Law Degree/Bar Exam in two years?

[Jim3k]

There is certainly a large number of legal denizens who inhabit this board--including me. Many went to the Duke Law School; others were Duke undergraduates who went to law school elsewhere. That was my track. None of us ever had the opportunity to take the bar exam after only two years. Three was required. And many of us hold the opinion that the third year was--if not a waste of time, at least not really necessary. Some schools currently use the third year to provide clinics (practice courts, and the like) or offer certain specialties. Mine, long ago, simply offered higher level classes (e.g., taxation, anti-trust, and labor relations) and seminars which required advanced legal writing. None of these were taught during the first and second years as students needed pre-requisites to get up to running speed. But if you were going to practice law in basic fields like personal injury or crimes, the third year may well have been unnecessary.

A debate is beginning to occur now, led in part by Duke Law professor Paul Carrington. He and a number of other profs from NYU, UNC and other schools are asking for a debate on the point. Indeed, New York is conducting a meeting of appropriate officials on January 19 where the proposal will be aired and perhaps sent to New York's Court of Appeals for adoption.

Karen Sloan of the National Law Journal has a piece about this movement. It is well worth reading. She points out that the proponents are looking at the unreasonably high costs of law schools as at least one reason why the idea deserves consideration.

If Cardozo and FDR didn't need the third year, why would anybody?

Well, maybe me...I found at least some of that third year to be valuable even if others did not.

So, DBR lawyers and lawyer wannabes...Want to weigh in?

[brevity]

I have no problem with the third year of law school. They should get rid of the first year instead.

[sue71, esq]

As a current 1L on the West Coast, I'm very curious to hear what people have to say about this. I believe my school offers an early bar exam option sometime during the third year (I think), but since I'm living the luxurious 1L life at the moment, I haven't exactly looked into it since my life is dictated for me until May.

It sounds like those wanting to specialize would need to opt into the 3rd year. If someone wants to go into immigration law or entertainment law or some other specialization, the third year seems necessary, at least as it would work with our curriculum in my school.

It reminds me of my Masters program, in a way. Some students finished in one year (with overloaded fall & spring semesters, & internships in the summer), and others (like me) took 2 years (full-time course load but not overloaded like one-years; could also take additional courses of interest if we wanted to).

If it becomes a 2-year program, would summer classes be required to finish in time, or would course requirements be adjusted along with the credits required? As someone who quit work mid-life to go to law school, the prospect of finishing in 2 years (and hence one less year of loans) is intriguing, even though I do want to specialize.

[OldPhiKap]

I am not sure you can really get the breadth of study in two years. Every lawyer should at least have a base understanding of certain core issues (bankruptcy, tax, UCC, estate law for example) even if that is not their expected area of practice. Very few areas of law are a vacuum unto themselves.

I would agree that the third year should be geared towards practical applications of the law -- clinics, externships, etc. -- to make the transition to licensed lawyer more fluid.

[Jarhead]

Just a Lyman's question, or two --where does the JD degree fit in this discussion? Is that not a goal for prospective lawyers as well as passing the bar exam? I would think that a JD degree would, at least, allow you to charge more for your time. Ka-ching.

[Matches]

Not a fan of the idea. For one thing, I was mentally fried by the end of my 2L year. It would've been really tough to refocus on a bar exam. It was a more manageable task after a relatively stress-free third year.

For another, taking the Bar after 2 years would have meant no summer job as a rising 3L, which leaves only one summer for practical experience. The post-2L job is the one most students really try to parlay into full-time employment, so taking it out of the picture seems short-sighted.

[Indoor66]

Not a fan of the idea. For one thing, I was mentally fried by the end of my 2L year. It would've been really tough to refocus on a bar exam. It was a more manageable task after a relatively stress-free third year.

For another, taking the Bar after 2 years would have meant no summer job as a rising 3L, which leaves only one summer for practical experience. The post-2L job is the one most students really try to parlay into full-time employment, so taking it out of the picture seems short-sighted.

I agree. The third year is also an opportunity to mature in your thinking and reflect on the law - not something you have a lot of time for later. For me I had the opportunity to garner a little perspective and to have a closer learning relationship with my professors who became, almost, colleagues rather than just teachers.

