Why are there no courses in Law at the undergraduate level?

Thanks, both.

I just wanted to respond to this part of the OP.

The legal profession doesn’t have the monolithic control over all institutions of higher education that this question assumes. It’s up to each university or college to decide for itself what courses it wants to offer. If a college wanted to offer a course in law, there are plenty of lawyers about who’d likely jump at the chance to teach. The local bar associations wouldn’t have any power to stop it - and I can’t see any reason why they would want to, in any event.

My first Bachelor’s degree was in Legal Studies at a Florida univerisity; the program’s enrollees typically were seeking to become Paralegals or hoped to (but not generally guaranteed) go on to law school (a very high percentage were age 25+ already working in some field of law).

That was quite some years ago, and as the Paralegal designation has grown the program seems to have popped up at more and more institutions.

The first course of the program was Law and the Legal System, which could be taken by anyone and gave a good overview of, if nothing else, just how complicated law is. I don’t know if that is what the OP is after, or if they were seeking a more “these are your rights and obligations” dead-end course, as another poster suggested (my paraphrasing; sorry if I missed your intent).

Not quite. Some law schools offer a LLB (bachelor of laws) rather than a JD. Some law schools offer a LLD (doctor of laws) as well as either a a LLB or a JD. Depends on both the state and the law school.

The Political Science dept at the university where I worked for seven years had several pre-law courses, which were taught by one of two practicing lawyers who were also full-time tenured faculty at the institution. That dept also hired lawyers as part-timers to teach American Govt.

That’s what they said in that polisci dept. But a lot of the students seemed to prefer the pre-law or polisci major. I think it’s a bad choice because, as chula says, an attorney has to do so much writing. And an attorney who can’t write lucidly, and doesn’t have a secretary who can patch up his/her flawed grammar and/or spelling, is going to have trouble with the judges. Judges have to read tons of paperwork. Who can blame them for wanting it to be coherent and correctly spelled?? {Not I, said the pedant} :stuck_out_tongue:

One other thing that may confuse people in the UK or commonwealth countries - we only have one kind of legal profession, unlike your barristers vs. solicitors. It’s true that most US attorneys (except for those who practice - mmm - sparsely populated areas) settle on a specialty, or at least on written work (usually contracts or general business) or on courtroom work. The attorney the owner of the chemicals manufacturing company used (Stan was litigious) was superlative at courtroom practice. If I’d ever done something wrong, I’d have wanted him to represent me. OTOH, if I needed contract work, I’d have used the attorney who bought a puppy from me; she was great at that.

Not all commonwealth countries have the divided profession. Canada has a unified profession (except in the civil law province of Quebec), so lawyers are technically barristers and solicitors. Of course, there is a functional division - some lawyers are primarily barristers, going to court; others are mainly solicitors; some do both.

While I was taking such a course in my junior year of high school, my sister was late in her law school career. She said she never had a course called “business law”. This phrase must refer to such layman courses that give one a general taste of (mainly) consumer law. At least, my class was geared towards consumer law.

Along the lines of the OP, why is there no real such thing as being “Pre-Law” in undergrad? - Jinx

Because law schools want students from a wide range of backgrounds. Having a pre-law degree would undermine that goal. In my year, we had lots of people with a BA in English or polisci, but also engineers, nurses, folks with BSc., and so on.

The law school teaches you the law; they want you to bring something else to the table.

In addition to Northern Piper’s answer, there’s no need for a Pre-Law major. Law school is a specialized curriculum that does not largely depend on what you took at college. Unlike medicine, where a school will expect students to know chemistry, biology, histology, etc., etc. on the first day, law schools require only that you know how to think and, ideally, how to write. There’s not any specific set of information necessary for success in law school – although certainly Government and Poli Sci majors will have a lot of info that is useful during their law studies, the study of law is so catholic that so will the Mech. E’s and the Comp. Lit. majors.

–Cliffy

:confused:

I find that statement very odd. Education, journalism, accounting, and nursing are four examples of undergraduate fields that emphasize practical knowledge.

Yes, but except for possibly journalism, those aren’t liberal arts.

Chula didn’t say liberal arts.

Yes in the US you need a Bachelor’s degree to get into law school. The law degree if call a Juris Doctor or JD.

Well, not quite. The Distinction between the Juris Doctor degree and the Bachelor of Laws is pretty narrow and is often a matter of internal university policies. The Master of Laws degree is a separate course of study for which a JD or an LLB is a prerequisite.

For instance back during the Johnson Administration when I received my formal legal education I could enter law school after I had 90 hours credit in a BA or BS program. The same was true of the medical school. You could be admitted to law school at the end of your junior year. If you took that path you would be awarded an LLB on the view that it was your first academic degree. On my wall I have my great-grandfather’s LLB from the University of Michigan dated 1868. On the other hand, because I had a BA before I entered law school and because I did reasonably well academically I received a JD. This split raise some unpleasantness, especially on the part of the people with LLBs and the university later changed all LLBs to JDs and offered to do a new diploma suitable for framing at a nominal cost. Now every US law school that I know of issues a JD only. Of course the piece of paper that really counts is the one from the clerk of the state supreme court that amounts to a license. A similar document from some federal court clerk helps, too.

My son-in-law holds a JD from Michigan and a LLM from New York U. The LLM was a year and a half of work (since it is in taxation read 1 ½ years of drudgery) after his JD.

There are law courses, then there are law courses, then there are law courses, and of course there are also law courses.

Some law courses are simply for general interet, or limited practical interest. E.g. business law for business students. Many schools offer one or two such courses. Astro-basket Weaving 101, Psyc 100, and Crim Law 104 make for nice electives for folks looking for easy credits toward a B.A. that has nothing to do with law.

