Talk:Juris Doctor/Archive 3

American Bar Association's website
Standford University School of Law website
University of Virginia Law School website (see article's History)
Concord School of Law website re Executive Juris Doctor

Post-Graduate?

Article says a JD is three years of post-graduate law study- and states that this is three years of undergraduate work - wouldn't that mean "post-graduate" should read "pre-graduate", post meaning after, sic, after graduation.

change "post-graduate" to "pre-graduate"?? or is it saying for ABA, 3 years undergraduate and 3 years law study (post graduate)?

The article is saying that it takes three years to earn a J.D. (3 years of post-graduate work), but that the ABA only requires 3 years of undergraduate work in order to be eligible to go to start post-graduate studies (not the 4 four years people usually do to earn a bachelor's degree and THEN go to law school). The article isn't clear here. I'll see what I can do.Gator1 19:27, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Accredited vs. Non-Accredited

The ABA minimum standard requires 3 years undergraduate study; however, AALS standards require a bachelor’s degree prior to admission and all reputable law schools in the United States subscribe to AALS standards. Non-accredited schools can award a J.D., or for that matter, a Ph.D. to anyone they choose, but these non-accredited degrees are without merit. In the United States the degrees of Ph.D., M.D., & J.D. are only conferred on those who have already completed a baccalaureate degree.

"Non-accredited" means not regionally accredited. The education laws of various states make it illegal to confer any degree with particular titles unless the degree-granting institution is authorized by the state's Department of Education to grant that degree. In other words, I can't open "Joe's Unaccredited Law School" and say the School issues a "Ph.D. in Law" because state laws don't authorize a Ph.D. in that particular field and the School is not authorized by state law to grant a Ph.D. This is for consumer protection, to prevent Joe from misleading consumers into thinking they are getting a genuine Ph.D.

Two of the requirements for regional accreditation are (1) the institution must be authorized by a state Department of Education to grant the degree and (2) the institution must meet the accrediting agency's criteria for minimum length of time in business, quality of faculty, etc.

It is not fair or valid to say that reputable schools are AALS approved. All reputable schools are ABA approved. Anything more is "icing on the cake".

The statement about M.D. and J.D.s only being awarded to holders of 4-year degrees is just plain wrong. M.D., J.D., DDS and DVM degrees all only require three years of undergraduate work. I found this out from a high school friend who wanted to be an orthodontist, like his father. He dropped out of high school after his junior year to go to college and dropped out of college after his junior year to go to dental school. He finished his specialty at the same time others were getting their basic DDS. Although a particular school may set higher entrance standards, those are school-specific, not requirements of "M.D. and J.D. programs in the U.S.".

RickReinckens 02:32, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

It is extremely rare in the US for an M.D. or J.D. to be awarded to anyone who has not first completed a bachelors degree.

--Coolcaesar 22:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

In the vast majority of cases the reason is that virtually no one is aware that a bachelor's degree is not required. As I mentioned, the only reason I know is that I found out from a friend whose father had a DDS degree. My law school was an AALS school and shortly before graduation they told us that although New York State and the ABA only required 3 years undergraduate, if anyone had not obtained a four-year degree the school could not grant the J.D. until the person got the bachelors.

RickReinckens 06:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

What's causing a lot of confusion here is that the bachelor's degree is not necessarily a 4-year degree. At many schools that operate on the unit system (including most University of California campuses), it is the number of units earned that counts towards graduation, not the number of years attended. Therefore, talented students who enter with substantial transfer credit earned from both community college evening courses and AP courses can earn a bachelor's degree within three years. I am speaking from personal experience, of course.

--Coolcaesar 22:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

No American college or university has a "4 year" requirement. It doesn't matter whether the school runs on a trimester or semester system, they all require a certain amount of "units". Normally, about 31 semester hours per year is required for a B.A. degree, which comes out to about 124 semester hours. A B.S. degree usually requires about 40 s.h. per year, which comes out to 160 s.h.