[cato]

I agree. The third year is also an opportunity to mature in your thinking and reflect on the law - not something you have a lot of time for later. For me I had the opportunity to garner a little perspective and to have a closer learning relationship with my professors who became, almost, colleagues rather than just teachers.

My third year was my favorite year of law school. As you say, it provided an opportunity to think about legal topics in a way that I could not in the first two years. I think that depth of analysis has turned out to be very, very valuable.

I was also able to do transactional work in a clinic, and take specialized classes like secured transactions. Since I am a transactional lawyer, those were two of my most important law school experiences after my 1L Property and Contracts classes.

That said, I don't think it was necessary. Students who just want to start working should have the option after two years.

I am more concerned about baby lawyers' utter lack of experience. Why not have fewer years in law school, but require some on-the-job training? Young lawyers would be much better prepared for their careers with a minimum of two years of school, and two years in an internship, than they are under the current system.

[Reisen]

I guess the question in higher education is: what's really necessary?

Is the second year of an MBA program necessary? No way. A lot of fun? Sure. Did I learn a ton? Sure. Do I think it makes me a better employee, manager, leader, and person? Sure. Do I think the company I work for got a better deal because I did two years versus one? Absolutely? But necessary? No way.

Same thing with, say, a liberal arts degree. Is 4 years of studying liberal arts better than 3 years? Maybe. Is it "necessary"? I don't know, probably not.

IANAL, but I get the feeling the third year of law school is like that. If I'm a law firm, I'd probably prefer lawyers who spent 3 years to lawyers who spent 2, all other factors being equal. Of course we know, they're not ever equal (other factors), but hey...

[El_Diablo]

Northwestern currently offers an accelerated JD (AJD) program that allows students to graduate in two years. Basically, a student enrolls for summer classes before 1L year, goes through on-campus interviewing in the late-summer-to-early-fall period (with the 2Ls), works for the following summer, and then comes back to school for the fall and spring semesters, graduating in May. The courseload is basically the same overall, just spread over 5 semesters rather than 6 (with slightly higher courseloads each semester).

One positive to this model is that it allows the AJD students to compete for summer associate positions rather than have to take classes during the summer. But they might be at some sort of disadvantage for OCI, since a firm would only have one semester's worth of classes and grades to consider (although employers would probably recognize that these students are more hard-charging in general and may be drawn to them such that the relative lack of experience is mitigated or even cancelled out). But it's hard to see how a firm would evaluate a student who hasn't even taken, say, a Civil Procedure class or a Contracts class when deciding whom to hire and being able to choose between these students and the students on the normal path. Regardless, the AJD students would only have one chance to land a summer job that leads to full-time employment, rather than the two cycles that other students have. Granted, it's not such a big deal to lose out on the 1L summer job these days, since that summer is generally not as important as the 2L summer to one's long-term job prospects, but it basically forces the students to put all their eggs in one basket--at a time (late summer, early fall of the 1L year) that is already stressful enough. And (assuming they get callbacks) then they would be travelling for the callbacks during their second semester of law school...missing Constiutional Law or Contracts rather than the 2L electives. That would be rough.

There's a huuuuuuge negative though--Northwestern charges the same overall tuition for its AJD as it charges for the JD; instead of 6 semesters at $X per semester, they charge five semesters at 6/5 $X per semster. Their reasoning is that a student pays for the degree, not the time spent earning the degree. And the workload is basically the same, so I can sort of see where Northwestern is coming from (although the school is clearly saving overhead expenses in the long term AND compressing those tuition payments into shorter time periods, so it is not fair in my opinion to charge the exact same amount). Anyway, a student still graduates with basically the same level of debt. Granted, he or she has an extra year now to start chipping into that debt, so there's still some economic benefit. But that benefit is, in turn, partially offset by "losing" the summer before 1L to take classes, and the vast majority Northwestern students have work experience before law school, so losing that summer matters. For students who go straight through from undergrad or who are unemployed before law school, losing that first summer would not be such a big deal...just lost "off" time. Since they can start working as a lawyer a year earlier, there's an incentive to go the AJD route. But it would be more of an incentive to have the tuition reduced somewhat as well, if they are already going to punish themselves with a higher course load and have fewer opportunities to find work as a summer associate.

