Online Law School Offers Degree, But It’s Not a Law Degree

Several online law schools are offering a degree they call the Executive Juris Doctor. Their pitch: Graduates won’t be eligible to practice law, but they can use their “advanced legal training in one of many law-related areas.” How is that working out? Not so great, if the recipient of an EJD who spoke to Buzzfeed — where an article about these semi-law schools appeared — is any indication. “I finished July 26 and am looking for a job,” she says. “I could scream because instead of getting a JD degree qualifying me to take the California Bar, I settled for the underdog degree, EJD. This is a non-bar attorney degree. No one knows what the f— it is and trying to describe it makes you look like a goddamned fool. Yeah, I screwed myself it appears.” She received her degree from Concord Law School based in Los Angeles, part of Purdue University Global, the online arm of the public university in Indiana. She went deeply into debt hoping that after graduation she’d find work as a paralegal, but no prospective employers recognized her credentials. Now she works as a substitute teacher, servicing her loan with earnings of about $80 per day. Concord and schools like it specialize in taking applicants whose test scores are too low for a real JD program, but charging them nearly the same tuition to attend classes for actual online JD students. The program is a roughly-three-year commitment of time and money, but according to BuzzFeed, no one can explain what students are able to do with the EJD that they couldn’t have done without it.