Juris Doctor

Juris Doctor (J.D.) is a first degree in law offered by universities in a number of countries, most notably the United States. It is considered a professional degree as one of the main purposes of the degree is to provide the academic training for those who wish to become lawyers.

In the U.S., the J.D. is a professional doctorate awarded by American law schools and is a requirement for admission to the bar in almost all of America's 55 jurisdictions. It replaced the Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree that had previously been the standard degree for those seeking to practice law. Some U.S. law schools award the J.D. as "Doctor of Jurisprudence" or "Doctor of Law" degrees; however, those degrees are not to be confused with D. Jur. (Doctor of Jurisprudence) and LL.D. (Doctor of Laws) degrees that are conferred by various universities as graduate research degrees or honorary degrees.

While universities in other jurisdictions (other than the U.S.) whose legal systems are based on the common law generally still award the LL.B. degree as the basic professional law degree, some law schools in Canada, Hong Kong, and Australia have changed their LL.B. programs to Juris Doctor programs. The J.D. degree is also being awarded in Japan as of 2004.

Australia's University of Melbourne offers both first-entry and second-entry first degrees in law: the LL.B. is offered as a four year program for secondary school graduates, while the Juris Doctor is offered as a two year (6-trimester) program for "mature graduates with a good degree in a discipline other than law and significant employment experience, and for lawyers who have a civil law degree". Course Overview: Juris Doctor Australia - University of Melbourne

The American J.D.

Prerequisites

In most programs, as a condition of admission to a J.D., applicants must have obtained a baccalaureate degree. Applicants need a 3.0 GPA, or "B" grade average, and score at or above the seventieth percentile on the LSAT for admission into a typical program. These requirements vary widely, however, and many law schools heavily consider other factors such as life experiences, work history, undergraduate extracurricular activities, and writing ability in addition to grades and LSAT scores when determining whether to admit an applicant. No particular undergraduate major or course of study is required for admission, and many law schools prefer that students arrive as a tabula rasa as far as legal subjects and preconceptions are concerned. While actual standards are left to individual institutions, most law schools that wish to be professionally accredited by the American Bar Association require a bachelor's degreeStandards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 502(a), American Bar Association. Retrieved July 3, 2006. and an admission examStandards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 503, American Bar Association. Retrieved July 3, 2006. (the LSAT remains the de facto standard exam) as a condition of admission.

Curriculum

The curriculum usually involves no less than six semesters or nine quarters (formerly measured as three academic years, excluding summers), and many programs place explicit limits on the minimum amount of time that a student must spend in the program. American post-baccalaureate degree programs, including the J.D., have an informal "industry standard" of requiring that post-graduate programs be completed in no more than six calendar years (inclusive of summers, leaves of absence, etc). The majority of American law students complete the J.D. in three years of full-time enrollment, though an increasing number are doing four-year programs and night schools. Diversity in student population has become a common goal among law school admission boards, and recruiting non-traditional students with real world experience is often difficult as few professionals are willing to abandon careers for a full-time day program. Night school is an attractive option for such students, and the longer program duration (4-5 years for a part-time program, depending on summer coursework) reduces the annual cost outlay.

The American J.D. is a professional doctorate, but some law schools have introduced "integrated", "honors lawyering", and certification programs which include research components. Certificates in public interest law, environmental law, intellectual property litigation, international law, and employment law have become commonplace in American law schools. These programs generally involve a specific curriculum and often a brief thesis, terminal project, or internship to qualify for certification. Some programs also offer joint degree programs, such as a J.D./MBA, a J.D./MA, or J.D./MS. Louisiana State University bestows on its graduates a combined J.D. (Juris Doctor) /B.C.L. (Bachelor of Civil Law) due to the Louisiana civil law components in the program and the additional (i.e., seventh) semester of study.

Utility

Generally speaking, graduation from an ABA-accredited law school satisfies the academic educational requirements for admission to practice law. Some states accept only a degree from an ABA-accredited school. Other states will accept foreign legal education, with or without subsequent American legal education, but typically requiring the foreign degree was earned in a country where the basic law is the common law of England. A few states – California and New York among them – do not require a law degree for admission to practice as an attorney. California, for example, will admit students to the bar exam from non-ABA-approved law schools, including correspondence and "on-line" law schools (such as Concord Law School); however, those students are required to take an additional examination after their first year of law school in order to be eligible to take the bar exam after graduation. In addition, Washington has recently enacted additional, post-Bar Exam educational requirements.

Comparisons to the LL.B.

The Bachelor of Laws degree (LL.B.), the most common law degree for qualification as a barrister and/or solicitor in common law countries (e.g., the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, etc.), is a usually three- or four-year undergraduate degree.

The lone exceptions within the Commonwealth are Canada ,India and Australia, where the LL.B. – although still an undergraduate degree – is typically offered as a second-entry bachelor's degree, not as a first-entry bachelor's degree.

