Law School Looking South
For some time there’s been a movement at Osgoode Hall Law School to change the degree awarded graduates from the LL.B. to the J.D. Recently the President of the Alumni Association reported that of the 500 or so alumni who responded to a survey on the matter, “approximately 90%” were in favour of the change, and that a vote by the current students found 75% of them in favour. (Note: Osgoode creates 300 alumni each year.) The issue now goes to the law school’s academic policy committee for consideration.
<rant>For what it’s worth, I’m agin’ it. The University of Toronto started this Canadian copycatting of the American puffery and now, sadly, others are joining in for fear of somehow being left behind in the greed stakes. The current law school experience, on both sides of the border, has (sadly) far more in common with high school than it does with graduate school, and to give its graduates the title of “doctor” is nearly shameful. A case of Gresham’s law, sort of, in which bad money drives out good. </rant>
It’s probably worth noting that the message from the Alumni office carefully didn’t provide a breakdown by year of the alumni who responded. 500 alumni is rather a small percetange of the living OHLS alumni who could have responded. Even if we include only those who graduated after the Great Migration, that’s at least 11,000. If we assume 10,000 are still “functional”, that’s 9,500 who had more important things to do.
Look at the humorous side. The SJD could be reclassified as the “Super JD”.
And, given the practical incompetence of most law school graduates, Junior Debutant(e) is an apt description.
Thanks for this Prof. Fodden. I graduated from Osgoode in 2005, happily with an LLB. I’ve gone on to work in human rights law, domestically and internationally – most recently in Uganda for the Uganda Law Society. I’m now doing graduate work at Oxford. Never have I once sensed that having an LLB was somehow holding me back. I haven’t missed an opportunity to date. On top of that, several of my colleagues in the private sector have gone on to work at international firms from NYC to Dubai.
Dean Monohan’s letter to the alumni suggested that Australia and Japan are making the move to JD’s. Since when were we comparing ourselves to Japanese or Australian grads? Besides, a quick check of Australian law schools would suggest otherwise. While some have switched to a JD format, it seems most have not. I wish Law School Deans would be honest and just come out and say it’s all about the U.S.
Aside from that, all other “evidence” in support of the JD switch seems anecdotal. Needless to say, I will not be switching from my LLB.
I’m sorry to say that I didn’t respond to the survey (one of the 9500 who couldn’t get to it), so perhaps it’s not really my place to say anything now. With all due respect and regard to the president of the alumni association, I’m more than content with my LL.B.; I’m proud of it. It’s a Bachelor of Laws. I have a Bachelor of Science, and I’m proud of that, too. But it wasn’t preparatory to the LL.B. such as to have made the LL.B. still anything more than a first degree in Laws.
The current law school experience, on both sides of the border, has (sadly) far more in common with high school than it does with graduate school
No offense, Simon, but it’s been a very, very long time since you’ve been in law school (let alone high school) and I can assure you that to one who has, that remark sounds excruciatingly fatuous. The very thing that the caricature of the withered old coot would say, just after how much tougher it was in his day and just before how he walked thirteen miles to school, and thirteen miles back, every day in four feet of snow.
Having been through both conventional graduate school and law school in the last ten years, I can assure you that while the academic rigor of law school could certainly improve (which has always been the case), law schools need not hang their collective heads in shame at wanting to recognize their programs as graduate in nature. Law school today has very little in common with undergraduate education.
These issues, the old sniping at the perceived incompetence of the young (how dare they have so little experience!) as much as any, were recognized by Langdell in his own arguments in developing the theory and practice of the J.D. curriculum.
and to give its graduates the title of “doctor” is nearly shameful.
I realize that there are divergent views on this, but in my view the J.D. does not confer the title “Doctor” and J.D. recipients should not use the title. Lawyers in particular should not (in my view) under any circumstances use the title “Doctor” unless they have a medical degree, not a research doctorate and certainly not a J.D., to avoid the obvious and constant public confusion.
(Full disclosure : I am a U of T law graduate. But I have not changed my LL.B., which I like just fine, to a J.D.)
Withered though I may be, Tybalt, I’ve “been in law school” very very recently in fact. My crack about high school has nothing to do with “how it was in my day” or any of that silliness — though things have not changed all that much since then: it has more to do with the “efficiencies” necessary to teach hundreds of students, such as regimentation, fixed program of study, lecturing to large groups and the relative lack of research and writing. Still a rant is a rant and I admit excess.
Enough with the degree envy, it is purely and simply a case of looking south; which unfortunately is a trend in Canada within Canadian Law Schools; starting with the two in T-dot, “cannot perceive ourselves falling behind, you know.”
One way to look at the situation is this.
Putting aside the health disciplines where “doctor” does not mean “somebody who is supposed to be very learned in the subject”, that’s exactly what it means everywhere else.
And that’s exactly what the “D” portion of “JD” can’t mean, so why use it at all?
Is there anybody out there who can validly claim that the mere acquisition of a bachelor- level law degree makes one very learned in anything. (In my case, it was pinball and table-shuffleboard, but that’s an exception, right?
I agree that it is silly to name a first law degree in this country a J.D. This was a fixation of the former dean of U of T, who had a great fascination with things American (to the point that he went off to join the senior administration at a US university). The biggest possible deal in his mind was to go work in the US, but he had such little confidence in American lawyers that he didn’t think they would understand a CV that had LL.B. on it, though it disclosed previous undergraduate (and often graduate) studies.
I don’t think U of T has all that much higher a number of graduates in American law firms than Canadian law schools that issue LL.B.s.
Besides, the logic fails in the U.S., since someone with a J.D. who gets to the next level is given an LL.M. How does that make sense? How can that be understood, except by someone who knows the system. And how can someone who knows the system not understand what an LL.B. is worth – which may vary according to country, just as a J.D. (and LL.B.) may vary in value according to the school, and even the student.