American Law School Degrees

Last August, at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association held at Portland, Maine, the Committee on Legal Education made a report proposing that the Association should recommend to the various state legislatures the adoption of certain rules suggested by the committee to secure uniformity in law degrees. These rules provided that an L.B. should be conferred by law schools maintaining a two years course; an LL.

B. for three years of legal study; an LL.

M. for four years, of which one should be postgraduate; and a D. C. L. or J. D. for five years, of which two should be postgraduate. None of these degrees was to be conferred upon other terms than those specified. A minority of the committee dissented from the report. Consideration of it was postponed by the Association.

The year before, this committee had made a substantially different report upon the same subject. In the main, this latest report appears to be governed by the principle that substantial distinctions in legal education should be marked by appropriate distinctions in law degrees. Granting the excellence of this principle, it seems to the writer that the committee has departed from it in failing to approve the use of J. D. as a first degree in law by those schools that regularly require a college education for admission. The distinctions recognized in the report are all based upon the length of time spent in legal study.

Another distinction, based upon the extent of preparation for legal study, is at present even more important than some of those recognized by the committee, and this the majority ignores.