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Dr.
Roberto Lee, a Virginia surgeon for more than 30 years has always had
a deep interest in the law but could never take the time away from the
hospital and his private practice to go to law school. For many years,
he was the only surgeon in the small town of Wytheville, where he saw
first hand, the ills of the health care system, including many instances
where patients who needed surgery were denied it by their managed care
providers. As a consequence, they ended up going to the emergency room
two or three times a week. ‘‘I found that my patients had been abused
by managed care and even by Medicare, Medicaid regulations,’’ Dr. Lee
said. ‘‘We’re required to call managed care to get permission to treat
our patients and if they say no, there’s nothing we can do...the patients
are so helpless.’’
These
experiences fueled his desire to get a law education, particularly in
the area of health care law, so that he could navigate the system and
better guide his patients. Four years ago, he heard about the nation’s
first online law school based in California, called Concord University,
where a student could earn a Juris Doctor degree wholly online via the
Internet. Streaming audio and video lectures, asynchronous learning components
[i.e., the content can be covered in ways that do not require the students
to be online at the same time], live discussion sessions, web-based bulletin
boards, and Internet-based /istservs are all part of the mix of this delivery
system.
Improvements
in technology make it possible for students across the globe to ‘‘virtually’’
attend the same lecture. Students have their own web pages that link to
their courses, assignments, lectures, and tests. They meet with their
professors and classmates at least once a week to discuss and debate course
content.
To
Dr. Lee, such a setup meant no commuting and the flexibility of being
able to attend classes from the comfort of his home. His professors were
experts in their fields from all over the United States—some were authors
of the textbooks that Concord students used. Most of all, this online
option gave him access and opened a door that had been firmly locked before.
Gaining
entry and staying the course required much discipline and perseverance.
In his senior year, Dr. Lee had a rigorous schedule. ‘‘I woke up at 3
a.m. to do my homework. When 6 o’clock hit, I had to be in the shower
because I had to be at the hospital by a quarter to 7 or 7 a.m. to start
my surgery. Since this was my last year, the hospital helped me out quite
a bit in the operating room. I had to finish by 10 a.m. to be in the courthouse
because I was an intern with the district court. Our sessions there usually
ended at about 12:30 or 1 p.m. I went to my office around 2–2:30 p.m.
to see my office patients. I would be home around 7 p.m., eat, read a
little, and then go to bed to be up again at 3 a.m.’’
Like
Dr. Lee, many Concord University students already have established careers
in fields such as banking, engineering, the police and military, accountancy,
and real estate. More than 42 percent of the 1,000 plus Concord students
hold one or more advanced degrees. Laura Lamont, a lawyer for McShane
and Bowie PLC, a Grand Rapids firm, was interested in obtaining an LLM
in taxation and was looking for law schools that offered the program.
She wandered into the Concord University website and began taking classes
in September last year. ‘‘The professors are top notch and because of
the way they interact with me, I have a great desire to always learn more
and more of what they discuss,’’ Lamont said. ‘‘Also, I have found that
the professors are much more accessible either by telephone or by e-mail
than at any fixed facility school that I have attended.’’
Second-career
students are also drawn to the availability of classes that may not be
offered in the traditional school setting because of a lack of numbers.
For the past two years, Professor Peter Martin at Cornell University has
been teaching an online course in Social Security Law, with students drawn
from five participating law schools, including Concord.
‘‘The
other schools approve the course for their curricula, select and register
their students for the course and pay Cornell for the instruction,’’ said
Professor Martin who has been offering upper-class electives focusing
on federal statutory regimes. ‘‘My firm conclusion is that this form of
learning is a valuable part of the mix, especially when it enables students
to take courses that would otherwise be unavailable to them, either because
it’s not in the curriculum or because of class or other schedule conflicts.
A significant number of students in my Social Security course are ‘part-time’
students in four-year programs, juggling employment, family responsibilities,
and commuting. For them, having one or more courses that can be done around
the edges permits better learning.’’
About
a year ago, Professor Martin submitted a report to the American Bar Association
on online courses. That report figured in deliberations over revision
of the ABA accreditation rules that now allow law schools to provide online
instruction for up to 12 credit hours. The American Bar Association, which
is the accrediting body for law schools, has not accredited Concord University,
nor has the school applied because of the ABA’s standard that requires
residential classroom experiences. Concord University is in fact accredited
by the Distance Education Training Council, which is approved by the U.S.
Department of Education as a nationally recognized accrediting agency.
