More than two years ago I wrote about Community’s Jeff Winger, a fictional character that faked a bachelor’s degree, went straight from high school to law
school, graduated, passed the bar, practiced law, was ratted-out, was disbarred,
and had to go back for a post-J.D. bachelor’s to be readmitted to the bar. (Seasons one through six on DVD here; season
six online here.) I also argued that in
real-life, the J.D. is nothing more than an associate’s degree, and law schools
should recognize this. First, as the
fictional Jeff Winger and every real-life law student prove, law school
doesn’t require a single, college-level prerequisite to get in. So what’s the difference if the student
spends four years and $100,000-plus for a B.A. in puppetry or skips college altogether
as Jeff Winger did? And second, I
argued, the third year of law school is pure silliness and should be
eliminated. In fact, some schools at the
time were designing two-year programs, but were still squeezing three years’
worth of tuition dollars out of their victims students. But now that would-be law students are better
educated about the limited value of the J.D., law schools are forced to look
for creative ways to fill their seats so they can pay their faculty to write
cutting-edge legal scholarship.
