I mean God forbid there’s a degree of progressiveness in law school land. Here’s the piece about Northwestern’s announcement of its new 2-year law degree program.
Many passionate comments about the move…I liked this one:
As a law school graduate, here’s my take: great move. There is absolutely no reason why it should take three years of dedicated study to prepare someone to be a lawyer when 80% of legal tasks could be performed by paralegals with a community college certificate and a few months of on-the-job experience.
Law school is about 25% actual education and 75% jumping through hoops. Let’s see if the rent-seeking, self-serving, self-protecting legal industry will allow this to happen or if they will threaten to revoke Northwestern’s ABA accreditation.
Depending on one’s mindset what’s the problem with in essence cramming two years into three. Use your summers for school instead of working and it’s easy. Who’s it good for? I think if you’re going into law school with a specific outcome in mind (“I’ve wanted to be a prosecutor from age 5″) go for it. Get out and do what you’ve always wanted to do.
On the other hand if you’re like me and went to law school with some faint notion of being a non-practicing lawyer/politician/writer I think that extra year for “discovery” is a good thing.
June 20, 2008
My wife and I raced through law school. We went to a law school that would allow you double up on courses if you wished. We finished all of our necessary hours in 2 years. Then the Dean called us in and told us that unfortunately Texas requires at least 30 months of work before we could take the Bar. So, we had to hang around for another semester. All we took were a couple law firm management courses, which were just a waste of time. We read material on copiers and stuff like that.