Can I finish Law School if I haven't taken classes in more than 10 years without starting over?

[karerob]

I've been wondering if I can finish my law degree? It's been over 10 years. Will I have to start over? Does anyone know? I know I will have to take the lsat again, but I'm concerned about the cost. I have taken my first year courses. I had to stop b/c I had a very traumatic event in my life and then got married and had children. Now, I'm wondering if I can finish without re-taking the courses that I have completed? I left the school in good-standing.

[mac_bolan00]

some law and med schools put a cap on your projected age upon graduation. in my university, med school grads can't be older than 30. law is a bit more fuzzy. a friend of mine's a doctor but he took law as a second course. finished at 48.

[Quercus]

Seems like the place to go for an authoritative answer is ... your law school. Why not call them up and ask?

[amarinth]

some law and med schools put a cap on your projected age upon graduation. in my university, med school grads can't be older than 30.Is this a non-US med school? Because that sounds very odd to me.

[Acsenray]

some law and med schools put a cap on your projected age upon graduation. in my university, med school grads can't be older than 30. law is a bit more fuzzy. a friend of mine's a doctor but he took law as a second course. finished at 48.

I've never heard of this kind of policy at any American law school. It's pretty routine to see people who have retired from another career to take up a law degree.

[Hello Again]

I've never heard of this kind of policy at any American law school. It's pretty routine to see people who have retired from another career to take up a law degree.

Yeah, I took the LSAT on my 30th birthday and no giant warning klaxons went off. I managed to graduate undetected. :) The oldest student at my law school was in their 60s.

Actually I would guess that such a rule would roundly violate age discrimination laws.

As to whether you would have to re-take 1L classes, etc, you really need to speak with your law school, or any law school you are thinking of attending, and discuss it with them.

[Rachellelogram]

Obviously it's going to depend on the school in question. I believe tech credits at my old college were only good for 10 years, at which point you'd have to retake the classes, but I don't think law has quite as much volatility as technology. They might just make you take a qualifying exam to test whether you've retained the knowledge from the first time around.

[Elendil's Heir]

Definitely, check with the school - or any other school to which you'd like to transfer credits. It can be complicated, but there's no harm in asking.

Be warned: If you're anything like me, your study skills have deteriorated sharply since you were last in law school. I took just two years off between college graduation and starting law school, and my first term's grades sucked. It was very hard to get back into the academic mindset.

[ftg]

All the universities I went to and worked for had time limits on course requirements. 7 years is the standard. If your degree requires you to have taken Physics 101 to graduate and it's been more than 7 years, you have to retake the course.

OTOH, credit hours are frequently preserved so you still keep those.

This was a real concern for some PhD students I've known. While individual courses weren't required, nearing 7 years after passing their qualifying exams became a concern for a few.

I have never, ever heard anything remotely like an upper limit on age for students of any type anywhere in the US. Lower age limits (to ward off 12 year old wunderkinds who aren't socially mature enough to handle college) have become more common in recent years.

Note, in all my decades in academia, I learned one important thing: everything can be appealed. Take this guy (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j-63qgcipBALxUiTJK38mXKtOuOw?docId=e58046debf07430688d8e81c8f23592a) for example. Presumably all his credits timed out 70 years ago but I assume the college did a bunch of exceptions so he could finish.

The only way to find out is to contact the law school.

[Hello Again]

Be warned: If you're anything like me, your study skills have deteriorated sharply since you were last in law school. I took just two years off between college graduation and starting law school, and my first term's grades sucked. It was very hard to get back into the academic mindset.

I had the opposite experience. I took 10 years off and arrived raring to go, with the additional bonus of self-insight about my optimal work habits and seriously not caring about other people's bullshit. My first semester grades were excellent. If I had started straight after college or even soon after college I would have been a burned out mess.

Not to discount EH's point of view. Just saying: YMMV.

[aceplace57]

Are law school cumulative in knowledge? Will a student build directly on what they learned in year 1 in year 2? Math classes are cumulative. Most schools use the same text book for Calculus I, II, III. It's one long course spread over three semesters. IIRC Cal IV used a different book.

If so then a 10 year layoff would be a huge problem. I don't know how the classes are structured.

[Acsenray]

Very generally speaking, students have to take the basic courses -- contracts, property, torts, civil procedure, constitutional law, legal research and writing, ethics, criminal law, evidence -- which overlap very little and which will change very little over a course of 10 years in content or concept. You might have missed one or two landmark cases, but that won't affect your ability to complete law school successfully.

