About Law School Accreditation

Accreditation and what it means to you. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the definition of accreditation is "to recognize as maintaining standards that qualify the graduates for admission to higher or more specialized institutions or for professional practice." Law schools generally fall into three categories of accreditation, American Bar Association (ABA) accredited, state accredited or unaccredited.

ABA accreditation - According to the American Bar Association, "Law schools approved by the American Bar Association (ABA) provide a legal education which meets a minimum set of standards as promulgated by the ABA. Every jurisdiction in the United States has determined that graduates of ABA-approved law schools are able to sit for the bar in their respective jurisdictions. The role that the ABA plays as the national accrediting body has enabled accreditation to become unified and national in scope rather than fragmented, with the potential for inconsistency, among the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and other territories. The Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar is the United States Department of Education recognized accrediting agency for programs that lead to the first professional degree in law. The law school approval process established by the Council is designed to provide a careful and comprehensive evaluation of a law school and its compliance with the Standards for Approval of Law Schools."

State accreditation - Most states have their own accreditation process and in most cases give accreditation status to ABA accredited schools. However, there are many law schools that for one reason or another do not meet all of the ABA accreditation requirements. Some of these schools, however, do meet the states requirements. Note: State requirements can vary by state. If a school meets state requirements it can apply to that state for state accreditation.

Unaccredited - According to the California Bar Association "An unaccredited law school is one operating as a law school in the State of California that is neither accredited nor approved by the Committee, but must be registered with the Committee and comply with the requirements contained in Rules XIX and XX of the Admission Rules, applicable provisions of the California Rules of Court and relevant sections of the California Business and Professions Code. A law school operating wholly outside of California is unaccredited unless it has applied for and received accreditation from the Committee or is provisionally or fully approved by the American Bar Association." Rules in many other states are the same.

Most states require that you meet certain requirements prior to being eligible to take their bar examination. The California Bar states "To be eligible to take the California Bar Examination, one must have completed at least two years of college before beginning the study of law or must have passed certain specified College Level Equivalency Program examinations before beginning law study and must have graduated from a law school approved by the American Bar Association or accredited by the Committee of Bar Examiners of The State Bar of California or have completed four years of law study at an unaccredited or correspondence law school registered with the Committee or studied law in a law office or judge's chambers in accordance with the Rules Regulating Admission to Practice Law in California." Most states have similar requirements.

The foregoing suggests that many states will not allow, non ABA accredited out of state law school graduates to take their bar examination, unless they attended school in that state or a school that is certified by that state. Therefore students graduating from non ABA accredited law schools may not be allowed to practice in any state other than the state they attended school. Note: Some states have reciprocal agreements with other states allowing attorneys registered in one state to become a member of the bar in another state without taking a bar examination in the new state.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, there are many fine law schools in this country that are not ABA accredited. Additionally, many ABA accredited schools do not offer night time or part time classes. Finally, there are many more applicants that spaces available in ABA accredited schools, forcing many good students to attend other schools. Therefore, accreditation should not be your only criteria in choosing a law school or in deciding whether or not to hire a particular law school graduate.

Advance Legal Jobs Launches Legal Jobs Board for Attorneys and Law Students

The founders of Advance Legal Jobs noticed that, even with the current glut of job boards, a single, reliable and affordable source of legal jobs for attorneys and law students just did not exist. The legal job seeker was limited to the pay-to-list sites, which charge employers hundreds of dollars per listing, the job aggregators that simply re-bundle jobs from the pay-to-list sites, or they could monitor the websites of every legal employer that might be of interest to them.

Advance Legal Jobs was created to fill this gap by providing a single, reliable database packed with thousands of up-to-date legal jobs that also includes the information necessary to apply directly to each and every legal job listing (without having to go through a third party search firm!).

To get as many jobs as possible for its members, the founders determined that an extensive legal jobs database had to be created using three distinct methods of obtaining job information:

  Never charge legal employers to list in the general legal job listings database, thereby removing any disincentives to posting open legal positions.
  Using the most sophisticated technology possible, monitor and research thousands upon thousands of legal employers to determine when new legal jobs have been added or removed by those employers.
  Hire a team of researches to work closely with an extensive and growing list of legal employers to get them to include each and every legal position in the jobs database.

The result of these efforts is the Advance Legal Jobs database that has literally thousands of legal positions, many of them unique, in both the U.S.

and abroad. Combined with Advance Legal Job's Law Firm Profiles section, real-time Job Alert feature, and our Legal Jobs Blog, everything an attorney or law student looking for a legal job might need can now be found in one centralized location.