RickReinckens 06:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Also, several universities with medical schools, like Northwestern and Irvine, have programs where people can be accepted to an honors program straight out of high school and attend only three years of college, then go straight to four years of medical school. An honorary bachelor's degree is awarded, but the undergraduate coursework required of persons in such accelerated programs is usually somewhat different from those in the ordinary bachelor's degree programs offered at those schools. --Coolcaesar 22:05, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

None of this is really relevant. The various states set the educational requirements to practice medicine, dentistry, law, etc. The various states require only about 90 undergraduate semester hours for entrance to the corresponding professional-doctorate program, which is three years of undergraduate course work at the normal 30/31 s.h. per year rate.

Bar Association Membership vs. Admission to Bar

The statement that "[p]rior to the practice of law, a J.D. holder is required to be member of the bar association of the state in which he or she intends to practice" is not entirely accurate. One must be admitted to "the bar," i.e., one must pass the bar examination and be certified by the state's administrative body that oversees the practice of law, but that is not the same as being a member of the state's bar association. A bar association is a non-governmental group that advocates on behalf of attorneys and various law-related causes. There is the national American Bar Association, and state equivalents (e.g. the New York State Bar Association). But it is not always necessary to join such an association in order to practice law.

In some states, like Florida, an attorney must be a member of the state bar association to practice law in that state.

J.D. a doctorate of its own

Just want to say that if J.D. is first-professonal doctoral degree it is clearly not equalivent to Ph.D. but it nevertheless a doctor on its own name and category. There is a Ph.D. in law or LLD but they are just different degree altogether isn't it.

Thus, if it is unlikely that a lawyer calls him/herself a Doctor in the professional practice it doesn't mean that the J.D. degree they got isn't a doctoral degree.

U.S. Degrees in Law

The Juris Doctor or Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.), like the Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), is a professional doctorate (also called terminal doctorate). The Doctor of Juridical Science (S.J.D. or J.S.D.), and Doctor of Comparative Law (D.C.L.), are the research doctorate degrees conferred in the United States. In the U.S. the Legum Doctor (LL.D.) is usually only awarded as an honorary degree.

This is inaccurate. J.S.D. and S.J.D. are the same degree. "Doctor of Jurisprudence" is one of the two accepted translations for Juris Doctor (the other being Doctor of Law, not to be confused with Doctor of Laws, which is the translation of L.L.D.) The initials J.S.D. are usually translated Doctor of Juridical Science.

RickReinckens 03:06, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction!

In the U.S. there are academic degrees available at the baccalaureate level such as a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Legal Studies. Academic masters degrees in legal studies are available for those who have obtained a bachelor's degree but not a Juris Doctor (J.D.) such as the Master of Studies (M.S.), and the Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.).

Foreign lawyers seeking to practice in the U.S., who do not have a Juris Doctor (J.D.), often seek to obtain a Juris Master (J.M.), Master of Laws (LL.M.), Master of Comparative Law (M.C.L.), or a Master of Jurisprudence (M.J.).

Is law a graduate program?

US News & World Reports list law schools as graduate schools.

Kaplan lists law school as a graduate program: look under graduate programs.

To avoid the type of confusion you have with a graduate program after a graduate degree some schools simply use the term Post-Graduate. The reason that many schools simply call these post-J.D. degrees "graduate degrees" is to reflect the fact that these programs are available to foreign applicants without graduate degrees.

Here, here, here, & here you see lists of undergraduate and graduate programs, and like Berkeley they list the law school as a graduate program. All universities list law school as either a professional program or a graduate program. I can find no exceptions to this rule.

In the United States, professional degrees refer to graduate degrees that are specific to a particular vocation, or profession. Law school, medical school and architecture school are all examples of institutions where professional degrees can be earned. It is simply a fact that law schools in the United States are considered graduate programs, or if you like, graduate level professional programs. Some law schools and universities in the United States refer to the J.D. by the Latin, Juris Doctor; however, many use the English translation, Doctorate of Jurisprudence. The only level of degrees conferred by U.S. law schools are master and doctorate level degrees.

