I have this idea in my head that when the degree inflated in name it also inflated from a two-year program to a three-year program. I’ve found no justification for this notion -did I just dream it? It’s always struck me and most of my lawyer friends that the third year of law school is a monstrous waste of time, required only because it provides employment for law professors and free labor for the grubby business of editing law reviews (and writing law professors’ books).
I started law school in 1960. Took over two years off for the Army and got my JD in 1966. During all that time, it was three years. I don’t remember it being less. I did go to evening school, but IIRC, day school was also three years. (Some who attended nights took longer.)
As far as the last year being a waste of time, I don’t recall that as being correct. You can say all three years is a waste of time. The law keeps changing any way. All you really need to know is how to do research (look up the law.) General rules are fine, but they’re subject to change and don’t mean much. Every case is different.
Being curious about which was the terminal degree, I found this site :
“…the fact remains that the postgraduate degree for both the “JD” and the LL.B is the LL.M (Master of Laws), and the terminal degree for both the “JD” and LL.B degree is the LL.D or S.J.D, a “true” Doctor of Laws.”
[continuing the hijack]
Actually, I’d say two years would be about right to learn the skills amenable to classroom teaching: caselaw reading, statutory analysis, regulatory, civil and criminal procedures, evidentiary systems, some sort of serious research effort in substantive law, institutional history, legal writing and oral argument. Some of these take a bit of time to master, but if you don’t get all of these by the end of the second year you’re hopeless.
And I really think that’s why the JD isn’t a real doctorate, because there just isn’t the depth. Although most law schools require some sort of research and writing exercise, it’s not even in the same universe as a dissertation. (At NYU, it was a 45-page academic paper, and quite frankly if you haven’t arrived at law school with the ability to churn one of those out, then what the hell are you doing there to begin with?)
I’m surprised nobody brought up the title “Professor” in this whole thing. I am legally a professor because the board of our local junior college said so many years ago. Here at Anodyne JC we were required to have master’s degrees, which I have, but in later years a lot of the new hirelings have PhD.'s and have tried to get into big universities. However, there are more people who want to be in universities than there are universities, so they wind up here at Anodyne, highly overqualified, as most of our students read at 6th-grade level. Anyways, you are a professor if the board says so, and when they wanted to make us professors because it sounds better in the brochures and to the community, our union made sure we would be professors by years of service and not by any other little qualifications (that could only be invidious and packed with the usual favoritism, who knows who, likability, cooperation, and being on a lot of committees type criteria behind the stated criteria). So we have Associate, Assistant, and Full Professors and I am one of the last.
I saw in grad school for the M.A. that it was just a scratch and claw (your way up) proposition to get a PhD., and that the other gradgrinds had no interest in the subject either and never talked about it, but only about departmental politics. So I knew I didn’t want that, and bsides, you had to learn Anglo-Saxon and another foreign language and take boring courses in emending texts, and so forth. Also, I think getting too high a degree is masochistic, and I usually try to avoid that. Finally, I saw that even if I was a professor at a real college or university, the departmental politics would continue, the people would go on being pretentious, phony, etc. It would be a constant struggle to stay at the top having to write papers on HUMPHREY CLINKER and THE FAERIE QUEEN or trying to be serious about MOBY DICK. As it is where I am there are plenty of politics, fending off of the administration, pomposity, unreality, and so on but not as bad as at more so-called important levels. And I write and distribute all the papers I want to on MOBY DICK and whatever other subject I’m interested in and never have to “defend” them because nobody takes much interest in them. It is always more fun to write something than to worry about its reception. I have found my niche, now if only I could get the students to stop snatching things off the desk while I professed, stop rustling their snack food bags, come on time, come at all, and quite complaining to the dean about every little thing, all would be even better.
Then I assume from your post that constitutional law and legal ethics is not “amenable to classroom teaching.” If that be the case, what is?
Research in substantive law is essential, but one still must have a foundation in the fundamentals. As you know, “substantive law” covers many categories: tort, contract, personal property, real property,international law; and equitable relief. There may be a few others that slip my mind at the moment. In addition, you mentioned civil and criminal procedures, but you omitted administrative procedures.
All of that can be learned in two years, but not with all the extra work required in law school: reading so many cases on the same general rule and then cases with the exceptions (flippantly described by you as “reading cases”); briefing cases; etc.
The point is that the 3d year is not superfluous, as many of those subjects are taught in the 3d year. Arguably, they could be condensed into two years. Arguably also, they could be condensed into one year. Hey, why stop there?
Chronos wrote:
“DD”? Is that a degree, or a cup size?
Only in your dreams. Doctor of Divinity. Of course, there’s also the “Associate in Arts” (AA) degree, too, to provide represenative balance, I guess.