Online legal education is not just open to aspiring lawyers and established attorneys seeking advanced degrees. You could be a working professional who simply wants to learn more about the law in your particular field.
Many top law schools, such as University of Southern California, Gould School of Law, offer numerous online programs for non-lawyers. And you can study from Nebraska, Louisiana, Maine, West Virginia, Singapore, Greenland, Brazil, Italy, Côte d’Ivoire . . .
USC offers an online Master of Studies in Law (MSL), which is designed for working professionals who would like a better understanding of the law but don’t need to become attorneys.
USC offers an online Master of Studies in Law (MSL), which is designed for working professionals who would like a better understanding of the law but don’t need to become attorneys.
That L.A. traffic? Not your worry.
“That was the premise when we launched online,” said Anitha Cadambi, the school’s associate director of graduate curriculum and instruction. “We wanted to bring USC’s brand of education to the world.”
The school offers an online Master of Studies in Law (MSL), which is designed for working professionals who would like a better understanding of the law but don’t need to become attorneys. Think of health care specialists, for instance, who deal with a host of laws in their field.
USC also offers online certificate programs to help professionals learn more about the law in specific specialties. It offers an Entertainment and Law Industry Certificate, which is no surprise, given the school’s expertise in that field.
The school looks at both market demand and student interest when deciding which online programs to launch, Cadambi said.
For instance, compliance is a hot area, one that the law school addresses with its online offerings, she said. It offers four compliance certificates, including one specializing in health care.
These online programs are popular for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they are flexible. They are part-time, and students can study on their own schedules because a portion of the learning is done by watching pre-recorded videos.
Still, the courses require students to tune into weekly live sessions, during which they participate in discussions led by the professor. The online programs are designed to create as much interaction as possible, said Cadambi, who teaches online as well.
The online method rivals the classroom setting, as it offers many ways to be involved, she noted. There are discussion boards, for instance, and students are encouraged to participate.
“They’re mostly mid-career professionals with much in common,” Cadambi said. “They learn from each other.”
She said the discussions can be quite robust. For instance, during live sessions, students may note how a particular issue came up at work. Others may chime in with similar experiences.
In J.D. classes, most students don’t have the immediate opportunity to apply what they are learning, she said, but these working professionals can bring their new knowledge of law back to their organizations and apply it in their work with attorneys.
Even those who are novices at online learning pick it up quickly, Cadambi said. Technology training is available, as well as a mandatory orientation course.
Most of these online programs are relatively short. The MSL degree takes 16 months. Certificates can be earned in nine months to a year.
And the diploma? There’s no asterisk noting it was done online.
Many other law schools have similar programs to help professionals in various fields further their careers. In some cases, professionals are required by their employers to get additional training in areas such as compliance, and law schools fill that need.
“Like others, we had heard from professionals who were looking for both flexibility and quality,” said Tim Glynn, senior associate dean at Seton Hall University School of Law, who oversees many of that school’s online programs.
Like others, we had heard from professionals who were looking for both flexibility and quality.” —Tim Glynn, senior associate dean, Seton Hall University School of Law
Seton Hall University has a number of online master of science in jurisprudence (MSJ) programs, including ones in intellectual property and pharmaceutical law.
Again, the school plays to its strengths. Seton Hall is in Newark, N.J., home to many of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical companies.
“We choose our offerings by looking at a combination of things,” said Brian Sheppard, associate dean for J.D. and graduate admissions. “We need to feel confident both that we can deliver a state-of-the-art education in that area and that there is industry demand for that education. The courses need to have utility and be up to snuff.”
Another selling point for such online programs is accessibility. One does not have to take the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) or an entrance exam. Students need a bachelor’s degree and experience in the field in which they plan to study.
“We want the degrees to be useful,” Glynn noted.
Many students opt for online certificates instead of pursuing a degree if they simply want to drill down in areas that are relevant to their work, Glynn said.
Certificate programs require three courses and can be completed in as little as six months of part-time work. The MSJ, which takes two years to complete while studying part-time, is for a “deeper dive,” he said. Glynn noted that certificate course credits can be counted toward an MSJ degree if a student later decides to pursue it.
Mastering the subject covered in a certificate course is sometimes a job requirement. Other online students find that developing a greater understanding of a particular subject improves their work product and makes them more confident.
At USC, the online learning at Seton Hall is very interactive, so students can feel a sense of community even if they are far away.
For some schools, online programs are hardly new territory. Loyola University Chicago School of Law has offered a master of jurisprudence (M.J.) online for more than a decade. Technology and student interest reached a point where it made sense to offer the M.J. online, said Lindsay Dunbar, associate director of Loyola’s online programs.
“There was a real need,” she said, noting how busy professionals can be. In addition to demanding work hours, many have family obligations too.
Loyola Chicago’s M.J. in health law is popular because the school has one of the nation’s best healthcare programs.
“We have such a strong faculty in that area,” Dunbar said.
So it’s not unusual to attract doctors, nurses and health care administrators to the online course, which takes two years of part-time study to finish. Many of these healthcare professionals work with lawyers routinely, she said.
One of the key benefits they get from the program is learning how lawyers express themselves since at times legalese can seem like a foreign language.
“It’s a great tool to communicate with them,” she said.
Even though Loyola Chicago has well-established online programs, it has not stopped designing new ones. It launched a Certificate in School Discipline Reform just three years ago.
The year-long, part-time program focuses on reducing suspensions and expulsion and instituting a more preventive approach to school discipline. It’s the only program of its kind in the nation, said Miranda B. Johnson, director of the school’s Education Law & Policy Institute.
“It’s a true niche,” she said.
Because it’s online, the certificate program has the potential to reach a larger audience of educators, she said. And there are a host of legal issues regarding school discipline, particularly when schools are trying to implement new policies to create reform.
Additionally, new challenges, such as how to address cyberbullying, are arising all the time.
For Claudia Lopez and Bryan Rome, deans of students at Highland Park High School near Chicago, the online program was an ideal match. In charge of discipline and attendance at the high school, they believe in using practices that promote accountability and dialogue.
Lopez and Rome had read about more progressive disciplinary concepts, but Loyola’s online course taught them how to implement these practices at the 2,000-student school.
For instance, they noticed that some students repeatedly faced disciplinary action, Rome said. Instead of doling out the same punishment over and over, they worked to understand the root cause of the bad behavior.
They found one of the problems was that the students didn’t feel a connection to any adults in the school. And suspensions only caused the connection to become more frayed.
“We felt establishing connections to an adult — be it a teacher, a coach, a dean, a counselor — would make a difference. And it’s not just one connection, but multiple ones,” Lopez said.
Both Lopez and Rome had taken online classes before, but none were as interactive as this one. Relationships with the professors and fellow students were formed and deepened as the course went on, they said.
Given their hectic schedules, neither could have gone to the Loyola campus for classes.
“It would have been impossible,” Rome said.
[Editor’s Note: This story original published in the 2020 issue of The Online Jurist.]
