Law School, Super Fast

Law360 is reporting that Jacksonville’s Florida Coastal School of Law plans to offer a fast-track program in which students will earn their J.D.s in two years, not three, by taking more credits during the school year and by attending summer school.  Carolina Bolado, Fla. Law School Starts 2-Year JD Program, Law360 (March 8, 2013), http://www.law360.com/articles/422106/print?section=legalindustry. 

Having managed to be on the four-year plan (I attended Georgetown at night while working full-time during the day), I can’t help but be drawn to a deal cutting time on campus in half, sort of. Students still need to complete the same number of credits; they just won’t be taking their sweet time to get to the cap-and-gown part of the process. Florida Coastal’s plan to refund $10K in tuition to students who fail the bar exam the first time out makes the deal even more attractive. Unsuccessful students will get a stipend and additional preparation the second time around, Law360 reports.

Even if tuition remains the same, students will save on room and board via this do-it-faster approach. Committed ones will need to maintain their focus, but turning a three-year slog into two may well boost enrollment by students previously deterred by the lengthy time commitment. Whether a more time-intensive but shorter program will generate better lawyers remains to be seen, but law students may still appreciate the opportunity to earn a fast-track J.D.

—Lori Tripoli

Have a J.D. and a Dream? Persevere through Troubled Times

The news about the legal profession has been unseasonably grim lately, with reports of underemployed lawyers, unemployed law schoolgraduates, and a shrinking profession marked by increasing competition. For those fresh-faced young lawyers looking to save the world, think grand thoughts, and swagger through courthouses, marketplace realities might sometimes get them down. No matter what the profession or the times, it can be a long slog through some personal torment to achieve any goal. Remember wannabe doctors who had to go to the Caribbean to get their medical degrees because they couldn’t get admitted to a school in the United States? Well, those graduates are practicing today. How about the glut of teachers, or of M.B.A.s, in previous decades? Those folks are still around. Sure, legal competition is intense today. Even a top-tier law school grad may not be able to sashay into a big-firm job in Manhattan.

Reality getting you down? Think about a few others who endured career challenges: Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn’t land a job as a big-firm associate despite attending Harvard and Columbia. Thurgood Marshall couldn’t get admitted to his first-choice law school not because he wasn’t qualified but on account of his race. Those two were going up against far more than a crappy economy and still managed to land pretty high-caliber gigs as justices of the Supreme Court.

No one is going to hand you a career. There will be challenges in good times and bad. Some might be universal, others might be self-inflicted, many will likely be due to plain bad luck. But if you have a diploma and a dream, do something with it. Don’t let a few, or a hundred, closed doors deter you. Sure, you might have to take an alternative path. Your accomplishment might be that much greater for it.

—Lori Tripoli

The Versatility of a J.D.

I was heartened to see that the cover subject of the most recent edition of my law school’s alumni magazine is someone who pursued an alternative path. Savannah Guthrie, Georgetown University Law Center class of 2002, opted out of law review and big-firm life to pursue her broadcasting career. Now the co-anchor of the Today show, she still remembers her gig answering phones in the dean’s office while she was in school.

At a moment when law schools are under fire for, possibly, fudging the post-employment statistics of their graduates, and in an era when big law is facing some big struggles, remembering the versatility of a law degree seems especially opportune. Not everyone has to march from associate to partner or counsel. Nontraditional paths abound.

Some lawyers ditched their day jobs back when the economy was good to become investors and financial advisors on their own; they realized they could make a lot more money if they were doing more than the paperwork on any transaction. The analytical and decision-making skills learned during law school certainly bode well for leaders in the business world. Any number of legal marketing folks, both in-house and out-, have J.D.s in their pockets.

In D.C., the federal government beckons; plenty of policy makers don’t practice law but are admitted to the bar. Publishing, P.R., small business—any arena where the ability to research, reason, and think are especially useful—all provide viable avenues for a lawyer longing to leave the legal biz. The only time my J.D. held me back was when I was trying to break into publishing. Having moved from D.C. to New York, I was told by one interviewer that he worried about giving me a job for fear that I would stay just long enough to pass the bar in a new state. I’d been surprised at the time; back in Washington, plenty of people at the federal agency at which I had worked had law degrees and no intention of practicing. I persisted and became a writer and editor and have never begrudged my legal education. Habits I picked up during my own years at the Georgetown University Law Center, my reading and research skills, my tenacity, have only helped me over the years. J.D.s can help any number of people in any number of fields nowadays, too.

—Lori Tripoli