Now, I did not go the Northwestern AJD route, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think that, overall, it is not worth it for most people when factoring in everything above. Now, if every school switched exclusively to the AJD model, then I think things would be okay. All students would be competing on an equal playing field for summer jobs, and they would graduate with basically the same level of education as they would in a traditional 3-year JD program. There would be no "normal path" students to compete against, so some of the negatives above would disappear and a new norm would be in place. Alternatively, if every school just reduced the 6 semesters to 4 semesters, I think it would work pretty well overall as well, even if some of the classroom learning goes to the wayside. Students would have to be more judicious in their class selection, but getting "on the job" earlier is better overall (since practical experience is vastly superior to classroom learning, and getting an extra year's worth of salary would be nicer than having a year's worth of tuition costs). Either way, overall tuition should be reduced in order to justify any shortening of the JD program...otherwise a big issue (massive student debt) is not being addressed.

[A-Tex Devil]

This comes down to 2 driving factors in my mind:

1. Is the third year essential to the student? My 3rd year at UT -- I spent the first semester in London with about 80 other UT law students, taking pass/fail classes with UK/EU undergrads. The classes were all year long for them, ours were a semester. We had to write a ~10 to 15 page paper, usually on a topic taught in the first 3 weeks, which basically meant we stopped going to class once the paper topic was assigned in early October (I went to one of my classes just one time). It was an absolute boondoggle that was a moneymaker for Queen Mary's and University College London, the 2 participating schools. Meanwhile most of us spent 3 months touring Europe, then spent a week writing papers that even if they didn't pass the first time, we could resubmit after getting back to the states to get passing grades. This was 2002-2003, so most of us had $$ to spend after summer associateships the previous summer. When I got back second semester, I took one class, Federal Income Tax, the second semester that I still get any use out of now (and that's very little still). While I attended that particular class most of the time, I probably made it to the law school 2-3 days a week. So.... yeah... third year in law school is what you make of it. I gave myself a year off of any real responsibility. Luckily, I was paying state school tuition, so I don't feel quite as guilty about running up the debt that people are these days. And none of this is to say that students can't wildly take advantage of wonderful course offerings and clinics and research their third year. I just found that after 2 years of a pressure cooker, most of us didn't bother, and that many of us were probably just as capable of taking the bar and starting our jobs a year early. So my view is the answer is clearly "No," but it can be worthwhile.

2. What are the law firms going to require? 1L grades are just about the most arbitrary way to judge whether someone is capable of working competent, ethical 70 hour weeks 12 months out of the year. Summer associateships, at least 10 years ago, were all about finding the right balance between Tucker Max and an absolute milquetoast, and doing quasi competent work. You had to screw up *not* to get hired. But still, that's something. A 2 year degree throws the associate intake schedule all out of whack. Now, sure, it's on the firms to adapt, but they are influential and not big fans of "Who Moved My Cheese." Anything that is going to make it harder to identify the wheat from the chaff is not going to be that welcome. That said, I could see 2 year law degrees creating a new rung of lawyers -- something like a 1-2 year "apprenticeship" with a fairly high weed out ratio after that point for those that aren't up to it. I don't really have any real answers -- but things would have to change. And as "big" as "biglaw" is, it is still a fairly small percentage of all of the lawyers in America, so maybe I am putting too much weight on this particular issue.

Overall, having gone through the process, I wouldn't have a problem with allowing 2 years minimum to take the bar. Perhaps make it optional? Perhaps have the third year be bar prep for the February bar? There are lots of different solutions I imagine. And after this wordy response, I think my answer is "Why Not?"

[Mike Corey]

I'm working on a column on this subject right now, so I'm thrilled to see this discussion here. I look forward to stealing your ideas and passing them off as my own.



As someone who is still getting acclimated to life as a lawyer, I have lots of thoughts about changes I wish that law schools would make. And yet, there's much that I'm glad law schools have persisted in doing. So I suppose my answer is atypical and boring: it depends.

I fully understand and appreciate the perspective that a year of absorbing and contemplating the law is both beneficial as developing critical legal thought, and in providing a mental break before the agony of the b*r. And yet, perhaps there are lessons to be learned from a busy, residency-like third-year of law school.

I tend to err on the side of fostering academics and relationships rather than practical experience, but I lean that way much less than I once did.

[Jim3k]

Here's an update from the ABA, describing the experience Washington & Lee's law school is providing ever since they switched the third year curriculum to practice skills:

http://www.abajournal.com/news/artic...n=weekly_email