Law School Discussion

cusc2011

1.  Tell me how can a phone call be binding on the Bar Examiners? There is no one person who makes up the rules.  I would not stake my career on what someone told me on the phone when there is a way to get it in writing. 

2.  You don't answer the question - the someone who graduated with a LLM did they have an online LLB without first qualifying in England?

You are making a lot of assumptions.  While you may well be right, I sure would not want to get an online foreign LLB and online LLM only to get into a hassle with the bar examiners because of what I was told on the phone years earlier.

Get it in writing dude, your phone call won't be worth anyhting if there is a problem later.

It is still questionnable if the the California Bar will accept the online LLB plus online US LLM without first qualifying in England.  The original poster was basing their theory on a phone conversation and not a filing for a ruling by Bar Examiners on the adequacy of the plan under  Rule 4.33. 

Good point; if you are not in California or plan to be, why go through Hell for a license you cannot use? Correspondence students especially need to learn on the job; passing the bar gives you a license to practice or commit malpractice.  Bragging rights? Most people hate lawyers and would rather do anything else than pay one. Don't expect any gratitude either from your clients. These days there is little civility among lawyers, many are ethically challenged and competition for business is cut throat. Too many underemployed lawyers with student loans to pay off thanks to the ABA law schools churning them out.

Unlike the US in which we cling to the ABA, guns, Bibles, gallons and inches, The Law Society supports alternative ways to qualify as a lawyer:

Apprenticeship route to the legal profession

10 January 2013

We have welcomed the news that the government has backed an apprenticeship route to the legal profession. We support the development and recognition of alternative routes as long as the quality of new entrants to the profession is maintained at the current high level.

Law Society president Lucy Scott-Moncrieff said:

'The Society supports the development and recognition of alternative routes, which can achieve the same standard for qualification.

'Alternative routes of entry into the legal profession are essential in order to enable new entrants to gain qualification through a modularised and work-based learning approach, since the costs of education and training through graduate routes continue to rise. Equality, diversity and social mobility are fundamental factors for the future of the profession. There are many eminent, senior and successful solicitors currently in practice who did not go to university, and this informs our own thinking currently about the various ways in which it should be possible to qualify as a solicitor.'

She added:

'This shows that alternative routes to qualification need not, and must not, undermine the overarching priority that required standards must be consistent across all routes to qualification.'

http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/stories/apprenticeship-route-to-the-legal-profession/

Except for California, online grads really do not have the right to be initially admitted anywhere in the US.  It has nothing do with ability as you note but everything to with the ABA stranglehold on law school standards. On the other hand England, makes little or no distinction between and online and traditional law degrees. The difference here is the ABA which is a malignant cancer on the practice of law.  We are well into the digital age but the idiots at the state bars and ABA seem unable to come up with simply multi state rules.