Get A Law Degree Online

Every day we see ads for online college degrees on television, in magazines and on billboards. While some of the ads are rather obviously for fly-by-night, diploma-mill schools, others appear to be reputable, but little known schools. But even the local four year colleges and technical schools are advertising online degrees, or, at least, online classes. The question then becomes, can you really get an online law degree? If you can, what is that degree worth?

The first thing to understand is that having a law degree does not make you a lawyer. Every state in the United States requires you to pass a rather extensive test on your knowledge and understanding of the law called a Bar Exam. It is only after you pass your State Bar Exam that you can legally offer your services as a lawyer for pay. Only after passing the Bar Exam do you become licensed to practice law in that state. So that means that a diploma-mill law degree will not make you a lawyer.

Neither does getting a law degree give you an automatic pass on the Bar Exam. Every year there are Ivy League Law School graduates that fail the Bar Exam; not many and they usually pass it the second time, but always some. The reason is that these were the students who did just what was necessary to get by and only remembered things long enough to pass an end of class exam. So, an expensive law school education does not guarantee a license to practice law. Only hard work and lots of studying will give you the foundation you need to pass the Bar Exam.

The last thing to consider before looking into an online law school is the diploma effect. Generally speaking the only employer that actually looks at a diploma is the first employer after you graduate, after that employers are more interested in what you did at your last job. That is, if you are looking at a big law firm in a relatively large city. If you are going into a politically important law firm, a diploma from a prestigious school is important and an online law school will probably not fill the bill. Or, if you are going into private practice on your own, the no-name online law school diploma hanging on your wall might not give the proper first impression to new clients.

If, after taking these things into consideration, you still want to attend an online law school, there are some things you need to check out about your potential alma mater. First you need to insure that the school is accredited by a nationally recognized organization. If the name of the accreditation organization is not readily available in the school’s literature, you might begin to suspect that it is a diploma-mill school. Once you do have the name, check the organization out online. Look at what other law schools receive accreditation from that organization.

The next thing to check out is the access that you will have to a law library. A major part of any law school education is learning how to find precedents, or earlier cases where the decision has an impact on your case. If you cannot do that research online, there must be someplace that you can physically go to to go through the old law books. An online law dictionary will not suffice. There must be access to law books, the actual records of court decisions from years past. While modern case law is available on line, most state and municipal decisions more than twenty or thirty years old is only available in bound volumes.

If the school checks out and you really want to go to an online school, do not expect the work to be easy. One of the things that make law school bearable is the ability to share the research work load with your fellow students. This combined with the chance to discuss law with your fellow students, to be totally immersed in the study of law, makes it easier to develop the thought processes necessary for passing the bar exam. Doing it on your own may be more difficult than necessary.