Distance Learning - All I Want is a Law Degree

Few industries are as slow to adopt new methods and technologies as the legal profession. Certainly, the stability provided by relying on tried and true technology is valuable in an industry that is largely risk averse, but this bias against new technologies sometimes seems arbitrary. This is why current activity in favor of law degrees through distance learning is encouraging.

Until recently, the American Bar Association's Standards for Approval of Law Schools prohibited accredited law schools from granting credit for correspondence courses except in very narrow circumstances. As an example, see the ABA's old position on distance learning, which included a statement that "a law school shall not grant credit for study by correspondence." The limitation was so severe that law students who needed to take a significant portion of their course work by correspondence were effectively barred from practicing law in the vast majority of states. The new rules permit accredited law schools to count substantial amounts of distance learning credits towards the minimum coursework requirement subject to meaningful oversight by the school, and further subject to additional qualifications described in the Standards. The rule change means that instead of a bias against distance learning, the ABA now recognizes distance learning as a legitimate means of obtaining a law degree when the shortcomings of education without in person interactions are addressed.

Only a handful of states permit graduates of all-correspondence law schools to take the bar exam, which is why I was surprised by the news of a recent court case in Massachusetts (among the states with the strictest bar admission rules). (Note that California is one of the states that permits graduates of non-accredited law schools to take the bar exam, subject to other requirements that do not apply to graduates of accredited law schools. Also, several states already have alternative review processes on an as-requested case-by-case basis even though they don't permit graduates of non-accredited schools to automatically take the bar exam.) The circumstances surrounding the case were covered in a recent edition of the California Bar Journal. A recent graduate of Los Angeles based Concord Law School, the first all-online law school, wanted to practice law in Massachusetts even though he knew the state did not permit graduates of distance learning schools from taking the bar exam. In spite of the rule, the student petitioned the state bar and initiated a court case seeking the right to take the exam. The law school graduate was such an effective advocate in representing himself through the briefs he filed and his oral arguments in the court case that the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled he could take the exam.

The case indicates a shift in the legal profession's bias against distance learning to an acceptance that, under the right circumstances, distance learning can produce strong candidates for attorneys. In practical effect, while the case does not mean that distance learning will automatically be accepted as a substitute for traditional law school attendance, it does mean that more states will likely add alternative review criteria for distance learning candidates when determining whether they should be permitted to take the bar exam.

The trend towards distance learning in legal education is part of a larger trend in support of distance learning for virtually all professions. Among the primary objections to distance learning is the lack of personal interaction and the environment of school and students is seen as critical to making good lawyers. This type of criticism is not typically cited as a weakness of distance learning in other professions. It's true that many attorneys will go into areas of the profession that require excellent client interaction skills, but these types of skills are not necessarily learned in the classroom environment. In fact, one could argue that the distance learning model more closely matches the way most attorneys perform their jobs on a day-to-day basis. Consider my experience as in-house counsel at MySQL, where over 90% of the company's employees worked outside the Silicon Valley office where I worked. The bulk of my client interactions were more often through e-mail, telephone and occasional travel rather than direct personal interaction.

Distance learning also serves another important purpose. It allows those with valuable real-life experience in non-legal professions and endeavors to pursue a legal career. Take the case of a lieutenant colonol in the US Army who is taking law school courses while deployed in Afghanistan, which was described in a recent edition of the California Bar Journal. These types of students typically have day jobs and families and would not be able to pursue a law degree were it not for distance learning, yet the breadth and depth of their experiences is exactly what will allow them to make immediate valuable contributions to the legal profession ... certainly more quickly than I could have as a law graduate who attended law school immediately after graduating from college.

No doubt, the ability to have quality personal interaction skills is critical to success in virtually all professions, but these skills can be learned outside the classroom environment and they are exercised in different ways by each individual. As a result, it does not seem fair that distance learning law students should be at a significant disadvantage. This is one case where it appears that the legal profession is taking the right steps to move into the 21st century.