The old saying goes that 3L will bore you to death, but that might not be the case for long – not in the US. A handful of major American law schools have recently made changes to their 3L curriculums in the hopes that 3L will be considered worth its lofty price tag.
In the fall NYU Law officially shifted away from simply offering conventional 3L elective courses to offering a range of opportunities outside of the classroom. The new 3L curriculum focuses on studying abroad, externships with governmental agencies and the option to pursue a concentration in a particular area of law. Stanford Law had already made changes in a similar spirit, placing an emphasis on joint degrees. Washington and Lee took a more aggressive approach in scrapping the 3L curriculum entirely and replacing it with clinical and internship opportunities.
It is unlikely that many of these changes would impress a student at U of T Law. After all, students are already able to pursue full-time clinical positions and go on exchange for a full semester. Moreover, there are those who question whether this addresses the root problem: the soaring cost of law school tuition.
According to a January 18, 2013 op-ed in the New York Times, the real issue is whether there should be a 3L at all. As tuition continues to rise, it becomes more and more difficult to justify law students subsidizing legal academia. In a now well-known 2010 statement, former Stanford Dean Larry Kramer said that “One of the well-known facts about law school is it never took three years to do what we are doing; it took maybe two years at most, maybe a year-and-a-half.”
There is some momentum to addressing this issue head on. Northwestern University, for example, allows students to pursue a fast-tracked JD in which students complete three years of work in two. While no doubt difficult, this option saves students one year of tuition and the opportunity cost of being in school rather than working for a year.
On January 18, 2013, NYU Law hosted a discussion amongst leaders of the New York bar, judges and law school faculty that goes a step further than what has been done at Northwestern. The proposed rule change would allow students to write the bar and practice after only two years of study. Such students would not be awarded a JD, as the American Bar Association requires three years of study in order to obtain a law degree. That said, this would cut the cost of attending law school significantly – this could mean greater access to a legal education at a top law school and more leeway for students to pursue lower-paying public interest work. If New York adopts this model, it would not be surprising to see other states follow suit.
No Canadian entity, whether a law school or provincial bar, has any similar plans in mind – at least not publicly. As Canadian law school tuition continues to creep higher, however, the American debate over the relevance of 3L is sure to spread north of the border.
