Some of you may be aware of the Senate runoff race in Georgia.
One of the candidates is Jim Martin. On his web page he claims to have earned three degrees from the University of Georgia.
A bachelors degree and two law degrees. 
huh?
Two law degrees? OK, I can see two Masters degrees or two bachelors degree because you have different areas of concentration. Can I assume then that law school is the same way? Do you specialize in law school where it could be worth it get multiple law degrees?
This webpage says that he has the following degrees. The law degrees are the LLM and the JD.
Education:
MBA, Georgia State University, 1980
LLM, University of Georgia, 1972
JD, University of Georgia, 1969
AB, University of Georgia, 1967.
I don’t know all that much about law degrees but the standard law degree is a JD but there are higher ones something like a doctorate in law that allows someone to teach at a law school.
OK, I had to look some of these up. I could keep that knowledge to myself but that sort of defeats one of the main purposes of this board.
MBA: Masters of Business Administration
LLM: Master of Laws (this is news to me)
JD: Juris Doctorate
AB: Bachelor of Arts (Artium Baccalaureus: first time I’ve seen it written as AB):
LLM is an advanced degree. In my experience, usually in something like TAX.
LLMs in Tax and Intellectual Property are quite common. The LLM is earned after the JD.
The highest law degree is the S.J.D., which is a research degree similar to the PhD. As noted, the LLM is usually a degree for specialists (though it’s often taken by foreign lawyers seeking to practice here, as some U.S. jurisdictions allow people to take the bar with both a foreign law degree and a US LLM).
In my experience, many law school professors just have the J.D.-not all that many have higher law degrees. Quite a few have higher academic degrees (lots of MA/PhD), but the S.J.D. is (relatively) rare.
IANAL.
Also, the LLM is kind of a different degree than the JD. It’s easier to get, and is kind of open about what classes you take. It’s about 99% foreign students, and then the occasional JD who just wants to put more letters behind their name. It’s kind of professionally worthless, though, unless you are a foreign lawyer.
The University of Chicago does ABs and AMs. Pretentious, but hey.
In the U.S., the traditional law school degree had been the LL.B. (Bachelor of Laws), which starting in about the early 20th century was the degree granted from a three year professional law program after an undergraduate bachelors prior to law school admission. Maybe 50 years ago some smart lawyer figured out that you would be paid more by the federal government if you had a doctoral degree than just a bachelors or two, and the law schools were convinced to start awarding the J.D. degree rather than the LL.B.
There historically have been and continue to be graduate law degrees taken after the LL.B./J.D. degree. These are the LL.M. (master of laws), which is a typically one year program taken after the award of a LL.B./J.D., and the S.J.D. or J.S.D.(doctor of juridical science), which is a research degree the equivalent of a Ph.D. The degree LL.D. (doctor of laws) is almost exclusive given as an honorary degree in the U.S., though it is an academic degree granted elsewhere in the world.
The LL.B./J.D. is generally considered a “terminal” degree, sufficient to permit one to teach in law schools, though these days the best law schools prefer to hire professors a J.D. and at least one other advanced degree (masters or doctoral, though not necessarily in law) or some other special qualification such as a Supreme Court clerkship. The LL.M. degree is usually taken in a specialized area such as taxation or is taken by foreign lawyers to qualify to take a U.S. state bar exam. The S.J.D. degree is just exceedingly rare.
I can’t find any online citation for this fact, but at some point, a century or so ago, it used to be standard for Bachelor of Arts to be abbreviated as A.B. in American universities. Furthermore, it was standard that all bachelor’s degrees awarded by a university would be Bachelor of Arts degrees. A small number of American universities have kept to this tradition and still only award only one undergraduate degree, an A.B., regardless of what one majors in. Other American universities also only award one undergraduate degree for all students regardless of their major, but they call the degree a B.A. Other American universities only award one undergraduate degree regardless of major, but they call it a B.S.
Many other American universities give different names to their undergraduate degrees depending on what one majors in, so that they award B.A.'s, B.S.'s, and various other bachelor’s degrees. All this is irrelevant to bachelor’s degrees as qualifications for further education or for employment. An employer or a graduate school is only going to be looking at what you majored in, what courses you took, what grades you got, the overall quality of the university that you studied at, etc. Nobody’s going to care what your bachelor’s degree is called.
My undergrad school awards both A.B.'s and S.B.'s.
Interestingly, at least when I was there, you could get either an A.B. or an S.B. in Computer Science, the A.B. version having slightly fewer mathematics requirements. Talk about inside baseball – I can’t imagine many people evaluating resumes knew the difference.
Also, I disagree that the LL.M. is “professionally worthless” for the non-foreign lawyer. :rolleyes: It’s not much of a qualification for your resume, I agree (though it doesn’t hurt). But I knew more than a few LL.M. students back when I was in law school who had practiced for a while in other areas and had found it exceedingly worthwhile as a way to prepare them to practice in a new area that was technically complex (hence, tax, IP and, to a lesser extent, labor and employment being the big ones) but in which they hadn’t previously had formal training.
–Cliffy
Cliffy, why didn’t you also quote this sentence from my post?:
> Many other American universities give different names to their undergraduate
> degrees depending on what one majors in, so that they award B.A.'s, B.S.'s,
> and various other bachelor’s degrees.
You’re expanding on what I said in that sentence when you wrote:
> My undergrad school awards both A.B.'s and S.B.'s.
By only quoting the following sentence from my post, you made it seem like I wasn’t allowing for the way your undergrad school names its degrees:
> A small number of American universities have kept to this tradition and still only
> award only one undergraduate degree, an A.B., regardless of what one majors
> in.
What kind of research would an SJD be doing?
Not to nitpick or anything, but J.D. stands for juris doctor, not juris doctorate. Example cite: JD Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster.
Putting “juris doctorate” on a resume drove the placement office personnel crazy at my law school, so we were extensively hammered on it. YMMV.
They would be preparing a thesis into a particular area of law. Like the Ph.D. thesis, the S.J.D. thesis has to meet the criterion of “original research” that makes a contribution to the academic analysis of the issue. It can’t just be regurgitation or a survey of the law and issues; it has to bring a detailed critical analysis to the topic.
As for what that topic could be, well, it could be anything related to the law, depending on what the person’s interests were: corporate law, tort reform, constitutional law, environmental law, international law - topics are endless.
The preparation of the thesis can take a couple of years, and results in something around the neighbourhood of 180-220 pages, outlining the issue, how the courts and legislatures have dealt with it, critical analysis of same, plus the candidate’s preferred outcome, supported by detailed arguments.
The candidate then has to go before a panel of academics in the particular field and conduct an oral defence of the thesis. If the panel votes in the candidate’s favour, the degree of S.J.D. will be awarded.
I concur with my learned colleague.
True, an LL.M. is not necessary to enter the profession of law, but it does demonstrate a detailed study of a particular area of the law. If a lawyer wants to specialize in a particular area, especially one of the more esoteric ones like tax or intellectual property, an LL.M. in that area may be of assistance in landing the job.
For example, in my office, several of us have LL.M.s in our area. It’s a definite plus for someone seeking entry to the field.
N. Piper, LL.M.
And now Canadian law schools are following that trend, allegedly so their grads can compete for jobs in the U.S. :rolleyes:
Pish. It’s all just academic penis envy. (“I have a B.A. and went through three more years of university, and all I get is another stinkin’ bachelor’s degree?!?”)