law program? It's all based on the exams the school implements. So how does that so much different from the Baby Bar that the students of unaccredited law schools need to pass in order to continue with their study? The average passing rate for Baby Bar is about 25%, and I think that's much lower than the passing rate of any UOL law exam. It will really be interesting to see CA Bar raising the passage rate of Baby Bar but implementing the exam after every year of law study in the form of final exam. If the students of the unaccredtied law schools could master all of the subjects that were covered on the bar exam by the time they graduated, it might improve the passing rate of these unaccredited law schools. Any comments???

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: some people will never get the message

They're always lower for February, because that's usually when people who failed the first time through take it again. So the Feb pool's made up inordinately of less inspired students. The figure I'd look at is the 60% July first-time passage for ABA approved. That's low, but not crazy low. When I took the July '94 exam in Arizona, I believe passage was around 70%--not that profound a difference. But on the whole, it's obvious that the Cal bar exam is at least somewhat more difficult that most all the others save for NY. So I do stand corrected.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: some people will never get the message

I measure it by nothing more than reputation and anectdotes; I have no figures. Based on what Osborne's telling us here--he of the decades of legal experience--my guess is that the rigor of the UoL program is much more than that of the average corrspondence Cal-only law school or the Baby Bar (not that their undertaking is to be sneered at--no way!). Think of it this way, if UC Davis or Berkeley or UCLA were to start a DL law program and give distance students the precise same exams and grade them the same way as the traditonal in-person students, would you have reason to believe that those students who passed--even if it was as much as 50%--were more capable than the average Cal Bar-only student who passed the Baby Bar? I certainly would, and UCD, Berkeley and UCLA are a fair comparison to UoL--the program has that good of an international reputation.

Students self-select in the UoL program, it's not the type of thing that a marginal correspondence student is likely to undertake. Example: after hearing about Osborne's experiences, I decided my time was better spent elsewhere than on a UoL LL.M. Not that I'm marginal, but I don't know if I'm that good. It's not a gift degree.

 

Is the California Bar REALLY harder?

"How long?" Too long. I am awaiting the results of my first set of exams from May 06. If I passed, I'm 2/5 of the way to the PG Certificate and will finish it next May.

"Silly..." Yes, it is silly. The PG Certificate/PG Diploma/LL.M. is of no earthly practical value to me but I have learned a LOT in the process. You have to fill your days with SOMETHING; jurisprudence is surely better than "Seinfeld" reruns!

I did some math.

In the June 2005 exam, 70% of first time takers from California ABA schools passed. That's a bit low but not totally out of line.

Then, I subtracted the takers from these schools:

Thomas Jefferson (provisionally approved), Western State (provisionally reapproved after actually LOSING its approval last spring), Golden Gate (on probation), and Whittier (also on probation). The pass rate went up to 75% which is not at all out of line nationally.

Now, of California's twenty ABA schools (nineteen then, I think) these four had by far the lowest first time pass rates. All four are private. None is anything like as prestigeous as Stanford or U.S.C. yet each charges astronomical tuition.

My brief and incomplete examination of the student profiles for each school seems to show relatively low average GPA and LSAT figures as compared with the UC schools or better known private schools.

Is it possible that the notoriously "hard" California Bar exam looks that way not only because of the CalBar and unaccredited schools but also because too many expensive, unprestigeous,provate ABA schools are scrambling for too few well qualified students?

I suppose I could just take the damned thing myself to see how hard it is but what use would a California license be to me?

 

Sorry; I meant JULY '05, not June.