For entry into common law LL.B. programs, Canadian and Indian universities require either a first bachelor's degree, or three (sometimes two) years of undergraduate studies towards the first bachelor's degree. The University of Toronto, however, strongly advises prospective students to have a four-year bachelor's degree before admission to its law school, and offers a J.D. rather than an LL.B. For entry into bachelor's degree programs (LL.B., B.C.L., or LL.L.) in Quebec civil law, universities in Quebec and the University of Ottawa generally require a CEGEP diploma. However, now in India a system of law schools has developed which offer a first-entry bachelor's degree in law which is an integration of LL.B. with another bachelor's degree mostly that in Arts. The pioneer in this regard being the National Law School of India University at Bangalore.

Australian universities offer three methods of entry to the LLB. If a student has exceptional secondary school marks, they are admitted to a heavily overloaded, joint degree programme, where a B.A. (or B.Sc. or Bachelor of Business) and an LL.B. are taught concurrently over 5 to 6 years. An Australian student may also transfer into a four year LL.B. programme after a minimum of 1 year's study of any other discipline. Finally, the LL.B. is taught as an American-style, three year postgraduate qualification.

History

See also Doctor (title).

In the common law tradition in the United States and Britain, law originally was learned by apprenticeship. Someone from a family seeking a profession would apprentice with a local lawyer. After several years, the lawyer would file a motion with a local court for admission of the apprentice to the bar and the court would enter an order admitting the apprentice as an attorney.

After the concept of law as an elite profession collapsed during the era of Andrew Jackson,Anton-Hermann Chroust, The Rise of the Legal Profession in America, Volume 2: The Revolution and the Post-Revolutionary Era (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p.286. This era is commonly referred to as the "deprofessionalization" of the American legal profession. a typical law student would usually attend a short undergraduate program – usually of two years or less in length – which culminated in a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) degree. Most lawyers then underwent a brief oral examination in the chambers of a local judge, and became members of the bar.

The creation of the modern Juris Doctor program is largely credited to Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895. Langdell dedicated his life to reforming legal education in the United States; the historian Robert Stevens wrote that "it was Langdell's goal to turn the legal profession into a university educated one — and not at the undergraduate level, but through a three-year post baccalaureate degree."Robert Stevens, "Two Cheers For 1870: The American Law School," in Law in American History, edd Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971), p.427. He was generally successful in remaking most American law schools in Harvard's mold, since they often drew their faculty from Harvard. First, Harvard extended its LL.B. program from 18 months to two years in 1871, and then to three years in 1899. Then, in 1896, Harvard was the first law school to officially require an undergraduate degree as a prerequisite to admission (although the rule was not strictly enforced until 1909). By 1921, the same rule had been adopted by the law schools at Columbia, Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve, Stanford, and Yale. Still, although the entry-level law program was revamped as a graduate program, the degree conferred continued to be called an LL.B.

However, upon its opening in 1906, the University of Chicacgo chose to award the Juris Doctor rather than the Bachelor of Laws. Some schools started conferring the Juris Doctor as a Latin honor for students with high grades. Eventually, the disparate treatment prompted schools to abandon the distinction and call all degrees conferred a doctorate. Yale Law School was the last to rename the degree-it conferred the LL.B. until 1971.

Length of study

The course of study usually takes three years for full-time students and four years for part-time students. The ABA previously required at least 36 and no more than 84 months of study for a school to receive approval. In 2005, the ABA amended the rules to permit as few as 24 months of study; however the total amount of instruction required was unchanged.Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 304(c), American Bar Association. Retrieved July 3, 2006. Interestingly, the ABA does not mandate a specific number of credit hours for graduation. Instead, it mandates the number of minutes of instruction each student must receive. Currently, schools with ABA accreditation must require that graduating students have completed 58,000 minutes of instruction time during their course of study. According to the ABA, this typically translates to 83 semester hours or 129 quarter hours.Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 304(b), American Bar Association. Retrieved July 3, 2006.

Titles

Licensed attorneys in the United States may append a variety of titles to their names, most of which are intended to convey that the person is licensed to practice law in at least one jurisdiction. "Attorney", "attorney-at-law", "esquire" ("Esq."), "lawyer", "J.D." are all generally acceptable titles that an attorney may use. However, "J.D." may be used by anyone who has received the Juris Doctor dgreee from from a law school, regardless of whether or not licensed to practice law. Those who are not admitted to practice law, but nonetheless represent or imply they are an attorney, may be subject to penalties for the unauthorized practice of law or impersonating a lawyer, both of which are criminal offenses in many jurisdictions.

While the Juris Doctor is a professional doctorate, most attorneys do not use the title "Doctor".

Comparison with other degrees

A Juris Doctor is considered a first professional degree or professional doctorate. In the United States, a professional degree is a type of postgraduate degree that is specific to a particular vocation, such as law, medicine, or theology. The J.D. is such a degree because it is a required qualification for its holder to become an attorney.

