Online Law School Graduates Should Be Allowed To Practice In Any State

The Covid pandemic has affected almost every aspect of American life, and higher education is no exception. In particular, the effect on legal education has been remarkable, and may prove to be the catalyst for the American Bar Association (ABA) to provide accreditation to schools that offer online-only law degrees.

This is especially important since many states only allow graduates of ABA-accredited schools to be admitted to the state bar. While the ABA has granted “variations” for 10 hybrid programs – which combine online instruction with in-person learning – it hasn’t extended similar status to online-only law schools.

As a result, the ABA’s bias against fully online law schools has helped to create a system that is heavily biased against graduates of these popular, practical, and high-quality alternatives to brick-and-mortar law schools.

The pandemic produced small steps

In March 2020, when Covid was first declared as a pandemic, the Council of the ABA gave its 199 accredited law schools permission to offer emergency online courses because of pandemic concerns.

Even as the pandemic has abated, 140 law schools were allowed to continue online learning for Spring 2022. The ABA will allow up to one-third of the credit hours required for a Juris Doctor (JD) degree to be provided through distance education courses.

The list reads like a Who’s Who of U.S. law schools, starting with Ivy League institutions such as Harvard, Penn, and Cornell. It also includes some of the nation’s premier law schools (as ranked by U.S. News and World Report), including Stanford (#2), University of Chicago (#3), New York University (#7), Virginia (#8), Northwestern (#12), Georgetown (#13), Texas (#15), UCLA (#16), Washington University – St. Louis (#18); Emory (#19), George Washington University (#20 – tie), USC (#20 – tie), Alabama (#23), and Washington (#24).

That means they can now offer online courses that don’t affect their status or accreditation with the ABA.

An overall trend toward distance learning

When the Covid pandemic started, colleges shifted to remote learning out of necessity. However, Harvard Business Review points out that while the Covid pandemic created a rush to virtual education, it merely continued a trend that was already underway.

Students, educators, and government leaders have begun to debate the cost and value of higher education, including law school, as a matter of traditional classroom instruction versus virtual learning.

According to the Brookings Institution, virtual instruction has proved to be far more effective than many people anticipated:

·        Technological advances in networks and consumer devices have created higher quality avenues for communications.

·        Students and instructors are rapidly becoming proficient with real-time online communications and learning tools.

Brookings says the use of tools such as Zoom has improved the quality of live online instruction so that it now rivals – or even exceeds – the quality of an in-person class.

This comes as no surprise to Martin Pritikin, Dean and Vice President of Concord Law School at Purdue University Global.

Concord Law knows the power of online education

Long before the pandemic demonstrated the value of interactive online learning for higher education, Concord Law School was ahead of the curve.

Established in 1998, Concord Law School was the nation’s first fully online law school. In 2020, it was granted full accreditation by the State Bar of California. California is one of the few states to accredit law schools independently of the ABA, and graduates from those schools are accepted by many states for admission to the bar.

Martin has an extensive understanding of both online and traditional education. Among other achievements, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School after receiving his B.A. from USC.

He knows from experience that there’s nothing inferior about a degree from an online-only school like Concord Law, especially given the nature of today’s law practice.

“Having been a tenured professor and administrator at a brick-and-mortar law school, I know that Concord’s program rivals that of most traditional schools,” he said. “This shouldn't be surprising. After all, if you can function as a lawyer almost entirely online, why not train to be a lawyer online as well?”

ABA weighs the advantages of distance learning

The ABA is slowly beginning to recognize the advantages of distance learning.

At its Feb. 18 meeting, the ABA Council adopted several proposals to amend the distance learning rules to better define “Distance Education,” to clarify the rules that would apply without a variation, and to conform its terminology with Department of Education definitions. The changes, in addition to others approved at the meeting, now likely will go before the ABA House of Delegates in August for consideration.

Online learning vs. the “correspondence school”

Part of the bias against virtual learning may be the antiquated notion of a “correspondence school.” Students enrolled from any location, lessons and exercises were delivered to them, then sent back to the school to be graded.

There’s no comparison between those correspondence courses and today’s online higher education. However, the practical advantages are similar:

·        Accessibility, regardless of location or the ability to physically attend campus in person.

·        Affordability for students who can’t afford the cost of a brick-and-mortar institution.

·        Flexibility for students who have to work their class schedule around jobs or family duties.

Virtual learning creates an advantage for today’s students

Those three factors made a world of difference to attorney Nelson A. Locke, Esq. when he decided to pursue his law degree.

As a young man, Nelson served our country honorably during the Vietnam Era as a non-commissioned officer of the United States Marine Corps. After that, he also:

·        Served for 13 years as CEO and Chairman of Amstar Financial Services, a successful, publicly traded Residential Mortgage Lender. He developed and managed the entire public offering.

·        Spent 10 years as Legal and Compliance Officer at Value Financial Mortgage Services. The firm specialized in reverse mortgage banking, originating over 5,000 loans under his direction.

·        Has been a licensed mortgage loan originator and underwriter since 1991.

Because he found mortgage finance to be driven by compliance, and that much of what he did involved complicated federal laws, Nelson decided that a law degree was a logical next step in his career which focused on helping consumers.

While managing his mortgage banking firm full-time, he attended Concord Law School for 5 years, graduating in 2011. He founded his own successful practice in 2013 after passing two rigorous California Bar Exams. In addition, he was admitted to the federal bar in five different states.

He created a schedule at Concord that fit around his career; saved approximately $100,000 compared with a campus-based program; and was able to attend online from wherever he found himself at the moment.

“I was looking for a virtual law program that would fit my life and my needs, and Concord Law provided all of those advantages,” he said. “It’s an award-winning university with an outstanding reputation, and was the first to provide a high-quality legal education through an online program.”

Bringing Texas into the 21st Century

Nelson believes that everybody has a right to a quality education, and that learning online is just as valuable as sitting in a classroom.   

In 2022, Nelson founded the Virtual Education Is Real Education initiative, a movement that would compel the state of Texas to allow graduates from online schools to be admitted to the state bar. He has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern Division of Texas, asking that portions of the state’s regulations be declared unconstitutional and biased, and that they be considered unenforceable.

“Online law schools such as Concord can provide a rigorous education that produces skilled attorneys who should be allowed to practice anywhere in the U.S.,” Nelson said. “Given the fact that an online education compares favorably with ABA-accredited schools nationwide, it makes no sense for Texas to prohibit them from practicing within that jurisdiction.”

“When it comes to practicing law,” he added, “Concord graduates prove every single day that  “virtual education truly is real education.”