Some law courses are part of a law degree which provides a thorough theoretical understanding of the law and which develops the student’s ability to think cleanly. E.g. courses in a law school leading to a J.D. or an LL.B… Such courses tend to be far more intensive than the general interest courses, and cumulatively lead to an understanding of “the law” as a whole.

Some law courses are part of a law society degree rather than a university degree, and tend to be very practical, but also assume the student already has a theoritical underpinning and can think cleanly. E.g. bar courses leading to a Barr.L. and call to the bar. Such courses help bridge the gap for practising lawyers between what they learn in law school, and what they actually have to do as lawyers. (I don’t know if this occurs elsewhere. I’m in Ontario.)

Some law courses focus on the study of law itself, rather than on the developing of new lawyers. E.g. LL.M. or Ph.D. These courses tend to be quite in-depth, and help contribute to the academic development of the law which eventually feeds down to the grunts in the field.

[b[Muffin**'s answer doesn’t exactly track with the situation in the States. As noted upthread, the general law courses he discusses in the first paragraph exist here, too, as does the law curriculum that results in a J.D. (And conceiveably an LL.B., although I don’t know that any U.S. schools actually award them anymore.) However, as noted by Hadrian, entrance into a J.D. program requires that you already have a Bachelor’s degree; law school is a separate undertaking from college, and it’s an extra three years. Many folks who go to law school end up there after they’ve been out of college a while – I started law school 2 years after graduating college, while there were people in my class who had been out of college for decades and were doing law as a second career.

I’m not aware of anything analagous to the Barr.L. Muffin mentions. In the States, most every lawyer has a law degree from a law school, although in a few states it is possible to avoid law school if you apprentice in a law office for a period of time (e.g., five years).

We have LL.M. degrees too. There are basically two types – the first is as an advanced law degree taken by someone who already has a J.D. which offers a concentration (such as in tax or labor and employment law); these are typically brief programs of a year or two. Also, foreign lawyers who want to practice in the U.S. can sometimes qualify to do so by taking an LL.M. program and, typically, passing the Bar Exam.

We have LL.D.'s and Ph.D.'s in law here too, but they’re pretty rare because a J.D. will qualify you to teach or do academic research in the law, but a Ph.D. without a J.D. will not qualify you to practice law.

–Cliffy

I was going to take issue with chula’s statement, too, for these reasons. But I didn’t, because after thinking 'er over I assumed chula meant really practical nuts and bolts things like what happens when you get sued, what you need to know to buy a house, etc. That’s one reading of the OP’s original question of “decent working knowledge” of the law.

In fields like you mentioned, you learn applied skills like how to start an IV, how to figure out a bridge that can bear truck traffic, and so on. Yes, those are certainly “practical” too, but in a different sense. That’s information for future careers and jobs, not information for general living.

And I will point out that true nerds would use the exact usage you and Chula did–“disciplines” for the more liberal arts things, and “fields” for professional and applied areas. So, good nerdliness, I salute you.

I think those other disciplines are what set some lawyers apart. We used to use a lawyer for our microelectronics company that had a JD along with a BS and MS in electrical engineering. He actually understood what we did. I’ve encountered corporate attorneys with MBA (Masters in Business Administration) degrees. The undergrad degree can focus your specialty.

Here in Ontario it’s a remnant from back when the Law Society taught law course to supplement what students at law were learning in their articles/apprenticeship. The Law Society of Upper Canada has been setting the standards for lawyers since 1797, so when universities moved in and offered professional law programs (LL.B.), the Law Society was not willing to relinquish control. As it stands, lawyers in Ontario go through a few years of undergraduate studies, then three years of university law school for an LL.B., and then year and a half of articling / bar courses through the Law Society for a Barr.L. and a call to the bar. There are a few ways of being admitted to practice in Ontario that bypass one or more of the above, such as already being called in another similar jurisdiction, or being on the faculty of an Ontario law school.

The Barr.L. is seen by many as a delay to students who want to get on with their careers. For myself, I found it very valuable, for the materials were pretty much a review of what a lawyer actually needs to know to survive in practice. The Bar.L. covered the practical aspects that the LL.B. did not touch on. I was fortunate, though, for I and a few others were permitted to do the Bar.L. course work in our own community with the assistance of local lawyers, rather than move a thousand miles to one of the cities where the program was being taught in more formal circumstances. This let me continue working as a student at law while studying, and also was a terrific introduction to the lawyers in the local bar. All in all, it was enjoyable and got me off to a good start as a lawyer.

I am not certain what the Barr.L. program is these days. I just popped down the hall and asked an articling student, who says that that the system is changing such that instead of taking overhalf a dozen courses and writing exams on each, it will be changing to only a few courses (Real Estate, barristers Criminal, barrister’s Civil, and accounting), but still have exams without courses for Public Law, Family Law, Professional Responsibility, Estate Planning, and Business Law. It sound to me like we are moving more toward the American model and getting away from extensive post-LL.B. coursework.

In Ontario, the norm is to offer LL.B. degrees rather than J.D. degrees, regardless of what degrees one may have had prior to law school. The exception if the University of Toronto, which recently has switched over to J.D. degrees to make it more competitive with the USA.

That has led to some teasing of folks who have turned in their U. of T. LL.B. diplomas and processing fees for U. of T. J.D. diplomas. Some of us are playfully calling it the “box top degree” progam. I’m hoping that my school (University of Western Ontario) someday offers a similar “box top” trade in, because a few years ago (but after I had an LL.B.) I made a bet with a friend who is grunting through a Ph.D. in biiology that I could get a doctorate before her without having to actually do any work.

In Ontario it is possible to get into law school without holding an undergraduate degree, but one must have a couple of years’ worth of exceptional grades. The norm for folks applying to law school here is to hold an undergradute degree, and a very high proportion also hold a graduate degree.