The College of Law -- London, Makes Move in U.S. Market

onMarch 15, 2010 at 3:36 PM

Do you want to sit for the New York Bar Exam without spending three years in an American law school? Now you can. But you’re not going to be saving a whole lot of time, and we’re not sure if you’re going to be saving any money.
The Lawyer reports that the College of Law has made a move to accelerate the time it takes for U.K. lawyers to get licensed in the U.S.:

The College of Law (CoL) has announced plans to offer the New York Bar Exam to UK students, allowing them to qualify as American lawyers without having to complete a training contract.
Full-time GDL students who go on to complete CoL’s Legal Practice Course (LPC) or Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) will be eligible to sit for the New York Bar Exam following an additional 22-week study programme.
Previously UK non-law graduates would first need to qualify as a lawyer in the UK and then complete an LLM degree in the US before being able to sit the New York Bar Exam.

The program is also open to people educated in the U.S., though it doesn’t look like you’ll save a whole lot of time hopping across the pond and back …

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We spoke with Corinne McPartland, who authored the article in the Lawyer. She explained that U.S. college graduates could go over to London and shave about half a year off their legal education:

A U.S. student who does their four years at college comes to the U.K. to do their GDL [Graduate Diploma in Law] for a year, then LPC [Legal Practice Course] for a year or BPTC [Bar Professional Training Course] for a year and then the 22-week course [at the College of Law]. A total of two years and the 22-week course… Then they are done.

It’d be nice to cut a semester off of the interminable law school experience. But while recapturing a few months of opportunity cost might be enticing, we still don’t know how much the College of Law experience will cost.
Still, the College of Law hopes U.S. college graduates take notice:

Though the programme is principally targeted at domestic students, CoL is hoping to attract graduates from overseas universities, particularly from the US and South East Asia.
[CoL chief executive Nigel Savage] said: “This is really putting London at the centre of global education. Attracting the best talent to the UK will be great for London and help sustain it as a legal services and legal education hub.”