Definition of the LL.B Degree

Quotable Quote from University of Toronto Law School

The LL.B., on the other hand, is typically granted in most Commonwealth jurisdictions to students who complete their legal education directly following graduation from high school.

• LLB – Bachelor of Legal Laws is the official degree designation

• The “B” indicates a baccalaureate level of study; undergraduate professional education.

The LLB degree in British Commonwealth common law jurisdictions has been designed to be a first degree. The emphasis is on professional education, with the student obtaining a practice focused skill set based on a methodology they can than acquire expertise in through practice rather than ongoing formal academic study. The LLB is normally a three year program rather than a four year full fledged baccalaureate in recognition of its vocational orientation. In all comparable Commonwealth countries, with the proviso that in some jurisdictions such as Scotland and New Zealand the three year LLB core curriculum is integrated into a four year honours degree program, that is how the program continues to be delivered. In the U.K, the birthplace of the LLB, Australia and New Zealand, a student enters a three year LLB degree program of study directly out of high school.  Canada stands out as the exception to the rule.

No Canadian law school requires an undergraduate degree as an academic criterion for admission.   A political compromise between the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) and the Ontario university system resulted in what has become a national admissions norm of two years of undergraduate education as a prerequisite for admission to a Canadian law school with provisions made in every law school for designated equity categories to be admitted on a qualitative assessment of high school diploma equivalency.

Canada has the dubious distinction of having the lowest per capita ratio of accredited law schools of any comparable British Commonwealth country.

• Canada has only 16  law schools for a common law population market of 30 million
• Australia has 25 law schools for a population of 20 million.
• New Zealand has 5 law schools for a population of 4 million.
• The U.K. has approximately 75 accredited law schools for a population of 60 million.

There are too few law schools to in Canada to accommodate qualified applicants. This creates a phenomenon labeled as crowding. A crowded pool of applicants - only one in 10-15 depending on the province of choice gets admitted - has enabled Canadian law schools to create a systemic barrier and artificially inflate entry standards and make the baccalaureate degree a de facto admissions criterion for a professional undergraduate degree program.

Law is a discipline. It is a structured learning process. The discipline of law is based on a methodology. The methodology of jurisprudence utilizes a set of principles that enable a person with demonstrated competency to analyze and solve legal problems.  The set of principles are contained in what is known as the core law school curriculum. The core curriculum comprises the required courses that are common to every LLB degree program in the U.K and Canada as well as Australia and New Zealand. Check out the mandatory curriculum of any Canadian or U.K. law school and you’ll find it consists of the following courses.

1) Torts
2) Real Property & Personal Property
3) Constitutional Law
4) Contract(s)
5) Criminal Law
6) Civil Litigation/Law

Moreover, because the U.K. is the birthplace of the common law system  and the origin of the LLB degree you can take this comparator one step further. Examine any Canadian law school text on the traditional common law courses of contracts, criminal law and torts and you’ll notice the preponderance of English law cases that form the foundation of learning for that Canadian course. The variations are to be found in jurisdictional adaptations. A lawyer who has an LLB from a U.K. law school can readily understand the fundamentals of a legal issue in any of the comparable common law countries and quickly adapt to resolve it by becoming cognizant of local applications.

The academic qualifications of the teaching faculty at Canadian law schools illustrates the extent to which Canadian law schools and legal educators look to U.K. law schools as sources of expertise for teaching this core curriculum.

• Approximately 35% of the faculty at University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law Schools, the two lead Ontario law schools, list a U.K. law school credential as their penultimate teaching qualification.
• Queen’s University offers a one year U.K. year abroad option in its LLB program.  Students reside on the Queen’s U.K. campus and are taught by U.K. credentialed law faculty.
• U.K. and internationally credentialed faculty are not unique to Ontario. McGill University is among the best known Canadian law schools at the international level. The McGill program web site consists of approximately 52 full time law professors. Only 11 of those professors, 20%, list a Canadian degree as a penultimate teaching qualification. The largest number, 16 -30% - list a U.K. degree as their penultimate teaching qualification with the U.S in the second category with 25%.  Ten professors, 20%, are from Europe. Approximately 80% of the faculty of this leading law school has foreign teaching credentials.

