legit JD route using distance learning

Thank you for your input.

Seating your excellent point in my small world....

This is one of my greatest concerns...not because I want my education to be accepted by the legal community, but because I want to be good (or great). In any case, I will probably never see the inside of a courtroom.

I just received my first set of info from NWCU Law School, and they have a Socratic method chat forum that looks to me like it is a required part of the curriculum.

I have no idea how effective this method is/will be. My first thought, on a common sense level, is that written communication, although live, is not the same as spoken.

Fortunately, I have the best speaking skills that six figure sales jobs can buy. I spent 4 years flying around the country selling software to people who have no budget and don't want to buy. Good practice for thinking on the feet....unfortunately, probably not enough to be a great lawyer. Sigh.

Interesting timing on this post...I just did a seminar/presentation on an internet application I built today. I had to speak off the cuff and take questions from the cynics in the audience. One of the listeners asked me if I had ever had teaching experience. He said he'd been a teacher for 15 years and thought I should consider such a career because he was so engaged and motivated by my presentation and thought I would be excellent doing the same for a regular classroom. This wasn't the first time I'd heard such comments. I just never listened before.

Perhaps I found my calling today, and it has nothing to do with the law. Good grief.

(Disclaimer: I fully realize there is more to legal argumentation than thinking on the feet and having good people manipulation/sales skills.)


I just reread this post and now it sounds like I'm bragging. I'm not. I am just being honest and hopefully this dialog will somehow elicit where I'm supposed to be going with all this.

 

Wes,

I understand the method and, with distance learning principles, it is now possible to take the same discussion over various service deliveries.

The country which built the common law system on case analysis has been conducting LLB's by distance education since 1858.

Almost all other common law jurisdictions have managed to maintain the quality of legal education with distance education resources. Some of these are the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, and other Commonwealth countries. There is no evidence to suggest that lawyers from these countries are any way inferior on the world stage than others or their courts any less legitimately based.

California does seem to manage to produce lawyers by distance education and, as I have been led to believe, you can still become a lawyer in the United States in some states by a system of apprenticeship.

Perhaps the answer is the separation between the legal education and advocacy skills. Legal knowledge, often required for business, is more about drafting legal documents and consideration of legal positions than advocacy. They are more in the category of legal officers than advocates.

Advocacy skills can be gained in a practicum setting created by a specialist course at legal centre or an pupillage system with a lawyer.

In the United Kingdom there has been a significant assault upon the bastion of professional protectionism of lawyers with greater recognition of qualified persons operating in specialist areas of law such as conveyancing. This has been done to introduce competition and lower costs.

This has gradually beginning in other jurisdictions in the same endeavour to open up the profession to competition to reduce the cost structure.

I think the case study system is a useful exercise in legal education and has been a central feature of legal education in the Common Law jurisdiction for centuries. Legal education has been taught more out of the university setting than in it. Most have taught over the centuries in the professional setting. Your President Abraham Lincoln is an excellent example of this. Most of the founding precedents quoted in "bricks and mortar" law schools were the product of legal reasoning by non univesrity educated lawyers

"Bricks and mortar" universities are not any more necessary for this education process than they were in the previous centuries.
The limitation of the profession to those who can attend these schools effectively excludes a considerable population base for participation in the profession. Flexibility of educational product will allow for greater legitimacy of the profession by a more representative sample of the population being able to access it.

Whilst the debate is over elsewhere, it is perhaps a debate will need to go on in America to determine a system suitable for American Jurisdictions. There appears to be a difference between what the states will approve, such as California, and what the ABA will accept. It is interesting to observe that California requires a "baby bar" from non ABA sources but not ABA. There does not seem to be any logic in that, since the state has approved the instructional process in the non ABA schools. It appears it has relegated their approval to a lesser status than a private institutions approval.
From an outsiders point of view, I would have thought that there are more checks and balances on state approval than on ABA. I might be missing something due to distance. I will follow the debate with interest.

 

Hi ebbwvale,

You said,

This is almost right -- there are a couple of levels of accredidation for law schools in California. There's the ABA-accredited schools which, as you note, do not require passage of the Baby Bar. However, there are also "Cal-Bar" accredited schools, that is, law schools accredited by the California Bar Association, and students at these universities also do NOT have to take the Baby Bar. Then there are law schools that are accredited by the State of California, but not the California Bar Assoc. -- students here DO have to take the Baby Bar. And, of course, students at distance-learning schools, unaccredited schools, and those studying with a lawyer or judge also have to take the Baby Bar.

Another thing -- if you screw up badly enough at a ABA or Cal Bar accredited law school (basically, below a C average after your first year of law school), you DO have to take the Baby Bar in order to continue with your studies.

As a law student at an ABA-accredited school in CA, I selfishly believe that the harder we can make it for people to become lawyers, the better -- it will reduce competition! Just kidding. Seriously, I agree with everything you mention in your post -- it seems like that the bar exam should be "the great equalizer", and it shouldn't matter how you got there -- whether through an ABA-accredited school, distance learning, or self-study -- if you can pass the bar, you should be set -- that's the point of the bar. right? I believe that Wisconsin has gone this route, at least to some extent -- I understand that graduates of ABA-accredited law schools in Wisconsin do not have to sit for the bar exam in Wisconsin, although I believe that grads of non-WI schools do have to sit for the bar to become licensed in WI.

 

This is not quite correct. Students at ABA or California Bar Accredited law schools who have not completed at least two years of undergraduate study are required to take the Baby Bar. (It is rare a student is admitted to an accredited law school under these circumstances but it does happen.)

As a matter of administrative policy, some ABA schools require poorly performing students to pass the Baby Bar before beginning the second year, but this school policy - not a Committee of Bar Examiners requirement.

 

I thought it was an ABA requirement -- I guess you learnsomething new every day...