After that, it's all electives, which are not necessarily cumulative with respect to each other. (Obviously, to take Constitutional Law II, you must have already taken Constitutional Law I, but you aren't required to take Constitutional Law II if you don't want to.)

[paperbackwriter]

in my university, med school grads can't be older than 30.
If your university is in the US, having a firm "requirement" of med school students being under 30 would likely be a violation of age-discrimination laws. Federal funding could be withheld, and nearly all med schools receive some federal funding. Some schools prefer that their students be younger, so they will have time to practice and effectively amortize both the education and the debt. This is hardly impossible to overcome, however. For example, my wife's study partner in med school was 41 when she entered, and that was hardly the only second-career med student I met in her class.

[ftg]

And another thing ...

When you matriculate (never got used to that word), the graduation requirements for your degree are spelled out in that year's college bulletin (or course catalog or ... whatever your place calls it). (Which used to be very useful hard copy booklets but of course nowadays ...)

That would (usually) be the requirements you had to meet to graduate 4 years later. You are often given the option (and in case of program changes, forced) to use a newer bulletin. Schools will also time out bulletins. Again, 7 years is typical.

So it may be the case that the original set of degree requirements have changed and you would need to "upgrade" to the new ones, assuming they have changed.

Maybe not too much of a problem in Law, but in my field (Computer Science), 10 years ago is ancient history and programs tend to change quite a bit.

[anson2995]

I've never heard of this kind of policy at any American law school. It's pretty routine to see people who have retired from another career to take up a law degree.

Agreed. But the OPs question is whether one can resume law school after an extended break, not start law school at an advanced (?) age.

Generally, there is no "expiration date" for college credits, but the degree requirements are likely to have changed. I took some comp sci classes as an undergrad that are no longer taught, for example.

[mac_bolan00]

If your university is in the US, having a firm "requirement" of med school students being under 30 would likely be a violation of age-discrimination laws. Federal funding could be withheld, and nearly all med schools receive some federal funding. Some schools prefer that their students be younger, so they will have time to practice and effectively amortize both the education and the debt. This is hardly impossible to overcome, however. For example, my wife's study partner in med school was 41 when she entered, and that was hardly the only second-career med student I met in her class.

that's right, it's not in the US (and i was talking about med schools.) but i've a strong feeling unwritten laws in some US colleges still hold. i know of one ivy league school that still follows a "secret quota." sorry, i can't disclose.

[Acsenray]

Agreed. But the OPs question is whether one can resume law school after an extended break, not start law school at an advanced (?) age.

Did you see what I was responding to?

[Eva Luna]

You need to talk to your school. Even if there is normally a time limit to complete your degree, they may be able to make exceptions for extenuating circumstances, but it may take some legwork and a sympathetic dean. I did this when I had a serious injury with protracted rehab after completing all my M.A. classes, but before defending my thesis...followed by my committee chair dying. The Dean cut me some slack, and I eventually defended my thesis and got my diploma.

[Northern Piper]

When I was at law school, we had an example of this. Many years before, the mother of one of my classmates had finished first year law but then got married and started having babies, so she dropped out of law school - that's what moms did in the early 60's.

But having her daughter go to law school, the same law school she had been at, made her start thinking "what if".

When we were in third year, her mom was back in second year! As far as I know, she graduated the year after her daughter.

So, kareob, as others have said, talk to your law school. And be persistent and persuasive - it'll be good training for when you're called to the bar! ;) Good luck!

[Kimmy_Gibbler]

Do check with your law school, but I suspect the answer is going to be no. ABA accreditation standard 304(c) (http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/legaled/standards/2010-2011_standards/2010-2011abastandards_pdf_files/chapter3.authcheckdam.pdf) [pdf link] provides:

A law school shall require that the course of study for the J.D. degree be completed no earlier than 24 months [2 years] and no later than 84 months [7 years] after a student has commenced law study at the law school or a law school from which the school has accepted transfer credit.

[Spoons]

that's right, it's not in the US (and i was talking about med schools.) .... Mac, is the age limitation because students in your location can go to med/law schools straight out of the equivalent of high school? As you may know, med/law students in the US and Canada are typically required to have a bachelor's degree first, so any age limit (if one exists, secret or not) would necessarily have to be pushed back.

[KarlGauss]

Mac, is the age limitation because students in your location can go to med/law schools straight out of the equivalent of high school? No, it's not that.

When I went to med school (in Canada) there definitely was a 'rule' (how inflexible, I don't know) that placed an upper limit on how old one could be at the time of enrollment (not quite the same as how old you could be at graduation and done that way in order to allow for delays from things like illness once you had already started your program). IIRC, that limit was 30, but I may well be misremembering the actual number.

