For John Sears, a third-year Juris Doctor candidate at the Wake Forest University School of Law, the teaching style in a course last fall titled “Professional Responsibili ty” differed from his other classes.
Rather than taking notes during lectures, the 37-year-old watched videos, listened to podcasts and answered multiple – choice questions remotely.
He and his classmates then attended class in person and applied that material to group work, in-depth discussions, project-based learning and hypotheticals, says Ellen Murphy, Wake Forest law school’s assistant dean of instructional technologies and design who teaches the course.
“It allows the in-class portions to be very focused on really prodding the concepts that are more difficult for people to understand,” says Sears. “It gives you a chance to dig a little bit deeper into those,” rather than first absorbing all of the material.
Sears isn’t alone. While the field of law has been slower than most to embrace online learning, some J.D. program professors are straying from the traditional teaching model and incorporating blended courses — those partially online, partially on campus — into their curriculums, experts say .
There are currently no fully online J.D. programs accredited by the American Bar Association — though recognized online Master of Laws Degrees, or LL.M.s, and other legal master’s degrees and certificates do exist. A few law schools are, however, designating entire J.D. programs as blended to emphasize their convenience for busy adults.
[Explore how to choose a law school based on teaching style.]
“I think the legal profession and legal education are just very resistant to change,” says Gregory Duhl, associate dean for strategic initiatives at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, a recent merger between Hamline University and the William Mitchell College of Law. But since the Great Recession, when legal jobs were scarce, law schools have faced pressures to innovate, he says.
The Mitchell Hamline School of Law — then William Mitchell — launched a hybrid J.D. program in January 2015, allowing students to take classes online for about 12 weeks a semester and requiring 10 campus visits throughout the program. Vermont Law School and the Loyola University Chicago School of Law have also introduced blended J.D. options.
“The biggest selling point for me was really the flexibility in terms of in-classroom time,” says Shemario Winfrey, a student in the program at the Loyola University Chicago, where J.D. candidates come to campus every other weekend. Winfrey travels often for work, so a part-time law program with classes held weekday evenings wouldn’t fit into his schedule.
More blended programs are emerging as lawyers communicate virtually with clients worldwide, says Nina A. Kohn, associate dean for research at the College of Law at Syracuse University. The school recently partnered with online education company 2U to develop a hybrid J.D. program pending state and ABA approval.
“Integrating technology into education makes a tremendous amount of sense,” she says.
[Discover which fields in graduate education have embraced online learning.]
To attain approval, the ABA has certain standards when it comes to online learning in accredited J.D. programs. Law students may only complete up to 15 credit hours in online courses, or those where more than a third is taught via technology. Students can’t start taking online classes until after their first 28 credit hours.
Mitchell Hamline School of Law is an exception. The law school received a variance enabling them to classify courses as on ground if up to half, rather than a third, is online.
While the creation of hybrid programs is a newer trend, some professors have been implementing elements of blended learning into individual law courses for several years.
Norman Garland, a professor of law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, has taught his evidence class several times in the hybrid format. Students access narrated PowerPoints and lecture materials online and take quizzes from home. The in-person courses that follow are discussion, presentation and analysis-based, he says.
“Coming to class having all the materials in their psyche, if not completely mastered, gives them a big foot up, I think,” Garland says.
Some programs also have courses taught primarily online. Jason Czarnezki, associate dean and executive director of environmental law programs at Pace University‘s law school, plans to co-teach one next semester with Michael Pappas, a University of Maryland law professor, bringing renowned environmental law experts from around the world to students’ computer screens to discuss climate change.
[Learn how to decide between blended and online courses.]
But, experts say, online learning isn’t right for every J.D. student — it takes a greater amount of self-discipline than face-to-face education, for instance. Some students also prefer to boost their oral communication skills in a traditional classroom.
Adapting to a virtual setting, however, likely isn’t a challenge for J.D. students, says Michael Kaufman, interim law school dean at Loyola University Chicago.
“For them, it’s really intuitive,” he says. “It’s really part of their landscape.”
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Law Schools Experiment With Partially Online Learning originally appeared on usnews.com
