St. Louis is offering online LL.M

First Name: Derek
Current Event Posting Number: 4
Topic: Education
Title of article: Law School Plans to Offer Web Courses for Master’s
Author: Tamar Lewin
Publication Name: The New York Times
Date of Publication: May 8, 2012
Length of article: 758/ 1 pages

On Tuesday, the Washington University Law School announces that it would offer online Master of Law degree (LL.M) for layers studying abroad. This is done in partnership with 2tor, an education technology company which already has five similar programs. Kent D. Syverud, dean of the law school, believes there are demands overseas for online programs with the same quality and same tuition that they deliver in St. Louis. Washington University will share the revenues from the $48,000 program with 2tor, which will provide marketing, web platform and technical support, including staff members to monitor each live class and deal with any technical problems that arise. Tomea Mersmann, associate dean for strategic initiatives at St. Louis is positive that the plan will work out and meet most of the requirements. There are still downsides of this provision. The live discussions via webcam and self-paced online materials are not designed to prepare students for the bar exam. Legal education has been slow to shift to online classes largely because of American Bar Association rules which approved law schools may not count more than 12 credits of distance education toward a Juris Doctor degree. Students who earn a J.D. from a bar association-approved law school are eligible to take the bar exam nationwide. Gayle Murphy, the senior executive of the California committee of bar examiners, with the advent of online degrees their guidelines might be revisited.

            ` With the help the growing number of law schools offer online master’s degrees in specialized areas of law, like taxation, health care, estate planning, the environment or business transactions, students who can’t uproot their lives to come to the States will receive equal opportunity. Mr. Syverud hopes to enroll 20 students in the first group in January, and have four groups a year, totaling more than 100 students. But so far, the law schools offer nothing like the online computer-engineering classes at Stanford or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that draw thousands of students.