how do I get a cheap law degree

May 23, 2009 7:33 AM

Where can I get a cheap law degree? And should I?

Is there a way I can earn a law degree cheaply, either part-time or online, and have it still be a "legitimate" law degree (e.g. an accredited university)? I don't care about prestige, but I want to be able to actually learn the law.

I want to earn it in my spare time, and I don't care if it won't be from a great school and I won't have a great GPA.

That said, if I pass the bar after earning the degree, is that all most people would care about. In other words, does passing the bar supercede the school & performance, when being evaluated by other people?

Note: I am not planning to go into a legal career. I'd like to continue working in business, but be able to bring the JD perspective to bear in appropriate situations.

posted by nyc_consultant to education (18 comments total)

What's your academic background like? Both Brooklyn Law and Temple, in Philly, offered me full or nearly-full scholarships for their part-time programs.

You just want to make sure anything you pursue is ABA-accredited, because that is usually a requirement to be admitted to the bar, even if you pass the actual bar exam.
posted by bunnycup at 7:38 AM on May 23

A friend of mine looked into CUNY some years ago. But no, passing the bar does not supersede other factors, such as performance (GPA, etc) and which law school you granted the degree.
posted by dilettante at 7:38 AM on May 23

Also look at New York Law School.

Both NYLS and Brooklyn Law School are rather expensive, though.
posted by dfriedman at 7:48 AM on May 23

I'd like to continue working in business, but be able to bring the JD perspective to bear in appropriate situations.

Speaking as a JD candidate, there is no "JD perspective" conferred by law school that is significantly different from the concerns of a business person that has done some introductory legal reading that bears on the area in question. Real legal knowledge comes from practicing law. I would think that the absence of a classroom setting, as you would find with an online degree, would further diminish the value of whatever perspective improvements law school might give you.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:57 AM on May 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

But no, passing the bar does not supersede other factors, such as performance (GPA, etc) and which law school you granted the degree.

This blanket statement is not true.

In a "retail" practice, where you are working in a small firm with a lot of client contact, where you went to law school and what your GPA was will be of virtually no importance.

In a big-firm type practice, where you have virtually no client contact and the main people you have to impress are partners, law school and GPA are paramount (at least to get your foot in the door).

What nyc_consultant is proposing is neither retail nor big firm, but a desire to learn about law, pass the bar, and bring his legal knowledge to the table in his business career. For that purpose, an online law school such as Concord Law School (which qualifies you to take the California Bar---which is the hardest bar exam in the country---and upon passing the California Bar, probably admission to the federal bar in your own state) ought to be fine.
posted by jayder at 8:00 AM on May 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

Inspector.Gadget wrote: Speaking as a JD candidate, there is no "JD perspective" conferred by law school that is significantly different from the concerns of a business person that has done some introductory legal reading that bears on the area in question. Real legal knowledge comes from practicing law.

This is very true. Having a law degree and even a law license doesn't really give you a lawyer's perspective. Until you've been in the trenches, practicing law, you would never be much more than a dabbler with an extremely superficial knowledge.
posted by jayder at 8:03 AM on May 23

Having a JD is a benefit to many business people. Learning to think like a lawyer is valuable to many business people. Having that on one's resume is also sometimes valuable. For a legal career having a degree from a name school carries much greater weight than a relatively unknown school. In business the distinction is far less. Nevertheless, you must ask yourself if you are not going to practice law whether the work required to get the degree, plus the expense both in real dollars and opportunity lost, provides sufficient benefit. Unless you go to Yale, and even there, a law degree is not like a philosophy degree. It is nuts and bolts training, more on what the law is and some policy. Will that be of sufficient interest, especially if you are never really going to use the rules of evidence etc.? If you are in NYC there are tons of night school options. An MBA might be more practical, but a legal education is not without benefit in business.
posted by caddis at 8:26 AM on May 23 [2 favorites has favorites]

In a "retail" practice, where you are working in a small firm with a lot of client contact, where you went to law school and what your GPA was will be of virtually no importance.

Maybe I should have been more precise: when you go to find your first job, your GPA and class rank matter, to itty-bitty firms and HugeMegaLaw ones. They all asked, or at least they did when I was looking.
posted by dilettante at 8:30 AM on May 23

In other words, does passing the bar supercede the school & performance, when being evaluated by other people?

It depends on whether those other people are lawyers or not, or know/work with lawyers. The average Joe probably doesn't even know that University of Chicago has a law school, and you may be better off with a local school that they will recognize the name of. OTOH, lawyer hiring by firms is based solely on school and performance -- new-hires haven't passed the bar, and anyone else is assumed to have passed already.
posted by smackfu at 9:01 AM on May 23

If you don't want to practice law - going to law school is a terrible idea. It'll be a waste of your time and money. You won't really learn that much, that you couldn't learn for free by picking up a book. Check out the Nutshell series on the topics you're interested in.

