Practice Management

In a decision by The Supreme Court of Georgia, Joyce K. Batterson will be denied a waiver to licensed in that state in that she graduated from an online law school, licensed by the State of California, Northwestern California University School of Law.

According to the Georgia Supreme Court Decision, the Georgia Board of Law Examiners properly denied Ms. Batterson's waiver because she failed to provide sufficient proof that the non-ABA-accredited law school from which she received her JD was equivalent in its education to an ABA-accredited law school.

In what seemed to be a rather picky decision, Ms. Batterson had provided not only a letter from the Dean of NWCU concerning the education of that school, but also letters from an Associate Dean of Thomas Jefferson School of Law, an ABA-accredit law school from which Ms. Batterson received an LL.M degree.  

The Georgia Supreme Court believed that the TJSL letters contained "only general conclusions" that Ms. Batterson's legal education was on par with that of an ABA-accredited school.

Although, I believe that this is a perfect example why students need to attend ABA-accredited law schools when possible, it does seem to me that the Georgia requirements are generally impossible to achieve.  For example, it will be nearly impossible for ABA-accredited law school professors to discuss the educational standards of a particular non-ABA-accredited law school.  Secondarily, given the requirements for accreditation under the ABA, no online law school will ever meet those ABA-accredited law school equivalences.

My point is that Georgia has effectively written rules for waivers that can almost never be met.  I think they know this.  If you do not like something, you do not have to prohibit it as you can just legislate it out of existence.  It is an old trick that the bar itself employs too much.

Much like the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court granting Ross E. Mitchell a waiver after he graduated from Concord, an online law school, to sit for the State's bar, the better course should not be to compare schools and education systems, but the qualifications, skills and knowledge of the law graduate applying for a waiver.

The bottom line, whether Ms. Batterson was qualified or not, and although the Georgia Supreme Court gave short rift to it, ABA rules for accreditation are becoming quickly and seriously outmoded in our Third Wave world.  Partly as a result, law schools are becoming too expensive.  In fact, they are increasingly becoming cost prohibitive for the exact reason that they do not use technology effectively to increase overhead and costs.

Georgia needs to consider the person and not the school in the granting of waivers.