The LL.B., the J.D., and the C.P.A.

The law degree used to be called the LL.B., or bachelor of laws.  Pictured below is the relevant portion of a re-issued J.D. degree, or Juris Doctor, replacing an LL.B. that had been awarded earlier, back in 1940, by Marquette Law School.  (The re-issued J.D. degree belonged to the now-deceased William Rose, and still hangs in the law offices of Rose & Rose, Attorneys, in Kenosha.) 

The now-deceased J. Gordon Hylton, a former law professor of mine at MU Law, explained in this blog post that the law degree used to be called the LL.B. because it was recognized for what it was: a bachelor’s degree.

I’ve previously argued that, today, the J.D. is really just an associate’s degree in faux doctorate clothing, as it doesn’t require a single specific prerequisite, and you can complete it in just two years.  Of course, you first have to get the bachelor’s degree to go to law school, but the bachelor’s degree can be in anything, which is proof of its complete and utter uselessness.  If a degree in puppetry or gender studies will get you into law school just the same as a degree in accounting or engineering, then the degree requirement is just a scam.  In other words, if there isn’t a single, specific prerequisite that is needed for law school, then students should be allowed to go right from high school to law school. 

In any case, in Gordon’s post, you can see that the law degree used to be called the LL.B. because you only had to have one year of college to get into law school.  Law school then took three years.  Those four years of schooling resulted in a bachelor’s degree in law, or LL.B.

Why did the powers that be change the LL.B. to the poorly-named J.D.?  A mindless pursuit of prestige, most likely.  And of course, it created a real conundrum.  The legal profession must look really stupid to other professions—and even to legal professions in other countries—because our discipline starts with a doctorate (the J.D., the first law degree) and then “progresses” to a master’s (the LL.M., the advanced law degree).  This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever.  Fortunately, almost no J.D.-holders pursue LL.M. degrees—with the exception of the LL.M. in tax, their value is highly questionable—so the irrational sequence (the regression from a doctorate to a master’s) doesn’t impact 99.9% of practicing lawyers.

As Gordon explains in his post, the prerequisite for law school went from one year of college to two years of college and, eventually, to a bachelor’s degree, which prompted the change in name from LL.B. to J.D. for the law degree.  I don’t know if this attempt to gain prestige worked—probably not, as no one thinks a law degree is really a doctorate—but it probably didn’t hurt the profession, either.  Despite the extra three years of schooling (a bachelor’s degree instead of only one year of college as a prerequisite), the number of law schools and law graduates have greatly increased over the years.

The same can’t be said, however, for accounting.  About 20 years ago, the accounting profession pulled a similar stunt to the legal profession’s: it decided to require five years of schooling (instead of the four-year bachelor’s degree in accounting) to sit for the CPA exam.  The extra 30 credits were a scam, of course.  Much like the bachelor’s degree-requirement before entering law school, the extra 30 credits to sit for the CPA could be in anything.  That’s a sure sign that the extra classes are just meaningless busywork for the students (and more revenue for the colleges). 

It turns out, however, that would-be accountants are a bit sharper than would-be lawyers.  When the salaries didn’t rise commensurately, the number of accounting students plummeted.  And as Lindsay Ellis of the WSJ explained this morning, now the profession is paying the price, as students are pursuing other careers that either don’t require the fifth year of college (e.g., finance, marketing, data analytics), or are more prestigious but don’t take any more time (e.g., law, as the BA-JD combo can actually be completed in five calendar years, if you are really ambitious).

Maybe we should rein in the educational industrial complex.  I can’t see any imaginable reason why an accounting major has to have an extra thirty credits in any subject, or why a law student first has to get a bachelor’s degree in any subject, before joining their profession or professional school.

Let’s cut out the waste, and cut our nation’s future student debt loads in the process.