Though the J.D. is the only degree required for the practice of law, further degrees in jurisprudence may be earned. These are the LL.M. (Master of Laws) and the J.S.D. (Doctor of Juridical Science, sometimes abbreviated as S.J.D). The LL.M. generally focuses on a specific aspect of law, such as tax law; the J.S.D. is similar in spirit to the Ph.D. and is intended for would-be academics rather than practitioners.

A J.D. program requires three years of post-baccalaureate course work with any B.A. degree as a prerequisite; it does not typically require academic (vice legal) research. By comparison, an M.D. requires four years of post-baccalaureate course work (usually including at least one summer session) with a B.A. degree and certain required undergraduate courses; it does not typically require individual research. A Ph.D. typically requires five or more years of post-baccalaureate course work with related B.A. and M.A. degrees as prerequisites, and requires significant original research that is of publishable quality.

Although law students do not complete a thesis, there is some research training in law school. Most American law schools require students to undergo a year-long legal research and writing program. Also, many American law schools require all students to complete a substantial research paper, of publishable quality, in order to obtain the J.D. degree; the ABA makes this a requirement for accreditation.Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 302(a)(3), American Bar Association. Retrieved July 3, 2006. Finally, the scholarly publications in the field of law – unlike in other fields – are edited and published by J.D. students rather than professors. Being a member of one of these publications requires the writing of a student "note", which is comparable to an intermediate-length scholarly article in any other field.

One of the generally-accepted definitions of a doctoral degree is that its holder must be capable of performing independent research in his or her field. Law schools prepare their graduates to perform legal research, as practicing attorneys must be able to do so as an important part of their jobs, regardless of which degree is awarded. Note that the term research in the context of legal education refers not to the generation of new knowledge, but the discovery and analysis of jurisprudence and statute laws.

Traditionally the M.D. and Ph.D. have been considered comparable to one another as doctoral degreesNote that Chapter I of Title 8 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York, Section 3.47. Requirements for Earned Degrees and Section 3.50. Registered Degrees contradicts this claim., while the status of the J.D. has been the subject of discussion. It is considered by some to be a doctoral degree, and by some to be on the order of a professional master's degree (like the three-year M.Arch. degree). In some cases, university presidents (or would-be presidents) holding a J.D. as their highest degree have been criticized for their lack of a terminal doctorate; others feel that such a criticism is unfounded.

There is no Ph.D. in law in the United States. In the U.S., the professional degree in law is the Juris Doctor, and the academic doctorate in law is the Doctor of Juridical Science. In other common-law jurisdictions it is the LLD (which U.S. institutions traditionally award only as an honorary degree). A Juris Doctor is all that is required to teach at an American law school, although many law professors hold LL.M. degrees in their area of specialization. Universities in some countries outside the U.S. offer a Ph.D. in law (e.g., University of British Columbia in Canada and Cambridge University[http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/courses/ and University of London in the United Kingdom).

Other law degrees in the United States

Below the J.D.: paraprofessional degrees

Some schools, such as Adelphi University, offer paraprofessional degrees at either the undergraduate or graduate level, such as a Bachelor of Legal Studies or a Master of Legal Studies. A Bachelor of Legal Studies degree is not equivalent to a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), and paraprofessional degrees are not considered to be law degrees. They do not satisfy the academic requirements for admission to practice law. Holders of these degrees often are employed as paralegals or in a law-related field such as insurance, trust companies, or banking.
Executive J.D. See Executive Juris Doctor (degree).

Above the J.D.: post-professional degrees

Master of Laws (LL.M.) is a post-Juris Doctor degree or post-LL.B. degree, usually in a specialized area such as tax law, intellectual property law, international law, or advanced tort law similar to post-professional doctorate programs at the master's level found in dentistry and veterinary medicine; such programs accept graduates of U.S. law schools and often, graduates of non-U.S. law schools. As well, some U.S. law schools offer an LL.M. in comparative law for graduates of non-U.S. law schools; this will meet the educational requirements for admission to the bar in some states, notably New York. The comparative law program generally consists of twenty-four semester hours of courses surveying U.S. law, because the foreign law graduates are expected to be fluent in English and to understand legal reasoning and the main concepts of tort, contract, property, procedure, and other major areas of law.
Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) is a post-Juris Doctor degree now only awarded as an honorary degree in the United States, although in Canada and most other common-law jurisdictions it can still be earned after the LL.M. While the J.D. is referred to as the Doctor of Jurisprudence, the LL.D. is referred to as the Doctor of Laws.
Doctor of Juridical Science (J.S.D.), sometimes also awarded as Doctor of the Science of Law, is the terminal degree in law, i.e., the highest degree in the discipline, typically earned by those wishing to pursue academics rather than practice as an attorney. Unlike a J.D., a J.S.D. program includes a doctoral dissertation and other features common to other terminal doctorates such as a Ph.D. Generally, the only people who seek a J.S.D. are professors at law schools that require that degree for tenure, though the degree is not a prerequisite to entry into legal academia.

References

Chapter I of Title 8 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations of the State of New York, Section 3.47. Requirements for Earned Degrees and Section 3.50. Registered Degrees

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