Online Education to become Attorney

I am willing to accept those numbers and I agree that it would be difficult to advise someone to take that route since there's only a small chance of meeting success. However, many of our members are people who fight the odds and accomplish goals that many others would not even attempt. These are people who don't ask for a guarantee but only an opportunity. They will take the chance and bet on themselves. I think that people should not be misled into thinking it will be easy but neither should they be discouraged. Most of our members are in positions where they have little choice but to pursue their goals in an unconventional manner. This is likely the case with this unorthodox route to becoming a lawyer. Either they take the hard route or they give up entirely. I, for one, do not like giving up and so it's good to know that there's a way it can be done, even if the odds are against it.

 

I'd say this is very true for many of our DI members. Because of my life circumstances, I know I would not have been able to earn a college degree without the DL option.

 

By the same logic, a given student has substantially lower chance of graduating from University of Phoenix (their graduation stats are easy to find, and are abysmal), and therefore UoP is way harder than say Harvard College. Logical holes here are easy to identify. Also, look at the pass rates for Cali DL law school graduates (a path you suggested as superiour), and note that these people all spent 4 years studying American law and virtually all of them are native English speakers (unlike foreign attorneys).

On another note: don't you feel that the law is a worthy subject to study for its own sake? Eg., I live in Canada, so I may have barriers to passing Cali or another State Bar related to mustering enough motivation to spend required money and time. Still, hopefully, in 3 years I'll end up with knowledge and a GAAP degree, all around $5000 US. I fail to see a downside in this endeavor.

 

attorney odds

I certainly agree that the study of law for its own sake is a noble thing and that users have sometimes overcome great odds to earn a degree. Yet most people go to law school to become an attorney, not a sage.

My posting was to make it clear how long those odds are if one wants to be an actual attorney. Previously, another user has claimed that a foreign LLB, a one year US LLM, and a bar review course would be excellent preparation for passing the bar. These statistics show that this route is so far from "excellent", that it is, in fact, most unlikely. Of course users are encouraged to pursue their dreams but they deserve to have a fair knowledge of the odds against them.

It also may be worth noting that while I have no direct knowledge of the distance LLB at Northumbria, its law school is just about in the middle of the pack in the Guardian's "League table" with high levels of satisfactions with the course and teaching but rather lower in "career after 6 months".

University guide 2016: league table for law | Education | The Guardian

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." (John Adam)

 

Yes, and this is sad. Current ABA law school regime may have something to do with it.

I don't think anyone is under any illusion that this path is easy or problem free. However: prove that the universe in this statistic bears any resemblance to participants in this forum. I suggest that you can't, because it just ain't so.

Again: most DL students in fact fail through attrition; is this a valid reason to advise a working adult not to pursue distance degree? What if a student in question is a long-time distance learning nerd? We have participants with multiple MBA degrees; we have participants with two doctoral degrees when one DL doctorate is an extremely uncertain affair. Are these people in any way "typical"?

In case it bears repeating: I am not necessarily trying to "become an attorney"; I know it's unlikely, for reasons unrelated to quality or content of any individual degree.

 

Thank you. I enjoy useless trivia just as much as the next man.
Show of hands: who here cares in any significant way about "league tables"? Remember that say Big Three are permanently and hopelessly unranked; their mission prevents them from even featuring in USNWR ratings, any tier.

 

Mark Twain

Mark Twain wrote fiction. I'm not.

 

You may not care about League Tables. Apparently lots of others do. In fact three of the four quality English newspapers publish League Tables. Of course, no one believes they are perfect - - but no sensible person ignores them either.

In one worldwide survey, my Alma Mater is SEVENTH in the fraking world. I don't know if that's really accurate but I bet she's better that number 307.

 

307 in the world is a school like George Mason. Most DL programs discussed here wish they were this high. My PhD school is 201-250. What is the supposed significance of this? But good for you and your alma mater; you honor us lesser lights with your presence.

 

It would be, it would likely be every bit as good a prep as a three year US JD, provided the person pursuing such studies was a native English speaker, as the OP presumably is.

 

Warguns. That is an invalid use of statistics. You know it and I know it.

I am speaking logic here, I am telling you about a course of studies that would mirror precisely the pertinent subject matter taken for the Bar Examination via a US law LLM.