Buy Student Essay

Students write different types of student essays. For example, students write law essays and business essays. Others write technology essays. Instructors require the students to write the essays as part of their assessments. The student essay contributes a certain percentage to their final grade. The kind of student essay students write influences their final grades. Students who write good student essay perform well compared to students who do not. This is because the essays meet the instructor’s guidelines. Most of the students have not been able to write quality student essay because of lack of time and knowledge. The students do not know what makes up a student essay.

In addition, the students do not know the writing style to use when writing student essay. Students can use a vast range of writing styles when writing essays. For example, the students can use MLA and APA when writing essays. Moreover, the students can use Chicago and oxford when writing essays. Though there are many styles that students can use to write essays, most students are not familiar with the styles. Hence, the students write essays that do not meet the instructions provided by the tutor. The students in turn score low marks. Students are required to use the steps below when writing essay.

First, students are required to choose the subject to be discussed in the essay. The subject of the essay should be related to the course the student is pursuing. Choosing a topic that is relevant to student’s course makes it easy for the students to perform well. The topic selected should not be outdated. Selecting topics that are not recent or you are not familiar with affects the quality of your student essay. The topic should be selected from things that are recent. A recent topic makes the research look original as the student does not copy other researchers that have been conducted before. The student conducts his or her own research when writing the essay. The topic selected should be able to be written from different point of view. This is mostly in argumentative essay.

Apart from selecting the topic for the student essay, the students should try to develop a thesis for the student essay. The thesis statement developed should be inline with the subject of the student essay. The thesis statement influences the content of the essay and its flow. Students who choose the right thesis statement perform well unlike students who do not. This is because they are able to develop the student essay well. So, students should be keen when selecting the thesis.

Moreover, the students should prepare an outline for the student essay. An outline is a list of topics and steps that are included in the paper. The outline should have subtopics that are relevant to the essay. For example, the outline can have an abstract, an introduction, body and subtopics and then the conclusion. The student should give a brief description of the sections included in the outline. After writing the outline, the students should start writing the student essay. The student essay should have an introduction where the student explains the topic. The introduction should be well developed and act as an attention getter. The body should be detailed with a list of the section discussed. It should also have a conclusion.

Law School Admission Requirements

Starting a career in the legal field is an enticing thought. However, this field does not accept jokers because it involves a lot of studying to master the acts and scrolls that never seem to end. Everyday, a region or state adopts a new legislation or amends a previous one; the legal industry especially the practitioners need to know about this when it happens.

Therefore, the professionals in this field of study always have a lot in their hands because it is possible to argue a case on a law made today or even a precedent that happened many years ago. For this reason, legal matters require a sharp mind.

Personal statement - many would think that a description of self, own ambitions, deficiencies and laurels would be taken as a routine matter. However, when it comes to gaining admission in a law school, your personal statement plays a very important role because it throws light upon your persona as well as your eloquence which is one of the most important attributes of a lawyer or attorney.

Letters of recommendation - the law school admission committee gathers relevant information about the prospective student from the recommendation letters they have. The way others appreciate the strengths of these students help the committee measure the intrinsic value and potential of the student.

Law school actually rewards certain kinds of smarts and not others. What kind of smart matters in your legal education? In general, analytic smarts are far more important than intellectual smarts. A mind that is skilled in analysis is good at slicing and dicing problems -- breaking problems down into pieces that can have rules or arguments applied to them (see my article on law school preparation for the reasoning skills commonly applied in law school).

It is best to make sure that you take the law school admission test before the month of December rolls around. This is the best time to take it in order for the results to be ready and read by the people who take applications at all of the top law schools in the nation, but most people take it in the summer months or the fall months, right as the Fall begins.

The above items are the law school requirements, but the greatest success goes to the law school applicants who go above and beyond the law school requirements and give the law school admissions committee something extra. The greatest rewards in life go to the outstanding, and when it comes to getting into law school its no different.

Apply As Soon As Possible - Simply put, the longer you wait to apply, the greater the disadvantage. If feasible, you should apply on the first day that the school begins accepting applications. The logic for this is twofold. First, most law school admissions are rolling. That means that the law school receives and reviews applications continuously over a designated period.

Personal statement is also very important in determining whether you are good for law education or not. Think of it as a resume. It may not necessarily speak for your entire being and capability, but it can show admission committees a summary or a glimpse of who you are. After all, your personality is directly related to the way you communicate or speak.