28 Dec Two-Year Law Programs Failing

The New York Times reported the other day that, despite an endorsement from President Obama a few years ago, the attempts to better manage the costs of law school by offering two-year programs have not been faring well. Northwestern, one of the top US law schools, decided a few months ago to terminate the program it pioneered to accelerate law training. Designed for older students coming to law school with job experience, it has simply failed to attract sufficient candidates.

Some other schools, like Brooklyn Law, do still offer two-year degrees, but these are really more concentrated times to cover the same material. You typically complete it by going to school for two summers in between normal school years. There are evening programs but they are few and far between. This also while law firms more and more are asking law schools to prepare new lawyers with not just academics but real practical training so they can hit the ground running.

Clearly schools would rather get 3 years of tuition from full classes and not send students to work where less money comes to the school. Any lawyer will tell you the third year of law school involves almost entirely elective classes that are not necessary before going out to earn a living and help clients. But they still must complete three years and graduate with tremendous debt and, in too many cases, no job. As my faithful blogees know I have numerous times here called for the option for students to either eliminate the third year of study or replace it with real experiential training supervised by the school, and I do so again now. Former Professor Obama agrees. Maybe we can get this done before my 13-year old son reaches law school age.