Proposing a four-way merge

Okay, we have WAY TOO MANY articles covering the same damned things and people are adding in way too much detail that is already covered elsewhere. For example, someone named Rick added in information on LL.M.'s and LL.D's that would have been more appropriate in Education of Lawyers in the United States. We need to get this mess straightened out once and for all.

To keep the redundancy from escalating out of control, I am proposing that the following four articles should be merged into a new article whose title would comply with the Manual of Style: Education of lawyers in the United States.

After this merge, then the existing articles would be turned into redirects.

Even better would be to merge in Attorney at Law to create a comprehensive Lawyers in the United States article encompassing admission, regulation and training. What does everyone else think? --Coolcaesar 07:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

The merger makes the problem worse, not better. Wikipedia guidelines say that an entire article should be around 55k. Merging these four articles, which are already long is the exact opposite.

I learned the hard way from creating a "mega" website that if you put too much information in one place people can't find what they want and it becomes useless. "Juris Doctor" is specifically about a particular degree--its history, etc.

I did not add the information on LLM's, LLD, etc. I merely added subsection titles to information that was already there. I separated the info about an LLM in Comparative Law because someone obviously not familiar with the system had said that JSD programs are popular with foreign lawyers who want to practice law in the U.S. and don't have a J.D. That is totally incorrect. Law professors are just about the only people who get JSD's and an LLM is required for a JSD so a foreign lawyer would have to get that and once s/he did, the JSD would be irrelevant.

Keep in mind that this is an encyclopedia for the general public, not a place for lawyers to dissect minutia. The general public doesn't understand that there is a difference between a Bachelor of Laws, Juris Doctor, an L.L.M., that an L.L.D./Doctor of Laws is an honorary degree, that a Bachelor of Legal Studies is a paralegal degree, etc. That is why a basic description of those other degrees is relevant in a Juris Doctor article.

Also, the issue of whether a Juris Doctor is equivalent to a Ph.D. is relevant to "Juris Doctor" but not "Admission to the Bar". The general public, including most businesses, think that a J.D. is not a doctorate. Although no university would claim that an M.D. is not a "terminal" degree, most of them have no qualms about saying that a J.D. is not a terminal degree in many fields.

However, for someone who wants to know "What do the letters 'J.D.' after this guy's name stand for?" or "This article says this guy has a 'Juris Doctor' degree. What field is that?", that person doesn't care about "admission to the bar". Similarly, "admission to the bar" is a lot more than getting a J.D. degree. Yes, there is overlap on these topics, but they should remain separate.

You are also ignoring the fact that more and more people are obtaining J.D. degrees--particularly as part of a dual-degree program--and not practicing law because they can make more money in another field such as business management, medicine, public administration, the media, etc.

Keep in mind that a four-way merger is pretty radical. If it is so necessary, how come no one else suggested anything like it previously?

RickReinckens 06:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, but the problem is that if you maintain separate articles with large sections of overlapping content, then people will keep adding information to one but not the other (especially if they are unaware of the other one). The result is a huge incoherent mess where it becomes impossible to synchronize the overlapping sections. This makes it much harder for a layperson to grasp the structure of a topic, because then they end up having to read dozens of mediocre articles to fully understand its nuances when one or two well-written ones should suffice. If a layperson really wanted to read lots of overlapping articles on all kinds of odd nuances, they would be going straight to the law reviews. Wikipedia is for those who want the concise, precise version of a topic.

The incoherent situation I just described is already the case with the large family of Freedom of speech articles (look at the long See also section in Freedom of speech). In particular, neither the United States section of the Freedom of Speech (International) article nor the article devoted to Freedom of speech in the United States provide a fully comprehensive, accurate, and well-balanced explanation of the topic. One has to read both and then try to put Humpty Dumpty together. Faced with this mess, most American laypersons would either give up or settle for an incomplete impression. And no Wikipedia editor, myself included, has the time to research the topic and rewrite both articles so that one contains a one-paragraph summary and the other is a balanced overview of all the major parts of American free speech law.

Thus, my point is that I do not want a similar mess to develop in the articles about American lawyers—who are probably a subject of broader interest and information about them should be accessible to a broad lay audience.--Coolcaesar 06:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)