Canada has the highest proportion of foreign credentialed law faculty among law schools in comparable commonwealth countries.

Canadian credentialed faculty is not a factor weighted in the selection of law schools or curriculum. Academic competency in its own right is the criterion where the emphasis is on jurisprudential education. The U.K. law schools represented by Canada Law from Abroad are all in the top tier and have faculty components with qualification that meet or exceed those in Canada with many of the U.K. law professors having degrees from the same U.K. universities as their Canadian academic colleagues. Students who take advantage of the Canada Law from Abroad international education bridge will be taught comparable law course by comparable faculty to their domestic colleagues.

The U.K. Law School Advantages

An international Educational and Life Experience

International education is the route to rewarding professional careers in a global environment. This is your opportunity to gain a world class legal education and experience and exciting international life experience.

 The Senior Status Two Year LLB Degree Program

Law is a demanding discipline. A number of complementary skills are required to become proficient in the application of jurisprudence to the core curriculum. Lawyers must be capable of specialized research, reading in depth material at a critical level, analyzing and evaluating complex theories, writing legal briefs and communicating formally and informally as a professional. The core curriculum of an LLB program can be completed in its own right in less than two years of study. The average number of mandatory courses in Canadian law schools is eight and these are completed in less than two years.  Because the LLB degree is an undergraduate program of study designed for students directly out of high school the three years is used to provide students with learning experiences in the complementary areas of study. These are comparable to the general education courses in regular undergraduate degree programs.

An increasing number of students in the U.K. are deciding to pursue undergraduate education in a preferred course of study and then leverage that knowledge base into a career in the legal profession with either and LLB or LLM degree. U.K. law schools have taken a leadership role in LLB degree education by recognizing that students with undergraduate degrees have acquired competencies in general education. Students with undergraduate degrees can qualify for admission to “senior status” two year LLB degree programs. You take all of the core curriculum law courses but are exempted from the general education component.

You eliminate what for students with prior undergraduate degrees in Canadian law schools is commonly known as the “dreaded dead third year”. You’re acquired the professional skill set associated with the discipline of law and are yearning to begin acquiring expertise through practice but must spend an additional third year in law school taking optional courses in the general education area or undertake what is essentially a mini-LLM program of study without the degree recognition by loading up on courses in a specialized area of law.

You Eliminate The Law School Admission Test (LSAT)

The Law School Admission Test (LSAT) is a “norm-referenced” or standardized test that is administered by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) in the United States. It is intended to provide law schools with "a standard measure of acquired reading and verbal reasoning skills that law schools can use as one of several factors in assessing applicants". In theory, LSAC correlates LSAT performance with first year law school grades.  In fact, the statistical correlation between LSAT score and first year law school grades is currently being debated. Consequently, the amount of weight assigned to LSAT score versus undergraduate GPA varies from school to school, as almost all law programs employ a different admission index formula.

All applicants to Canadian and U.S. law schools are required to submit an LSAT score with their application. It is weighted into the admissions process. This creates a number of problems for Canadian students. It is well known that all “norm – referenced” tests contain an element of cultural bias. A wealth of studies into “norm – referenced” IQ tests has demonstrated the degree they reflect a middle class cultural bias. This explains why U.S. law schools assign different weights to LSAT scores when evaluating admissions applications to accommodate visible minorities and related equity categories of applicants. This in turn explains why Canadians, with their own distinct learning experiences and cultural background,  need to take “cram” courses to write the LSAT.

• The LSAT is not recognized as a demonstration of competency for legal studies in the U.K. There is no requirement to submit an LSAT score with an application to a U.K. law school.

• The LSAT is not recognized as a demonstration of competency for admission to a provincial bar admissions program. No provincial law society requires submission of an LSAT score as an academic criterion for admission.

