Law school in the United States

Law school redirects here. For an introduction to legal education in general see legal education.

NOTE: Much of the information found here can also be found in legal education.

A law school is an institution where prospective lawyers obtain legal degrees. In the United States, law is a graduate degree, the pursuit of which students undertake only after having completed an undergraduate degree in some other field (usually a bachelor's degree). The law school program is considered to be a graduate or professional school program. The undergraduate degree can be in any field, though most American lawyers hold bachelor's degrees in the humanities and social sciences. American law schools are usually an autonomous entity within a larger university.

In most other countries, law is an undergraduate degree and graduates of such a program are eligible to become lawyers by passing the country's equivalent of a bar exam. In such countries, graduate programs in law enable students to embark on academic careers or become specialized in a particular area of law.

In most cases the degree awarded by American law schools is the Juris Doctor, or J.D., degree. In contrast, the LL.B. degree is still the standard qualification in other common law jurisdictions, mostly in the Commonwealth of Nations. Other, higher, degrees that are awarded include the Master of Laws degree (LL.M.) and the Doctor of Juridical Science degree (J.S.D. or S.J.D.).

Admission

In considering law school, potential students should consider the advantages and disadvantages of lawyering and the law school experience. Many books are available about the realities of law school and lawyering. Before entering law school, potential students should also talk to both attorneys and law students about their experiences and recommendations.

In the United States, most law schools require a bachelor's degree, a satisfactory undergraduate grade point average, and a satisfactory score on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) in order to be considered for admission. Some states that have non-ABA-approved schools or state-accredited schools have equivalency requirements that usually equal 90 credits toward a bachelor's degree. Additional personal factors are evaluated through essays, short-answer questions, letters of recommendation, and other application materials. The standards for grades and LSAT scores vary from school to school. Highly-regarded law schools accept only those applicants with very high LSAT scores, GPAs or financial and political leverage. For admission data from real applicants for this application cycle visit lawschoolnumbers.com.

Individual factors are also very important, although applicants are virtually never asked to interview as part of the application process. Such factors are evaluated through other application materials, and while these factors can compensate for a low GPA and/or LSAT score, where they are weak they can also detract from high scores. Many law schools actively seek applicants from outside the traditional pool in order to boost campus diversity, both racial and economic. Most law schools now factor in extracurricular activities, work experience, and unique courses of study in their evaluation of applicants. A growing number of law school applicants have several years of work experience, and correspondingly fewer law students enter immediately after completing their undergraduate education (for example, at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, for the Class of 2008, the average age of an entering first year law student was 25; most college graduates come directly from high school and are approximately 21 or 22 when they receive their undergraduate degree).

Students considering law school should note that although law school tuition is notoriously high, it is not uncommon for law students to receive grants and scholarships, or more rarely complete tuition waivers, from their schools. While each school's financial aid system operates differently, there is a rule of thumb relating to GPA and LSAT scores: a student whose grades and LSAT are distinctly higher than those of most students admitted to a given school--in other words, a student who could get into a "better" school--has a good chance of being offered some kind of scholarship by the lower-ranked school. Likewise, many law students frequently choose lower ranked schools due to their inability to get into higher ranked schools because of low LSAT scores and GPA, and then transfer to the better schools after their first year of study, provided that they received good grades in the first year of law school.

Accreditation

In order to sit for the bar exam, the vast majority of state bar associations requires that an applicant's law school must be approved by the American Bar Association. The ABA has promulgated detailed requirements covering every aspect of a law school, down to the precise contents of the law library.

California is the most famous exception to the rule. The State Bar of California's Committee of Bar Examiners accredits many schools which would not qualify for ABA accreditation (due to low admission standards, lack of a full law library, or nonstandard academic calendar). Graduates of such schools can sit for the bar exam in California, and once they have passed that exam, a large number of states allow those students to sit for their bars (either immediately or after practicing for a certain number of years in California). California is also the first state to allow graduates of online law schools to take its bar exam.

