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Salzer, R J --- "Juris Doctor.Com: Are Full-time Internet Law Schools the Beginning of the End for Traditional Legal Education?" [2004] LegEdDig 21; (2004) 12(4) Legal Education Digest 7

Juris Doctor.com: Are Full-time Internet Law Schools the Beginning of the End for Traditional Legal Education?

R J Salzer

[2004] LegEdDig 21; (2004) 12(4) Legal Education Digest 7

12 CommLaw Conspectus 102, 2004, pp 1–26

‘Distance learning’ is defined as ‘the process of extending learning, or delivering instructional resource-sharing opportunities, to locations away from a classroom, building or site, to another classroom, building or site by using video, audio, computer, multimedia communications, or some combination of these with other traditional delivery methods.’

In 2001 a serious blow was dealt to the ABA’s ‘monopoly’ over legal education. In United States v. American Bar Association, the US District Court for the District of Columbia determined that the ABA had ‘restrained competition by fixing compensation levels of professional personnel at ABA-approved schools and by acting in ways to limit competition from non-ABA-approved schools’. Despite this decision, little has changed. However, a new development in Internet education stands to pose a serious threat to both the ABA and those who believe that the only way to earn a legitimate law degree is through traditional legal education.

In 2002 the Concord School of Law graduated the country’s first Internet law school students, marking the first monumental step towards what they hope will become a revolution in legal education. Although generally considered a relatively new invention, the Internet has been used in some capacity for over 30 years. The expansion of education through the Internet has increased dramatically over the past few years. By 1998 there were over 1.3 million students enrolled in distance learning programs, up 78 percent from 1995. The number of enrollees is projected to continue rising dramatically in the upcoming years.

The history of Internet law schools begins and ends with the Concord Law School, as it is the first, and currently the only, institution in the US offering a JD degree entirely online. The basic JD program at Concord is on a part-time basis and therefore requires four years of study to complete the ninety-two credits necessary for graduation. Concord’s course requirements are no different from most traditional law schools in the US. It has implemented procedures to ensure students consistently keep pace with the course load. Each course is broken into ‘modules’ of roughly a week and a half. Before students can progress in any course, they must pass a multiple-choice exam that tests material from the most recent module.

Traditionally, law students embark on this ‘search’ at their university’s law library. Although Concord has no library building, their students have access to the world’s largest library researching tool: the Internet. Concord students openly rely on the Internet as their sole source of research and thus far have found everything they need despite the non-existence of a library.

Despite the efforts by Concord’s founders and administrators to maintain a traditional legal education through a unique medium, Concord has received a tremendous amount of criticism and resistance from legal scholars, traditionalists and even a Supreme Court Justice. While this criticism has not weakened Concord’s efforts, it has certainly hindered their quest to gain accreditation.

One of the more frequent and less publicised criticisms of Concord is that the Socratic method, i.e. the traditional form of law school teaching during which the professor randomly calls on individual students to discuss a case or statute, is all but lost over the Internet. While that fact is undeniable, the true question is whether this teaching method is necessary in law school. While true that one cannot use the Internet for research in the heat of litigation, it is questionable whether the Socratic method makes students any more prepared to answer questions in the courtroom. The only certainty when examining the battle between Socratic teaching and Internet education is that much of the burden lies on legal professors to embrace the available technology, while accepting that ‘traditional’ methods are not necessarily the best methods. In addition, no logical explanation has been offered to explain the value of the Socratic method to those students who have no future in litigation.

The ABA’s refusal to grant Concord Law School accreditation initially precluded Concord graduates from taking the bar exam in almost every state. Today, the ABA admits over 50,000 new members per year and has a total membership of over 350,000 members. Despite the ABA’s stated intentions, there has been an increasing number of lawyers and law students who feel that the ABA abuses its power, and that regulation or even the abolishment of the ABA is necessary to truly ensure fairness in the competitive world of legal education.

The ABA has wielded the power to determine who is worthy of accreditation for over 60 years. In that time, it has convinced all but four of the 50 states that their stamp of approval should be required before a student may sit for the bar exam. Despite the ABA monopoly throughout much of the twentieth century, numerous lawsuits were filed against it in the last 20 years. The suit was settled after extensive negotiations, and the ABA agreed to relinquish some of its control over the legal education field.

While the exceptions outlined for distance learning do indicate some flexibility in the ABA’s traditionally rigid standards, they still signify that the ABA is far from accepting a purely online school. To date, there is no indication that the US has any intention of publicly supporting distance education or endorsing Concord in a suit against the ABA.

Some argue the system as it stands is both under and over-inclusive and that states actually hamper the legal profession by limiting the bar exam to ABA-accredited graduates. Should opponents succeed in convincing states currently requiring ABA accreditation to include distance learning programs, a domino effect could occur across the country within the next few decades.

While a grudge match between the ABA and its innumerable opponents seems like it will be a reality in the near future, the two sides will eventually mirror the result in ABA v. United States: they will settle. Neither side will ever totally agree, but the ABA will be forced to bend its restrictions to the unstoppable force that is distance education.


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