Why Not? Law as an Undergrad Degree

I run into some problems here in The Hague.  My seven years of higher education just get no respect.  In most of the world, law is an undergraduate degree; those serious about, say, international law will then spend a year getting a subject-specific Master's degree (LLM).  Those really serious will get a PhD - but this isn't like the six to eight years it takes to get a humanities PhD in the U.S.  And then there are those who don't even have a undergrad law degree, but only a one-year LLM.

Many a time I have tried to explained to 23-year-old colleagues that yes, I do have an advanced law degree.  While this is slightly annoying at a personal level, it makes me wonder, what if we didn't stick with the JD model back in the States?

Consider: a state university with a law school (take the University of Oregon) could negotiate with the state bar association (take Oregon's) to allow students from an undergraduate law program to sit for the bar (most states require you to have a degree from an ABA-accredited law school first).  U of O could then start a four-year undergraduate law degree program, perhaps with a strongly recommended fifth-year LLM (Master's degree) component.

Your freshman year of college would be composed of traditional liberal arts classes.  Sophomore year, in addition to taking any remaining general education requirements, you also take courses on legal reasoning and the theoretical underpinnings of law - something that is generally missing from U.S. legal education.  Junior and senior year you take full-on law courses, many of them at the university's law school.  If you complete the program, you are automatically admitted into the law school's LLM program in a specific area of law that is widely practiced in the state.  In Oregon, this might be energy or environmental law, or general business or criminal law.  

Consider further: Some law schools have already floated the idea of cutting out the third year.  Others have effectively done so by requiring a year's worth of externships.  Super-nerds like me, who just can't get enough of school (or are indecisive), could still get a liberal arts college degree and a separate JD.  Those able and willing to go the undergraduate route, however, would save considerable tuition costs - as well as the opportunity and career development cost of two or three years of productive employment in lieu of law school.  Which also means that fewer lawyers would feel trapped in jobs they really didn't like just because they have law school loans to pay off (or to justify how much their parents spent on their tuition).  And if after five years of your BA and LLM studies, you still want more, you could pursue a SJD, like a PhD of law - currently so rare a degree, most people don't know it exists.

Yes, employers would have to be willing to hire these B.A. lawyers.  But the lower cost of these lawyers (justified by their smaller investment in tuition) would be a real incentive.  Indeed, having a pool of B.A. lawyers could increase access to justice for lower income families, small businesses, and non-profit organizations.  The state and local governments could get in on the action, too.  Really, I only see upsides - and I think it's a model that could be feasibly implemented by rolling it out on a state-by-state basis. 

You can thank me later.