[PreLaw Magazine]
Law school in your free time
Distance learning schools offer an alternative
Summer 2004
By Rebecca Luczycki
If you can't take three years full-time out of your life to attend law school and driving miles to attend evening classes after a busy day's work doesn't appeal to you, don't despair. There are a growing number of online law schools offering a chance to complete a J.D. from your own home, on your own time.
California is the only state currently accrediting distance-learning law schools -- none are yet accredited by the American Bar Association -- but you don't have to live there to enroll. In fact, students from across the country and even around the world are doing their J.D.s online.
"It's like the United Nations, and I often joke that we should have headsets in here [during orientation]," said Steven Carter, director of admissions for Abraham Lincoln University School of Law. "We have a special ops soldier in Kosovo and a real estate agent in New York. These are all people who are trying to better themselves, but it is not like a typical class at UCLA."
Carter's school, in Los Angeles, offers classroom sessions on evenings and weekends, as well as live online lectures. Students can sign up to take one or the other, or a combination.
He said online studies are especially useful for local students whose jobs require them to travel.
"The state accrediting agency requires that the education has to be uninterrupted for the first six months," he said. "This option ensures that."
Abraham Lincoln student Margaret Salah takes a combination of online and in-person classes. As a full-time middle school administrator, the option, and the price -- about 25 percent of traditional law school tuition -- appealed to her.
"The decision to attend Abraham Lincoln came after I had researched many options," she said. "I found that the traditional schools lacked the flexibility I needed, in order to perform well in both of these demanding tasks, running a middle school of 1,200 kids, and studying law. I attend class weekly, but when my middle school has events which demand my presence, I have the option of viewing the lecture on the Web."
But online schools are not without their pitfalls. Daniel Ng said tuition, relocation expenses, room and board, having to give up or cut back his film-editing career, and travel costs all added up to make traditional law school, even part-time, out of the question for him. Ng is enrolled in Lake Forest, Calif.-based British American University School of Law's distance-learning program, and he knows he misses out on part of the law school experience.
"The lack of classroom interaction with teachers and fellow students make this type of education a lonely experience," Ng said.
