Juris Doctors Without Borders

Yesterday’s  National Law Journaldetails the nascent global spread of U.S.-style legal education, where “a number of higher education institutions around the world are emulating the United States' three-year J.D. program.”  There are two broad reasons for this trend: increasing globalization demands increased consistency in legal training, and a growing preference for a postgraduate legal education.  The U.S.-style J.D. is recognized as more rigorous than an undergraduate law degree (even when combined with an LL.B).  According the NLJ, schools in South Korea, Australia, Canada and China have begun offering J.D. programs.

The top line of Jeffrey Lehman’s dazzling C.V. reads “Chancellor and Founding Dean of the School of Transnational Law. Peking University.  Beijing, China.”*  According to the NLJ, Lehman recently held a screening of The Paper Chase for the incoming group of (first-ever)1Ls at STL-PU.  As you'd expect, the movie stoked the students’ anxiety: “Were all American law professors as mean as professor Kingsfield?”  (Would Chancellor Lehman recommend viewing Alive to first-time fliers? )

Lehman told the NLJ that “Our goal is for them to walk out and work for  Paul Hastings,  Akin Gump and other similar firms.” he said. The chancellor did not pluck those firms’ names out the air--each has reportedly donated $25,000 to the fledgling school.  (Annual tuition for the transnational law program is $9,000.) Paul Hastings partner Timothy Dickinson is quoted as saying that the school will train a new “cadre” of lawyers “educated to handle international work.” (“Cadre” is an interesting word choice. Why not go all out and say “vanguard”?)

                                                -posted by brian

*charter member of the New Name/Old Name Mix & Match Inter-Entity Basketball League, along with Gold Coast Refrigerator Repair College of Ghana, Ceylon Beauty Academy of Sri Lanka, and the Philip Morris All-Stars from the Altria accounts/payable department.