Miscellaneous

Two Years of Law School

By Bill Gratsch

Interesting note this weekend, Law School in 2 Years (Same $$?) ? Assessing Northwestern?s Program, on Northwestern's coming two year law program

Here is a snippet on the subject from the Wall Street Journal's Law Blog:

Is the plan, spearheaded by Dean David Van Zandt, an innovative break with the conservative, time-honored traditions of law school? After all, how much law is learned in that third year? Or, as Chicago?s Professor Stone suggests, is the two-year program an ?irresponsible? ploy that risks churning out substandard lawyers?

Here are the details of the program, according to Van Zandt:

Tuition: Don?t expect to save money. Northwestern announced the program but won?t answer the $42,672 question of whether the compressed plan will be cheaper. Van Zandt told the Law Blog that, rather than the prospect of a cheaper degree, the financial attraction of the program is more likely to be the ability to be earning a salary a year earlier. (And yes, the $42k figure is NU?s annual tuition.)

• Time This is a five-semester program that will begin in May. The 25 to 60 students expected to join will take the same number of credits as students in the three-year program. They?ll take extra courses each semester and pick up one or two credits through mini-courses between semesters.
• Curriculum While the two-year option will have the same curriculum as the traditional program, the two-year students will be the first to test two new required courses: quantitative reasoning, including accounting, finance and statistics; and the dynamics of legal services behavior, including skills such as teamwork, leadership and project management.
• Admission Applicants will be required to have two or three years of ?substantive work experience? after college. People with work experience are likely to have ?the good time management? necessary to success in the program, Van Zandt told Insider Higher Ed.

Full post as published by Blawgs Blog by Bill Gratsch on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).