Sunday, July 17, 2016

Getting closer to the associate’s degree in law

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