The underlying idea was that since the Ontario tax payer was going to foot the large majority of your bill (at that time, med school fees were heavily subsidized, something like 600 bucks a year!), you needed to able to repay them by being able to work as an MD for thirty years (or whatever the true number was).

As an aside, for those who assert that such a rule wouldn't be brooked in the US, is there not an age limit for students entering its military academies, i.e. West Point, Anapolis, etc.?

[Great Antibob]

As an aside, for those who assert that such a rule wouldn't be brooked in the US, is there not an age limit for students entering its military academies, i.e. West Point, Anapolis, etc.?

Yes, there is. Actually, it goes both ways. There's both a maximum AND a minimum age for entrance to the service academies. You don't see either restriction for normal 4 year colleges and universities. Actually, we often get news stories about the grandmother or the precocious 10 year old who gets a college degree.

Of course, there's a bit of a difference here. The service academies are specifically tasked with providing a portion of the officer cadre of the US armed forces, for which there are also age requirements.

There are all sorts of exceptions we make for our military that we wouldn't allow for civilian occupations. For example, sex discrimination in several military occupations is still perfectly legal, including serving on submarines or for occupations where there is a high likelihood of experiencing live combat.

Another example is "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". A regular civilian company could face rather stiff consequences from dismissing an employee for being homosexual. The same consequences do not exist for the military. This has been the case for a number of years.

The bottom line is that in the US, you aren't going to see age-based restrictions as a matter of policy for educational institutions meant for the average Joe.

As for the law school requirement, I would be surprised if an accredited program allowed 10 year old credits to transfer. The knowledge may not change much for some courses, but accreditation places time limits on credits to make sure degrees are valid.

I know this is the case for several undergraduate and graduate programs as well. My own university had something like a 14 semester expiration on most undergraduate credits and a 10 year limit on the time to begin a Ph.D program and finish (otherwise you were just flat out - oh, and usually very few graduate level credits were allowed to transfer from other schools on top of the residency requirements).

[robert_columbia]

No, it's not that.

When I went to med school (in Canada) there definitely was a 'rule' (how inflexible, I don't know) that placed an upper limit on how old one could be at the time of enrollment (not quite the same as how old you could be at graduation and done that way in order to allow for delays from things like illness once you had already started your program). IIRC, that limit was 30, but I may well be misremembering the actual number.

The underlying idea was that since the Ontario tax payer was going to foot the large majority of your bill (at that time, med school fees were heavily subsidized, something like 600 bucks a year!), you needed to able to repay them by being able to work as an MD for thirty years (or whatever the true number was).
...

This type of admission policy was discussed in Edward Bellamy's 1888 SF novel "Looking Backward". In his future world of 2000, university education is 100% subsidized by the government and everyone who can work has a government job (centrally planned economy to the max), and the cap on age at admission is precisely so that upon graduation, you will be able to serve at least a certain number of years to pay it off before reaching the mandatory retirement age.

[Hippy Hollow]

Generally, there is no "expiration date" for college credits, but the degree requirements are likely to have changed. I took some comp sci classes as an undergrad that are no longer taught, for example.

Actually, as others have noted, your coursework can indeed become "stale." Our institution places a 9 year cap on courses, if I'm not mistaken. We had a student who dropped out of the PhD program in the coursework phase and wanted to come back 10 years later. It was pointed out to him that he'd have to retake all of his coursework... he demurred after hearing this.

[robert_columbia]

I think I also remember reading through the admission process for a nursing program (or an allied health program), and it specifically stated that there were health qualification criteria, I believe the point being that there's no point in getting a nursing qualification if you can't qualify for a nursing license.

Now, if you wanted to do an MA in English Literature at most schools and you were 90 and needed a wheelchair, oxygen tank, and a 24/7 nurse, and you had a bachelor's degree and otherwise qualified for the program, they wouldn't have a problem with that.

[anson2995]

Actually, as others have noted, your coursework can indeed become "stale." Our institution places a 9 year cap on courses, if I'm not mistaken. We had a student who dropped out of the PhD program in the coursework phase and wanted to come back 10 years later. It was pointed out to him that he'd have to retake all of his coursework... he demurred after hearing this.

But is it because in general, college credits "expire", or because the classes that you took 10 years ago are no longer relevant or don't meet the degree requirements? I took COBOL programming... a class that I presume is no longer taught anywhere, nor relevant to a comp sci degree. Would my credit for calculus be considered "stale" just because I took it more than 10 years ago?

If so, what's the rationale?