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Northwestern Starts a 2-year Law Degree Program

July 9, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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Why spend three years on a law degree when you can do it in two? Northwestern University plans to offer a compressed, five-semester program starting in 2009. Open to 40 students, the new track would require one summer of coursework and heavier course loads each term to complete the same number of credit hours as a traditional three-year program, making Northwestern the only top-tier law school to offer both two- and three-year tracks, says Dean David Van Zandt.

The program is designed to tap into a new group of potential applicants with extensive full-time, post-college job experience—it requires a minimum of two years—who in the past could not afford to be out of the workforce for a full three years. "We think there may be a good number of people who wanted to apply to law school before and now think it might be worthwhile," Van Zandt says.

But don't expect to see other top schools follow in Northwestern's footsteps, says Brian Leiter, chair of law at the University of Texas and editor of the popular blog Brian Leiter's Law School Reports. He says many colleges have permitted motivated students to take summer classes and graduate early for years and considers the new program Northwestern's attempt to distinguish itself from other elite institutions. "I think it's an interesting experiment and may turn out to serve their students very well, but I don't think anyone's going to jump to follow suit," he says.

Tags:: Northwestern University,; law school

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For mid-level and senior level executives interested in going back for a JD, I think its a brilliant idea. As I researched the facts of law school it was to over generalize....a scam. Law school consists of approximately 42 credit hours of actual law training and another 48 hours of fluff. Whatever you want to fill with those elective credits is totally up to you. So what have all the programs done? Well they've just marginalized the MBA by providing a joint MBA/JD program where all the electives count for MBA credit. So its really about stuffing people in a classroom for 3 years doing something. How about a JD and an LLM? No problem, just do all your electives towards the LLM in three years.
What no one will admit is that law school (the credit hours) is a two year program. If the ABA allowed an 18 month program it would be an 18 month program. What's that old saying? Year one they scare you to death, year two they work you to death, year three they bore you to death? Or as my buddy describes it, year three was about playing xbox way too much.
I think its a travesty that more schools don't take this approach. The JD candidate is taking all the risk anyway. They are paying the same price for the JD as the three year program anyway. The JD is losing out on the L3 summer associate options to get them their first big job...their choice. If the JD candidate is confident they can get their job without 2 summers as an associate then the third year is really just collegiate grind. Let them have their JD and be on their way in 2 years.

Troy of IL 2:10AM October 15, 2009