Lots of people who don't go to law school seem to think that a JD is a versatile degree that allows you the freedom to do many things. It is not. It allows you to be a lawyer. And it doesn't even train you to do that. Law school teaches you to "think like a lawyer" what ever that means. As a recent law school graduate, I can tell you, I don't feel any more prepared to do anything than I did before I entered law school and the only new form of thinking I've picked up is thinking that law school is tedious and a waste of time. But I want to be a lawyer, so I've gotta jump through the hoops; you do not.

If you don't want to be a lawyer - don't go to law school! Telling random non-lawyers that you have a J.D. might be impressive on paper. Telling lawyers you have a J.D. from some no-name school and that you never practiced (and don't want to practice) will cause them to think, why did he go to law school?

Go get an MBA or a Masters degree in something useful. They'll teach how to think about and analyze problems and will be much more applicable to your career.
posted by Arbac at 9:29 AM on May 23 [7 favorites has favorites]

Telling random non-lawyers that you have a J.D. might be impressive on paper.

Or might hurt you. A lot of people have a very negative view of lawyers.
posted by smackfu at 9:50 AM on May 23

Almost all of the law schools in the NYC area, regardless of prestige are really expensive, probably because of the high overhead of operating in the city. If you did want to go to a school with a good reputation, Fordham has one of the top part-time (night) law programs in the country. However, I wouldn't bother going there if I didn't want to actually work in law.
posted by ishotjr at 10:03 AM on May 23

Wow I was thinking about doing the same thing, getting a JD to improve my knowledge of contract law and such, only to keep coming back to conclusion that law school is too intense and too expensive if you have no aspirations to be a lawyer. In my undergrad life the two single classes I consider the most important happened to be contract law I and II, which according to law school friends actually covered a lot.

Law in a Nutshell is the way to go? Any other recommendations? Centered on contracting and design build law?
posted by geoff. at 10:31 AM on May 23

When I audited a law seminar at Columbia just for the hell of it, I picked up some BAR/BRI books at a thrift store and learned quite a bit. E-bay has some fantastic deals on PMBR Law Bar Review CDs if you're interested in teaching yourself.

I also scored literally thousands of dollars' worth of discarded books at the end of the semester. The next time you're around a campus, keep your eyes open!
posted by aquafortis at 12:02 PM on May 23

Or might hurt you. A lot of people have a very negative view of lawyers.

Plus you'll be "overqualified" (spit) for lots of other jobs if you mention you have a JD.
posted by dilettante at 12:40 PM on May 23 [1 favorite has favorites]

Law in a Nutshell is the way to go? Any other recommendations? Centered on contracting and design build law?

This book was pretty much an essential read for law students studying contracts back when I was in school, and it's very much readable for the non-law student to boot.
posted by gyc at 2:46 PM on May 23

Great perspective, thanks!
posted by nyc_consultant at 7:14 AM on May 24

I've seen multiple occasions when the law degree made the sale for a job interview... candidates that otherwise would not have been competitive won.

Two were non-profits; one environmental advocacy outfit and another a land conservancy outfit in the Southeast.

The two richest men I have dealt with in my professional career were both non-lawyer JDs. (One had a Havard MBA and NYU law degree. The other a Wake Forest BA and a JD.)

As an MBA (from a mediocre school) with 35 or so years in the field, I can attest that extra letters confer competitive advantage, if for no other reason that they show an ability to make a plan and stick with it through to completion; the same thing that is THE key discriminant in a 4-year degree versus 'only one semester to go before I dropped out'.

Generally, I'd opt for more education than less. Brand name increases the value. To me, (as a former employer) anything on-line automatically subracts 50 points. Anything top tier automatically adds maybe 20. Anything brick-and-mortar with real professors, attendance requirements, focused study is a plus. Two year versus 4-year loses, generally as a 4 year project is harder than a 2 year project when judged purely by the effort, planning and persistence required. These are just my biases, of course, but I'd bet they are widespread. An on-line JD and a California or NY bar would get a definite checkmark.

All of the above I'd toss out in favor of job-specific experience with a track record of consistent progress and success. (My self-taught mechanical engineer late father-in-law had 200 patents. I'd wager his skills were better than a Georgia Tech ME fresh out of the program, for instance.)


Law is something ALL business people get to experience up close eventually, usually in small pieces. Hence, law smarts are generally a good thing to have. They are good to have to increase your personal value as a CITIZEN, too. Self-study in law with focus on a specific issue might be good, but a thorough understanding of how law is structured, how the courts work, contracts, property, litigation, patent law / intellectual property, informs focused and situation-specific law study. Otherwise, it's like claiming engineer status because you know Ohm's law.

What's needed methinks is an MBA with a concentration on business law. I have no idea if such a beast breathes, though.
posted by FauxScot at 7:59 AM on May 24 [1 favorite has favorites]