Concord seems to be emerging as the Harvard/Yale of on-line law
schools in the USA. Even though ABA does not accredit on-line JD
courses, I believe the likes of Concord and Taft provides an
alternative to people like me who are unable to attend a bricks
and mortar school due to the geographical distance (I live in
Switzerland), schedule (full-time work) and cost.
ABA is run by dinosaurs. You can get an on-line LLB degree from
the UK (or any common law country) and be eligible for bar exams
in the US. Neither the ABA nor any other bodies have any issues
with the mode of instruction or eligibility.
With the absence of ABA approval, the responsibility of choosing
a genuine on-line law school lies on the applicant, so that they
don't invest time and money on diploma mills. Other than that,
ABA is almost defunct during the law education stage in my
opinion. The acid test is the bar exam. As long as any on-line
or correspondence schools bar exam pass rate follows the general
trend than they are good enough.
I would however like to see on-line schools offering trial
advocacy immersion workshops to bridge the gap due to the
on-line divide.
The schools I am considering -
Concord (part of Kaplan University, renound faculty, Concord
model may be eventually become industry standard)
William Howard Taft (they are $16000 cheaper, oldest school)
My tupence. Hope this helps
On 7/12/08, John wrote:
> On 7/12/08, Mary Ann wrote:
>> Does anyone have any comments on Concord?
>
>
> Concord is a very successful online school Mary Ann. You
> will not get socratic teaching, or have a professor ask you
> to brief a case in front of the class, or explain a legal
> theory, but you will be able to call your own hours for your
> own study time. They have canned video lectures that you
> watch at a time of your own choosing. And computerized
> modules to track your reading completion to keep you on
> pace. I highly considered Concord, and called many times
> about the program talking to their enrollment advisors and
> to the dean. I also called a Concord graduate and asked him
> about the program and how he liked it. You may want to do
> the same. The program has grown considerably as you can tell
> on the Cal Bar pass rate stats. However, I decided that
> interaction with a law professor is one of the hallmarks of
> getting a good legal education. If you cannot set aside a
> regular time to attend a class, Concord is not a bad way to
> go. It's more expensive than other online and pure
> correspondence programs, but you will have a large cohort in
> your class group. Note that you really dont interact with
> anyone, its mainly self study and meeting once a week for a
> online chat session with the instructor. The main goal of
> the school is to prep you for the BB and Cal bar exam, and
> based upon their pass rates they do a better job than most.
> Perhaps forming a study group would be advantageous to
> overcome this obsticle. I have an online study group at Cal
> SL, where we are able to speak and hear each other
> contemporaneously and go over the case reading and outlining
> for exam prep. We meet once a week. The setup is very
> useful. You might want to check to see what programs are
> there to interact with other students, I think they encourage
> study groups, but mainly let the students organize for
> themselves outside the school such as with a yahoo group
> account. Going it alone in a law program is a rough road,
> but its done all the time so just have to be extremely
> disciplined to keep on pace. Since my online class is
> totally interactive, we get to talk to each other and
> encourage each other through the rough spots and before and
> after exams, and complain about how we missed certain
> elements on the exam. If you were at Concord, where you dont
> get to talk to anybody, I would find a study buddy or a few
> of them just to interact about the program for encouragement
> and feedback.
>
> Here is a link to a successful Taft student talking about
> what it takes to complete a correspondence JD program and
> passing the bar:
>
> http://www.asis.com/users/edenson/lawstudy.html
>
> Check it out. Its a little old but still absolutely relevant
> for any correspondence student. I even use it to guide my
> outlining and memorization technique.
>
> John
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