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International Law

: China Law Blog

An "American" Law School In China. Explanations Sought.

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

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My tiny firm must receive at least ten resumes every day. About a third of these come from students who, even in the best of of times, would likely never be hired as a law firm associate. Go ahead and get mad at me if you want, but those who are in the bottom half of the class from fourth tier ranked or unaccredited law schools are just not going to get hired by a law firm without exceptional circumstances. The United States is producing way more lawyers than jobs. I do not have the numbers on this, but I KNOW this to be true. Just ask Loyola 2L. And yet (usually with self-generated fanfare) new law schools just keep on coming. Why? I could talk about college presidents wanting to extend their fiefdom (and that would be true), but what it really comes down to is that law schools tend to be very profitable. I thought of all this today when I read an excellent article on the USC US-China Institute's website, entitled, "China Legal." The article is on Peking University's new school of Transnational Law, which will be awarding United States Juris Doctorate (JD) degrees soon. I hate to be so practical, but with so many Chinese having to return to China without jobs after graduating from US based J.D. programs, I have to wonder whether there will be jobs for the graduates of this school. Will there? And if so, where? Are the Chinese students with United States secured Juris Doctorates who are not getting jobs in the United States getting jobs elsewhere in the world? I really do not know the answers to these questions so I am throwing these out there to those who do. One correction to the article. It starts out saying that "anyone with a university degree can sit for the bar exam and be eligible to practice law [in China]. That is only somewhat true. Only Chinese nationals (and in some circumstances, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers) can become licensed Chinese lawyers. What do you think?

Full post as published by China Law Blog on August 16, 2009 (boomark / email).