it's that Syracuse thing https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/06/22/online-program-helping-military-members-and-spouses-get-law-degrees.html
It's great. It's a shame it doesn't qualify you to sit for the bar in New York (where the program is based). I wonder which other states prohibit admission based on the delivery method...
I missed that they couldn't sit the NY bar- yours is a good question. Admittedly I don't follow law school stuff, but is that true that this is the first ABA distance learning program?
The New York Bar Examiners have a very strict rule about no online or correspondence study. From the Syracuse website... To answer my original question, you're apparently sunk if you want to practice in New Hampshire or, possibly, Alabama... It's a good first step and I imagine many of these barriers will break down in time. Syracuse is a well respected law school, even if not top tier, and the program is ABA accredited. After a while it might get annoying trying to differentiate between a bar qualifying syracuse grad versus a non-qualifying grad. But lawyers can be stubborn, so, who knows? Either way, I wouldn't be shocked if we learned of more limitations to this JD.
In late 2013 the ABA approved a variance allowing its first accredited hybrid JD, at William Mitchell College of Law. It admitted its first students in 2015, also the year William Mitchell merged with its crosstown rival to become Mitchell Hamline School of Law. At recent count there were nine ABA hybrid JDs.
On the one hand, I'd love it if states started licensing law schools on their own and didn't rely so heavily on ABA accreditation. This may result in that happening. New York has always had standards that exceed ABA standards. My mother's law school had a weekend JD program that was non-bar qualifying for New York, for example but was acceptable for at least one of our surrounding states. On the other hand, there is no good reason for the states currently prohibiting hybrid JDs from sitting for the bar to be doing so. They wrote those laws to keep Blackstone School of Law from putting lawyers into their system and diluting their earning potential. Now we have respected mainstream law schools using a well proven delivery method. I would expect to see a legal challenge on par with the Concord Law issue in MA. But it's still possible that these hybrid JDs will cause more harm than good if the states refusing bar admission to the students continues to climb.
We are pretty much headed in the opposite direction. All of the state-approved law schools are drying up. Primarily because most states require and ABA approved program. The UBE and online education seem to be the biggest movements happening right now.
