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Non-traditional, older students who are interested in environmental law—but who don’t want to become practicing trial lawyers—can now enroll in two new, 100 percent online master degrees offered by Vermont Law School.
Vermont Law is offering a new Online Master of Law Degree (LLM) in environmental law, designed especially for people who are licensed attorneys, but who seek re-tooling in an environmental specialty area.
Another new Vermont Law degree is the Online Master of Environmental Law and Policy. This distance degree has been developed for managers who do not intend to practice trial law but who seek the legal expertise necessary to manage complex environmental projects.
New Trends in Legal Education Online
Both of Vermont’s new online law degrees represent a new trend in legal education. Adults who are employed as managers or consultants are turning to distance learning to gain expertise in complex legal niche areas, such as taxation, health law, or green law.
For students who are not lawyers, and who do not plan to practice law in the courts, these new online degrees offer an affordable alternative to going to law school.
ABA Accreditation Not an Issue
The American Bar Association (ABA) doesn’t regulate legal masters degrees, only the juris doctor, or JD degree. The JD is the type of degree required to sit for the ABA exam that allows one to practice law in the courts. No online JD degree program is currently approved by the ABA (see Online Law Schools Inch Closer to ABA Accreditation). Schools don’t need ABA approval to offer online masters degrees in law. And that’s a good thing because the ABA is divided on the wisdom of letting ABA accredited law schools offer online JD degrees designed to let professionals sit for the bar exam.
Professor Rebecca Purdom oversees the new online law degree programs at Vermont Law. The online degrees are distance learning versions of the very same degrees offered on campus in Vermont.
The main difference between the online and residential versions of these degrees is the time it takes to complete them.
The online degree takes 18 months (five 14-week semesters), while the on-campus degree is a one-year program. Otherwise, says Purdom, the cost, faculty, and subject matter are identical. The online law courses are taught by the very same faculty that teach on campus.
Online Law Degrees Attract Adult Students
Online law students are quite different, however, from the residential legal eagles that flock to the rural Vermont campus.
“For the on-campus masters, it’s often folks who are a year or two out of school—24 or 25 years old,” says Purdom. “But for the online programs, we have one student who is 28, but the rest are folks in their 30s and 40’s. Mid-career professionals are looking for these degrees.”
In fact, the new online LLM degree program, which is for students who already hold JD law degrees, is filled with folks “over 50, who are really deep in their careers and want a little extra training or expertise.”
Online degree students include people in high level positions, such as an administrative law judge in Washington, DC, and a senior in-house counsel at a major corporation, says Purdom.
The online students may not be practicing attorneys, but they are established career professionals. The online student body includes two professionals who jointly manage an environmental consulting firm. Their desire is to learn more about the legal issues that impact their clients and their consulting business. They don’t intend to practice law in the courts or to seek legal clients.
Students are now enrolling online because most would not be able to leave their careers and families to re-locate to rural Vermont and train in environmental law (the town of South Royalton, Vt. is so small it lacks a stoplight).
But these older students, who are embedded in their careers and communities, can attend an online program, which is why the residential law school decided to offer the new distance degrees, says Purdom.
“Putting programs online is, for us, about reaching populations who can’t get this kind of education any other way.”
Employer Recognition of New Online Law Degrees
One problem online students may encounter is the possibility that employers may not recognize this new form of mid-career professional legal degree.
This lack of recognition is not tied to how these degrees are offered—online vs. residential—but to the concept of a non-JD law degree.
Barry Currier, former dean of Concord Law School (an online school run by Kaplan) and now a legal education technology consultant, blames the lack of a consistent naming convention for confusion over the new non-JD law degrees.
Loyola University offers an online “MJ” (Master of Jurisprudence). Concord Law promotes its online degree program as an EJD (“Executive Juris Doctor”). Other online schools refer to these new non-JD degrees as masters of science in law or masters in legal studies.
“Employers don’t know what an EJD or MJ is,” says Currier. Once they do, such degrees “are going to be tremendous career-enhancers for people.”
Other online legal masters degrees designed for mid-career adult students include:
Concord Law School Online Executive Juris Doctor (a three-year program for non-lawyers to learn law, including optional specialty tracks in technology and criminal justice)
