“The Claw chooses who will go and who will stay.” — Alien #2, Toy Story
For many years my wife Adella has talked about how she wants to go to law school. This is an interesting situation, because we're in the U.S. for now but ultimately we plan to return permanently to Dominica, in the Caribbean. That means she needs to do a law program that would allow her to practice law there, but it also has to allow her to practice law here at least for a while.
The problem is that because of our family schedule, distance learning is one of her requirements, and if you want to practice law in the U.S., your distance learning options are very limited. The American Bar Association has a death grip on accreditation of law schools, and squeezes tightly to ensure that distance learning options aren't available. And it's understandable that they do — they last thing need is for it to be convenient for people to go to law school, why, then there would be more lawyers out there, and that would mean more competition to drive down legal fees!
As with any sufficiently complex system, though, there are loopholes. The biggest is California, which is unique among U.S. states in that it has an alternate system where programs approved by the state bar association allow one to take the bar exam in that state. Since some of those programs are available by distance, it's possible to do a JD degree online from one of them if one is okay with only being able to practice in California, at least initially.
Unfortunately, we don't live in California so that doesn't work for her. And then there's another wrinkle in that she doesn't have a Bachelor's degree. In most English-speaking countries, law school is a first degree, called a Bachelor of Laws or LLB. In the U.S., it's a similar program, but it requires a Bachelor's to apply, and the degree is a Juris Doctor, or JD.
So what about foreign schools with distance learning programs? This is especially useful for my wife in that those programs are mostly at British schools, and since Dominica inherited its legal system from the British, it's possible to practice there with a British law degree, and many attorneys there do exactly that.
The question, then, is how much use a British law degree is in the U.S. It turns out that the answer depends on in which state you want to practice. We live in Virginia, and it seems that a British law degree doesn't get you very far in this state, but that if one has a British LLB one can practice in either D.C. or Maryland by going on for an extra year to get an American LLM, or Master of Laws degree. We're just fifteen minutes from either of those jurisdictions, so that might be the best option.
So, with it reasonably settled that an LLB from a British school with a distance learning program would meet all her criteria, she then had to find one that would be a good fit. The best known and most prestigious is the University of London External Programme, but it's a notoriously difficult program, and she's concerned it wouldn't be easy to balance with family and work responsbilities. There's the Open University, which is well regarded, but unfortunately they don't admit students who live outside the EU. There's Northumbria University, which requires more visits to campus (i.e., trips to England) than would be convenient for us. But finally there's Nottingham Trent University, where annual visits would do, and where the overall cost of the program is about eighteen thousand dollars.
Then she spoke with a friend who's an attorney in Ireland and now New York who has an LLB from Nottingham Trent and recommends them highly. So she applied to Nottingham Trent a while ago as a first choice. After a while she called them to see whether they'd received all the materials she sent, and ended up speaking with a very nice lady who it turns out is the decision maker on her application. Even though she was so pleasant, Adella couldn't help but later admit to me that she thought of her as The Claw since she's the one who chooses who will go to Nottingham Trent and who will stay out.
Anyway, she's supposed to hear from The Claw next week. Here's hoping that she's selected!
Next up, The Claw decides!