Please tell me from logic how person A, a native English speaker taking an identical course load of Bar Exam classes (as I described in my previous post) supplemented by a three year education in the UK common law system with ample knowledge that closely mirrors our legal system would be inadequate. For example, contracts (the UCC excepted), torts, and criminal law--yes, there are a many similarities between our system in terms of criminal law doctrines with not only the Brit system, but also many civil law systems (and I dare say I know a smidge about this having developed from scratch and taught courses in International Comparative Law at a U.S. university).

Of course there are students with a halting grasp of the English language who try this route, students who's only education has been in a civil law system, students who take a US law LL.M that doesn't cover the essentials, only comparative law, contracts, international conflict law, etc. Those are people who are simply not prepared for the Bar and are not legitimately preparing for it. But that is not what our OP proposes. So why would you lump him in with everyone else?

What bearing would those California statistics have to him? He is a U.S. citizen taking a UK common law based course of study and planning to supplement it with an LL.M in US law. If he does not take the requisite courses and takes one of those US law LL.Ms that's not about Bar prep, then shame on him, but if he does, taking a course of study such as I described on another post, please tell me in what manner will he be handicapped? I shall await your response.

 

That may or may not be the case, but that is irrelevant as applied to you (just as your Cali stats are irrelevant as applied to the OP). This is about whether you are presenting a logical argument or a fallacious one. I do not care if you graduated summa from Harvard and Yale and picked up two firsts each from Oxford and Cambridge, that does not mean you making any sense here.

 

What is your evidence that foreign law graduates, who routinely fail the Cal Bar, have only a "halting grasp of English" and that they come from civil law jurisdictions ? (for the uninitiated, here "civil law" refers to a legal system based on Roman Law via Napoleonic Law which is more codified, as apposed to "common law" which is, to a larger extent, judge-determined.)

What evidence is there that their one year of US studies was not on common law principles?

You don't have any such evidence, nor do I have evidence to the contrary. Evidence is often imperfect and we have to use what there is. The fact is that the Cal Bar pass rates for foreign educated lawyers with at least a year of US law school is dreadful.

It seems to me to be presumptuous to assume that these failing foreign law graduates are so stupid as to attempt the bar with bad English skills and without using their year of US studies to study what is actually on the bar. Why assume they are so much stupider than you are?

So, the wiser course would be to assume that this route is not one that is likely to end in success.

As for your claim that the route you expound would "logically" be successful, in modern times we rely more interested on empirical results from inductive reasoning than deductions.

As a child, I though that wind was caused by trees waving their leaves. That's deductive reasoning.

Of course, if someone wants to try your proposed route, I sincerely say "good luck to ya."

 

For those who see no other way, some will surely try this route. As you say, best of luck to them. I am guessing that with the number of law school applications falling steadily, the ABA will someday find it's way to allowing online law degrees. I believe that the pressure from the law schools will increase until this occurs. At that point the need for these alternate routes will diminsh.

 

Actually George Mason is between 651-700 in the QS rankings.

Top Universities | Worldwide university rankings, guides & events

 

Look at admission requirements at any large LLM program. Does it require a degree from a common law jurisdiction? Does it involve proof of English skills beyoun the standard TOEFL test? As someone who took (aced, actually) TOEFL twice, I can attest that it doesn't assess professional English skills on a level beyond "halting". I can also share that English skills sufficient to ace TOEFL are considered "advanced" in at least some countries, and moving beyond that is virtually impossible without using English in challenging context for quite some time, and one year (more like 9 months) that typical LLM program may well not be enough.

Here is a selection of Pitt Law alumni: Alumni News | PittLaw . Can you identify LLM grads from non-common-law jurisdictions? Certainly Pavel Astakhov (LLM'02), Russian celebrity lawyer, government official, hypocrite and Putin propaganda stooge did not have prior common law background.

Nice deflection, BTW. It was you who made confident inferences from the statistical sample you now claim we know nothing about, so the burden should be on you to justify said inferences.

 

For the final time, I am going to ask Warguns the following question:

What possible disadvantage would one have if they are a U.S. citizen, a native English speaker and they have a three year degree from a common law UK law school supplemented by a one year U.S. LL.M. that included all of the relevant material covered on the Bar Exam (as I outlined earlier) plus Barbri? Tell me clearly and succinctly why they would be disadvantaged.

At that point, we can get back on point here and discuss the OP's circumstances, which are all that is on the table here.

 

[video]https://youtu.be/K8E_zMLCRNg[/video]