Curriculum

Law students are referred to as 1Ls, 2Ls, and 3Ls, based on their year of study. In the United States, the American Bar Association does not mandate a particular curriculum for 1Ls. ABA Standard 302(a)(1) requires only the study of "substantive law" that will lead to "effective and responsible participation in the legal profession." However, most law schools have their own mandatory curriculum which typically includes:

These basic courses are intended to provide an overview of the broad study of law. Not all ABA-approved law schools offer all of these courses in the 1L year; a significant number of schools do not require constitutional law and/or criminal law. Some schools roll legal research and legal writing into a single year-long "lawyering skills" course, which may also include a small oral argument component.

The law school curriculum, ironically, results in lawyers who, in the opinion of some experts, are ill-prepared for the realities of lawyering. Although students may know how to do legal research, they are not trained in dealing with clients, opposing counsel or how to navigate the court system. Some schools offer courses in negotiation, discovery procedures, trial advocacy and argument. However, many lawyering skills are learned on the job.

The ABA also requires that all students at ABA-approved schools take a course in professional responsibility (ethics). The course is typically an upper-level course, most often taken in the 2L year. This requirement was added after the Watergate scandal, which seriously damaged the public image of the profession, because of the fact that President Richard Nixon and most of his alleged cohorts were lawyers. The ABA hoped to demonstrate that the legal profession could regulate itself (and also hoped to prevent direct federal regulation of the profession).

As of 2004, to ensure that students' research and writing skills do not deteriorate, the ABA has added an upper division writing requirement. Law students must take at least one course as a 2L or 3L that requires the writing of a paper for credit.

After the first year, law students are generally free to pursue different fields of legal study, such as administrative law, corporate law, international law, admiralty law, intellectual property law, and tax law.

They may also take clinics, which offer hands-on experience providing free legal services to the surrounding community. In 1968, the Ford Foundation began disbursing $12 million to persuade law schools to make "law school clinics" part of their curriculum. Clinics were intended to give practical experience in law practice while providing pro bono representation to the poor. However, conservative critics charge that the clinics have been used instead as an avenue for the professors to engage in left-wing political activism. Critics cite the financial involvement of the Ford Foundation as the turning point when such clinics began to change from giving practical experience to engaging in advocacy.^[1]

Many law students participate in internship programs during their course of study. Some become assistants ("clerks") for local, state, and federal judges; others work in law firms, corporations, or legal aid clinics.

Pedagogical methods

Most law school education in the United States is based on standards developed by Christopher Columbus Langdell and James Barr Ames at Harvard Law School during the mid-1800s. Professors generally lead in-class debates over the issues in selected court cases, compiled into "casebooks" for each course. Most law professors choose not to lecture extensively, and instead use the Socratic method to force students to teach each other based on their individual understanding of legal theory and the facts of the case at hand. Examinations usually entail interpreting the facts of a hypothetical case, determining how legal theories apply to the case, and then writing an essay. This process is intended to train students in the reasoning methods necessary to interpret theories, statutes, and precedents correctly, and argue their validity, both orally and in writing. In contrast, most civil law countries base their legal education on professorial lectures and oral examinations, which are more suited for the mastery of complicated civil codes.

This style of teaching is often discomforting to first-year law students who are more accustomed to taking notes from professors' lectures. Most casebooks do not clearly outline the law: instead, they force the student to interpret the cases and draw the basic legal concepts from the cases themselves. As a result, many publishers market law school outlines that concisely summarize the basic concepts of each area of law, and good outlines are highly sought after by many students, although some professors discourage their use. Legal pedagogy has also been criticized by scholars like Alan Watson in his book, The Shame of Legal Education.

References

^ Heather Mac Donald. "Clinical, Cynical." Wall Street Journal. January 11, 2006; Page A14.

External links

Top 100 Law Schools - According to US News
Law School Admission Data at lawschoolnumbers.com
The Best Law Schools in the United States - According to Lawschool100.com
Law School Discussion