‘‘We
think the [current accreditation] standards are satisfactory and that
they protect the public and the legal profession by establishing certain
minimums that programs must include to be accredited,’’ explained Barry
Currier, the ABA’s deputy consultant on legal education. ‘‘The standards
change over time as they just have with distance education and they may
change some more. But just because someone comes along with something
that doesn’t fit our standards and says ‘why won’t you?,’ well, the answer
to me is ‘why should we?’’’
Currier
pointed out that the traditional law schools are already using much of
the new technology like extensive chat rooms, e-mail systems, limited
online courses, hyperlinks to readings as well as web-based career services
and registration systems.
‘‘To
many of us it seems rather obvious that there are significant benefits
particularly for people who are trained to go out and work in a people
profession, for folks to come together and learn and study together rather
than doing it exclusively in an ûnline environment,’’ Currier said. In
his view, the evidence that the online environment is just as good as
the physical environment has not been proven yet. ‘‘I think you find lots
of universities that went ‘gung-ho’ into distance education, backing away.
At the same time, some schools are doing more. Some schools are doing
less. Big consortiums of elite universities that went into the business
of distance education have now dissolved those businesses. So, we’re still
in the middle of this paradigm shift and it’s not at all clear where it’s
going to go...we’re willing to listen and to learn and to look at the
experiences of Concord.’’
Joan
R. Bullock, a member of the State Bar of Michigan, who is a professor
at Florida A&M University College of Law, has taught in both the ‘‘bricks
and mortar’’ and virtual environments. Although she believes that there
is a place for both mediums in education, Professor Bullock’s view is
that online education is not as effective as the traditional classroom
in conveying the complete learning experience and engaging all our senses.
‘‘The
traditional classroom can be a training ground for the student to learn
how to communicate in emotional and perhaps highly politicized discussions.
For example, in a criminal law class where the students discuss a hypothetical
where the victim gets raped outside a bar, lively discussion can ensue
with some students perhaps voicing insensitive and outmoded views. In
the traditional classroom setting, the speaker would be immediately alerted
to the state of affairs in a way that cannot be given or received over
the Internet. The in-classroom speaker would most likely hear the audible
gasps of fellow students, see the reactive body language of the offended
listeners, and receive verbal retorts and admonishing. However, in the
virtual environment, the student may only realize he or she has offended
others but may not appreciate the number of people who disagreed with
the point of view or the level of their discontent.’’
According
to Candace Elliott Person, a second-career attorney who has been on the
faculty of Concord University since the fall of 1999 and is the Director
of the Concord Law School Health Law LL.M. program, ‘‘people need to be
aware of their learning style and what works for them. Some people really
need the classroom—they need the comradeship of their colleagues right
there. I have to say that our online law students have some of the best
communications systems that I have ever seen. They are so creative—it’s
amazing. They have a lot of tools available to them with the use of the
Internet. They put together listservs, and they have their own online
study groups, using bulletin boards, net meetings, and other kinds of
group facilitative software. Their communication and sharing among themselves
is far more extensive than I had with my classmates and professors when
I was in law school.’’
Person,
who is also a member of the State Bar of Michigan’s Publications and Website
Advisory Committee adds that to more fully meet the students’ needs, Concord
University has developed some unique strategies—for example in the online
trial advocacy course, in addition to written work, students submit videotapes
of their trial performances for critique and assessment. Concord Law School
has also added a Legal Education Experience Program, which is a nationwide
clinical/internship program. Students are placed for internships in lawyers’
and judges’ offices.
While
the online environment may not be for everyone, it is fast growing in
popularity. A Journal of Higher Education report says that 96 percent
of U.S. colleges today offer online education, compared to 3 percent in
1990. It has also been estimated by the Sloan Foundation—a New York-based
philanthropic organization that funds many online education projects and
runs its own Internet-based courses, that ‘‘three million students across
the nation are earning their degrees online and that the registration
for online education is growing at a rate of 20 percent annually.’’
Concord
Law School graduated its first class of 12 students in November last year
and Dr. Roberto Lee was one of the graduates.
Dr.
Lee, who will be taking the California Bar Exam in February 2003, believes
that the education that he got from Concord is at least equal to what
students get at the top law schools and it is much cheaper. He spent a
total of $20,000 over the course of four years, compared to four times
that amount that he had to pay [individually] for his son and daughter,
who are also lawyers. Current Concord fees are $7,000 per year for 22
to 24 credit hours. ‘‘I was able to use what I learned [at Concord] in
my dealings with my patients and the hospital,’’ Dr Lee said. ‘‘In fact,
when I recently got a partner for my [medical] practice I did not have
to spend a legal fee. I negotiated the contract and it already paid for
what I did.’’
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