Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - Printable Version +- Online Degrees and CLEP and DSST Exam Prep Discussion (https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb) +-- Forum: Miscellaneous (https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Forum-Miscellaneous) +--- Forum: Off Topic (https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/Forum-Off-Topic) +--- Thread: Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School (/Thread-Found-1-500-TOTAL-At-own-pace-Law-School) |
Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - marianne202 - 03-12-2012 I'm wondering if you could do this program, get your bar license in CA then leapfrog into taking the bar in other states? I have a friend who has her bar license in several states, so I don't know if they offer reciprocity like they do for nursing degrees etc. Just a "loophole" thought. Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - dcan - 03-12-2012 THIS DEGREE WILL NOT LEAD TO A BAR LICENSE. There are several schools that are state-accredited to provide a path to the bar in California. Yes, if you go through one of them then you can sit for the bar in California, and after practicing for a few years there you can petition another state's bar if that state has a reciprocity agreement with California. There are a handful, not a lot though. This is a "loophole" like I referred to earlier, essentially getting a DL law degree and transferring into another state's bar. Whether you can actually pass the state bar is another question. In fact, the mandatory First Year Law Student Exam has a very low pass rate from these online DL state-accredited schools, and failing to pass (not sure how many tries you get) means you are thrown out and don't get credit for your entire first year. However, Mid-Atlantic is completely un-accredited and will give you nothing in regards to a "real" law degree. If you want that then after checking out a bunch I fall back to Northwestern California. Tuition is $237 a month for four years, under $15K, and is fully state accredited. To be honest, since this is something I would look into after a master's degree, I would probably just go with the NWCU option. At least it has some accreditation. Plus after thinking about it for a day or so I have a sneaking suspicion that Mid-Atlantic's module "tests" are merely "write an essay summarizing the textbook" and you pass. If that's the case then the degree really is a joke. I mean, why pay $1,500 and $525 for books (15 x $35 each) when you can get the exact same thing for just the $525? If nothing else, at least now you know what to read, so go through their "course list" and buy the books yourself and read them at your leisure. So maybe I got all excited over nothing. I thought this was a "steal of a deal" for others in this camp, but it may well just be a scam. BTW, a lot of lawyers will think any non-ABA school is a scam. Without ABA you will not really be hired at any big firm, but like I said you may be able to do limited private practice in some jurisdictions. That may be enough for some people. But again, a degree from Mid-Atlantic is not just non-ABA but non-anything and will be worthless if you want to practice law. That needs to be understood. Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - jt003806 - 03-12-2012 dcan Wrote:THIS DEGREE WILL NOT LEAD TO A BAR LICENSE. ...and worthless if you want to be a pooper scooper! Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - dcan - 03-13-2012 Like I said, their "curriculum" seems to simply be "read the outlines and summarize them in an essay" -- which yes means worthless. I guess if you are going to go DL then NWCU is the best at half the cost of Kaplan. But the best would still be in-residence. Too bad the tuition is $100,000. Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - Slobodon - 01-05-2017 ........... Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - Slobodon - 01-05-2017 After considering myriad options - and needing to distance - I'll start NWCU on Jan. 23 Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - jsd - 01-05-2017 Slobodon Wrote:After considering myriad options - and needing to distance - I'll start NWCU on Jan. 23 Out of curiosity, what do you plan on doing with this degree? Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - dfrecore - 01-05-2017 Here is info from their website: Question: "Is Northwestern California University accredited? If not, will I be eligible for Bar membership in any state other than California? Answer: Our school was approved in 1982 to issue degrees by the State of California Department of Education. It is presently registered with and regulated by the California State Bar. Our students are eligible to practice law in California if they successfully take and pass the California First-Year Law Students' Examination (the "Baby Bar") after the first year of our program and later, upon completion of the program, pass the California General Bar Exam. The school, as with all distance learning and correspondence schools, is not accredited by the American Bar Association (ABA) or by the by the California Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE). However, as mentioned above, it is registered with and regulated by the California Bar as an unaccredited law school and our students are eligible to practice law in California after passing the Baby Bar and General Bar Exam, and are eligible to practice in certain other states and the District of Columbia (Washington D.C.) pursuant to special eligibility rules." Unfortunately, the Baby Bar is supposed to be incredibly hard, with only a 20% pass rate. It's used to weed people out right off the bat (after their first year at a non-ABA-accredited law school). Then you do 2 more years of law school, then have to sit for the actual bar exam, which has a 60% pass rate. Yikes! But, I guess if you're wanting to see if you can hack it, doing it this way is a LOT cheaper than going the traditional route. $2850 for a year of the school, $600 for the Baby Bar exam, plus maybe $500 or so to get access to a Baby Bar prep program. If things don't work out, then you've spent a whopping $4000 to find that you don't like the law. And if you do like it, I imagine you can do another 2 years. Good luck! Let us know how it goes. Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - jsd - 01-05-2017 And you can only sit for the bar in California, known for being one of the hardest states to pass. And you can't just transfer it to another state. And on top of that, your figures are very generous. For all Bar takers who attempted the CA Bar after going to one of these CA unaccredited schools, only 12.5% passed in the most recent stats available (July 2016) (source: http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/4/documents/Statistics/JULY2016STATS120716_R.pdf) As far as the baby bar, only 18.2% people passed in the most recent (June 2016) (source: http://admissions.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/4/documents/Statistics/June2016fylxstats121216_R.pdf) There's really no reason to go to any of these schools. Even if you managed to pass the baby bar and bar exam and move to california, you're not going to get a decent job in the field. People from traditional ABA law schools with lower ranking cant even get decent law jobs. edit to add this quick rundown I did of the success rate of these programs from a previous thread, based on the passage rates a year or so ago (20% baby bar, 11% bar, 90% first-year drop out rate) jsd Wrote:let's say 1,000 students are in your cohort... 90% drop out within the first year, so we're already down to 100 students. Only 20% of those pass the baby bar, so 20 left. 11% of those will pass the real bar, or 2.2 Found: $1,500 (TOTAL) At-own-pace Law School - creditmonsoon - 01-05-2017 dcan Wrote:I know this is tangential to the normal "Big 3" discussions here, but this is in keeping with the "insanely low prices if you can put in the work" approach. This is a long post, I apologize, but I wanted to try and capture what I do know (not a whole lot, but enough) about these schools. hmm. Would receiving a JD allow me to one day be able to have a "foot in the door" if I choose to finish up with a bar exam in my state, or do I run the chance of my JD being seen as nothing but a diploma from a diploma mill? That's my only concern. Is it legit? |