In 2006, the Common Law Section of the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa expressed concern over the use of personal information that is required for the Law School Admission Test. The LSAC requires that examinees submit thumbprints and under the USA PATRIOT Act this information may be collected by US federal services such as the FBI without the knowledge or consent of the examinee. This practice may be a violation of Canadian privacy law. The University of Ottawa law school may discontinue use of the LSAT as an admission tool . Other Canadian law schools have expressed similar concerns.

The Law School National Admission Test ( LNAT)

The Law School National Admission Test (LNAT) www.lnat.ac.uk is a standardized aptitude test developed by a consortium of law schools in the U.K. to measure aptitude. A significant amount of research was undertaken prior to its introduction to attempt to overcome the problems associated with all “norm-referenced” tests and eliminate the defects in the LSAT. The LNAT was developed to reflect the growing multi-cultural mix of the U.K. student population and recognition that many in this cohort don’t have the opportunity to benefit from its internationally acclaimed private school system. The LNAT mission is to enable students with the innate ability to succeed in law school to demonstrate competency through norm testing and compensate for poor formal academic performance.   Only 11 out of the approximately 75 accredited law schools in the U.K. utilize the LNAT as admissions criteria.

Canada Law from Abroad has included one of those schools, the University of Birmingham, among its group to provide Canadian applicants who believe their academic performance doesn’t reflect their innate ability to make the case for admissions on the basis of a satisfactory LNAT score.  You’ll note in clicking into its page on this web site that it’s a member of the prestigious “Russell Group” of universities and the 9th ranked law school in the U.K. This is a prestigious law school reaching out to candidates who believe they can demonstrate their eligibility for admission to law school through aptitude testing.  Only candidates applying for the three year LLB degree are required to write the LNAT. Applicants to the senior status two year LLB degree program are exempted.

The U.S. Juris Doctor Degree (J.D.)

The J.D. Degree program of study and professional designation reflects the regulatory professional politics of one country, the U.S., and the struggle of attorneys in what was historically a completely unregulated profession to gain power and control by creating a systemic educational barrier to entry. Until the mid 19th century legal education was taught through an ad hoc network of private schools. The LLB degree was the acknowledged professional degree designation.  Academic qualifications for admission to a state bar were either non-existent or minimal, depending on the state.  Abraham Lincoln is among one of many famous American lawyers who qualified for the bar by reading the law by candlelight at night and working with an established lawyer by day. Not surprisingly, legal education was shunned by the established universities, particularly the prestigious “Ivey League” schools.

Harvard University made a policy decision to mold the law degree into a professional equivalent to medicine and elevate the study of law to graduate school level by embracing what it labeled as scientific jurisprudence using the case study method of analysis. The LL. B. Degree was replaced by the formal three year Juris Doctor Degree (J.D.) graduate study degree with a four year baccalaureate degree required as a prerequisite. Other universities followed suit, although Yale University the other predominant Ivey League law school in the U.S. retained the LLB degree designation until the 1960’s.  A combination of emancipation of African Americans and large influx of Eastern European immigrants, Jews being predominant, created a surge in law school enrollment of whom were considered to be less desirables. The newly formed American Bar Association (ABA) worked with a core group of universities to form the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) which lobbied state bar associations to require the J.D. as the academic admission criteria. By the mid 20th century accredited legal education in the U.S was dominated by seven year baccalaureate/J.D.  programs which created a significant time and monetary barrier for visible minorities and recent immigrants.

It is noteworthy that some state bars, notably California continue to permit candidates to write the state bar examinations and qualify for bar admission through correspondence course programs. In what may well be a pushback to reflect that reality of the learning experiences associated with legal education law schools in the U.S have begun experimenting with two year J.D. degrees, an adaptation of the U.K. senior status LLB degree.

The core curriculum of all common law J.D. programs in the U.S. is the same as LLB degree programs in Canada and the U.K.
A number of state bars, notably New York and Massachusetts,  accept stand alone LL.B. Degrees from accredited Canadian and U.K. law schools without any baccalaureate prerequisite as the sole academic criterion for eligibility to write state bars examinations and qualify to practice law.