# What's the fastest legal way to get a law license?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-fastest-legal-way-to-get-a-law-license/72742>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 17, 2001, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-fastest-legal-way-to-get-a-law-license/72742 "2001-07-17T01:08:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![denquixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@denquixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/denquixote)\
**Post date:** [August 16, 2013, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-fastest-legal-way-to-get-a-law-license/72742/41 "2013-08-16T03:47:47Z")

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Not really but thanks. I do think it would not be hard to flag posts over a certain age, say 3 years for easy identification.

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**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2013, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-fastest-legal-way-to-get-a-law-license/72742/42 "2013-09-03T14:32:42Z")

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> [@dracoi](#):
>
> When I was in college, the general rule was that you had three hours of homework or studying for every one hour in class. If we apply that to this equation, you have half a year in class, and a year and a half out of class, for two years total (defining years the way you do, as 240 8-hr work days). That happens to be the length of time for the accelerated courses that some other posters have cited, so it seems to be a pretty good explanation for why it can’t be crammed into half a year.

However, I’ve never seen a school that had a _policy_ saying that students who did not put in three hours of homework or studying for every class hour could be _directly_ penalized by loss of credit, reduction in grade, or otherwise. The three hours studying per one hour lecture was explained to you as a best practice that you were strongly encouraged to adopt if you wanted to do well. If you, for some reason (e.g. prior knowledge/study, just that damn smart, have a whiz tutor, just wanna roll those dice and see if you can BS your way through by guessing…), didn’t want to do that, you were gambling with your own success. Any “penalties” levied against you were indirect, caused by your lack of studying causing you to do poorly on assignments and/or exams. There were no timesheets where even though you got a 94 on the midterm exam, 91 on the term paper, and 92 on the final, you got bumped down to an 86 (B) because you turned in timesheets showing an unacceptably low number of hours spent in earning those A grades.

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