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Monday, July 13, 2009

Law - Still more on "Concord Online Law School Places Second in National Moot Court Competition"

Updating this ILB entry from June 26th about Concord Law School, which is an online school. Kashmir Hill of Above the Law writes this afternoon: "Could There Be Accreditation for Distance Learning Law Schools in the Not-So Distant Future?" Among other things, he writes in the lengthy entry:

As we have mentioned before, the American Bar Association is in the midst of reviewing law school accreditation. Not only are they putting a focus on measuring student outcomes, they're reviewing Standard 306, which governs "distance education" a.k.a. online programs. From the ABA website:
Currently, there are not any law schools approved by the ABA that provide a J.D. degree completely via correspondence study.
The ABA Standards Review Committee plans to issue a new review of Standard 306 in Fall 2010.
Concord costs $9,500 per year. Recall the ILB entry from July 2nd headed "Passes NY bar, but denied character and fitness approval because of amount of outstanding student loan." The subject of that story had piled up law school debts of $400,000.

From the other side of the country, here is a story from The National Law Journal, by Leigh Jones, headed "8th Circuit: Attorney Can't Discharge $360,000 Student Loan Debt." A quote:

Jesperson, a 2000 graduate of Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., had amassed $363,218 in student loan principal, interest and collection costs when he filed for bankruptcy in 2005. According to the ruling, he worked as a judicial clerk on the island of Saipan after graduation, then as an attorney with Alaska Legal Services and later as a legal temporary worker with Kelly Services.
So that gives a range -- $9,500 / year ($28,500) to attend the online school vs. the (hopefully) outer limits of $400,000 for three years at a traditional school.

IU Bloomington's current tuition (but slated to go up by 25%) is about $20,000 per year; IU-Indy's is about the same but is only slated to go up about 9% -- see this ILB entry from July 9th.

The point? Virtual schooling is now accepted at the grade and high school levels. Higher education costs can be very high. It does not seem like much of a jump to be seriously looking at accrediting virtual law schools.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on July 13, 2009 03:17 PM
Posted to General Law Related