"Reading law" was a long process for potential lawyers.
Historically, lawyers acquired their legal knowledge through a system of apprenticeship. An aspiring lawyer sought out an established attorney and "read law" with him for several years until the mentor was satisfied the student was ready to go solo. Being admitted to the bar required the mentor to file a motion with the local court to admit the apprentice. It was a flawed system, but developing an academic course of study worthy of the juris doctorate (J.D.) degree took time.
Early Academic Study
By the mid 1800s, some colleges offered an academic undergraduate degree, usually taking less than two years, called a bachelor of law (L.L.B.) degree. After receiving this degree, an applicant would take an oral examination, usually in the chambers of a local judge. Passing meant the applicant could get a license to practice law in a particular type of court or geographical region. This system, also flawed, required no prerequisite education or degree and, in fact, many lawyers learned on the job.
Law Schools Open
Legal training became more rigorous in the late 1800s.
Universities began opening law schools as they realized that the spotty and often leisurely study of law produced lawyers with wide variations in competence and knowledge. Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, which opened its law school in 1867, made history by admitting the first female student, Phoebe Wilson Couzins, in 1869. However, years would pass before women became fully accepted as attorneys.
Christopher Columbus Langdell
Christopher Columbus Langdell, dean of the Harvard Law School from 1870 to1895, is generally considered to be the father of the current system of legal education that leads to a juris doctorate degree. He believed that a law degree should be a post- graduate course of study. After extending the program of legal study for an L.L.B. degree to 18 months in 1871, Harvard went to a three-year course in 1899, and was the first college to require an undergraduate degree for admission to law school. Even though the law schools at Columbia, Pennsylvania, Stanford, Case Western Reserve and Yale followed Harvard's example, even as late as the 1930s and 1940s, some states still did not require a law school degree in order to obtain a license to practice.
Case Study Teaching Method
With the backing of Harvard President Charles Eliot, Langdell made his greatest contribution to the law by instituting the case-study method of instruction at Harvard. This approach required students to read reports of actual cases and discuss them in class so they would master the underlying legal principles and learn to analyze different methods of reasoning. No longer could students just memorize lectures or recite rules; they had to understand the process. At this point, legal education became a demanding three to four-year post-graduate academic course on a par with medical schools and Ph.D. study programs. At its inception at Harvard, enrollment dropped until students realized they learned more about critical thinking with this method.
The Juris Doctorate
The name change to reflect the reality of the revamped professional program did not immediately affect what the legal degree was called, and the bachelor of law degree was conferred until the 1960s. By then, some law schools had begun awarding the Latin juris doctorate degree to honor its most outstanding graduates and soon law schools adopted the J.D. degree for all law school graduates. Virtually all American Bar Association-accredited law schools except Yale University had adopted the J.D. degree by 1969. Yale used the L.L.B. degree through 1970.
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