Now Law Schools Are Spawning Colleges

As if creating new law schools from scratch wasn’t enough, now the schools themselves are starting to breed. Legal Blog Watch reports that The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is metastasizing and creating a hybrid undergraduate program:

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is branching out. It is launching the nation’s first college dedicated exclusively to the teaching of history, including American legal history. To be called the American College of History and Legal Studies, the college will open its doors in August 2010 in Salem, N.H., according to an MSL announcement.
The ACHLS will be an undergraduate “completion college,” offering only junior- and senior-year courses. After completing their junior year, students who meet certain criteria will have the option of starting law school at MSL. These students will receive their bachelor’s degrees after the first year of law school.

Let me get this straight: you spend a whole year of college learning legal history, and then you still have to go through three years of law school at Andover? So it’s kind of like an extra fourth year of law school that is even more useless to a practicing attorney than the long three years that come after it?
HOW DOES THIS HELP ANYBODY GET A JOB??????
Sorry, I didn’t mean to go all-caps there. It’s just my head, and the blood coming out of my ears. And the eye: lidless, wreathed in flame.
I take my blood pressure medication after the jump.


According to school officials, actually helping its students get paying legal work — or even helping its students learn anything of critical importance to a future attorney — is manifestly not the point of the new college:

As for why MSL is starting the new school, Velvel said that the public and leaders are too often ignorant about history. “As a high percentage of elected officials, judges and corporate executives are lawyers, it is imperative to begin the process of trying to ensure that American leaders, especially its lawyers, have the historical knowledge needed to make intelligent decisions in the national interest,” Velvel said.

So the new college program is trying to train people to make decisions in the national interest? That’s great, it’s a good thing that lawyers work for “the nation” instead of pesky, unenlightened clients.
Even if you agree that a “high percentage” of elected officials are ignorant of history, what does that have to do with the law? When I wanted to learn about history, I took history courses! When I wanted to be an elected official, I took Government courses. When I wanted to learn how to be a lawyer, I went to law school. Too bad I didn’t realize that law school was code for “learning esoteric legal concepts which have little or no relation to the actual practice of law.”
I know I’m doing nothing more than spitting into the wind here, but there has to be something that can be done. There are too many lawyers. Doesn’t anybody understand?
Another New Law School, Sort Of
[Legal Blog Watch]
Earlier: Great News! Cooley is Opening Another Law School Campus. Yay!
More Law Schools + More Lawyers + Recession = FUBAR

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