Editing Juris Doctor (section)

==Historical context==

===Origins of the law degree===
The first university in Europe, the [[University of Bologna]], was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 11th century who were students of the [[glossator]] school in that city. This served as the model for other law schools of the [[Middle Ages]], and other early universities such as the [[University of Padua]].<ref>{{cite book
 |last=García y García
 |first=A.
 |year=1992
 |chapter=The faculties of law
 |title=A History of the University in Europe
 |place=London, UK
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |isbn=978-0-521-54113-8
 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5Z1VBEbF0HAC&q=bologna+doctor+title&pg=RA1-PA399
 |access-date=26 May 2008
 |archive-date=9 April 2023
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409145105/https://books.google.com/books?id=5Z1VBEbF0HAC&q=bologna+doctor+title&pg=RA1-PA399
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref> The first [[academic degree]]s may{{efn|Some sources have the first doctorates in theology at Paris being awarded prior to the doctorates in law at Bologna.<ref>{{cite thesis
 |first=Keith Allen
 |last=Noble
 |year=1992
 |title=An International Prognostic Study, based on an Acquisition Model, of Degree Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.)
 |page=18
 |publisher=[[University of Ottawa]]
 |degree=Ph.D.
 |url=http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED350932.pdf
 |access-date=15 February 2017
 |archive-date=3 March 2017
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170303222830/http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED350932.pdf
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>
}} have been doctorates in civil law (''doctores legum'') followed by canon law (''doctores decretorum''); these were not professional degrees but rather indicated that their holders had been approved to teach at the universities. While Bologna granted only doctorates, preparatory degrees (bachelor's and licences) were introduced in Paris and then in the English universities.<ref name="Lexikon des Mittelalters: Licentia">
{{cite encyclopedia
 |last=Verger |first=J.
 |year=1999
 |title=Licentia
 |encyclopedia={{Lang|de|[[Lexikon des Mittelalters]]}}
 |volume=5
 |publisher=J.B. Metzler
 |place=Stuttgart
}}
</ref><ref name="Lexikon des Mittelalters: Doctor, doctoratus">
{{cite encyclopedia
 |last=Verger |first=J.
 |title=Doctor, doctoratus
 |year=1999
 |encyclopedia={{Lang|de|[[Lexikon des Mittelalters]]}}
 |volume=3
 |publisher=J.B. Metzler
 |place=Stuttgart
}}
</ref><ref>
{{cite book
 |last=de&nbsp;Ridder-Symoens |first=Hilde
 |year=1992
 |title=[[A History of the University in Europe]]
 |volume=1, Universities in the Middle Ages
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |isbn=978-0-521-36105-7
}}
</ref><ref name="Herbermann-etal-1915">{{cite book
 |last1=Herbermann
 |display-authors=etal
 |year=1915
 |title=Catholic Encyclopedia
 |place=New York, NY
 |publisher=Encyclopedia Press
 |url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05072b.htm
 |access-date=26 May 2008
 |archive-date=4 August 2017
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170804141252/http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05072b.htm
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>

===History of legal training in England===
[[File:London-Inns-of-Court.JPG|right|thumb|The [[Inns of Court]] of London served as a professional school for lawyers in England]]

The nature of the JD can be better understood by a review of the context of the history of legal education in England. The teaching of law at Cambridge and Oxford Universities was mainly for philosophical or scholarly purposes and not meant to prepare one to practice law.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|pages=434, 435}} The universities only taught civil and canon law (used in a very few jurisdictions, such as the courts of admiralty and church courts) but not the [[common law]] that applied in most jurisdictions. Professional training for practicing common law in England was undertaken at the [[Inns of Court]], but over time the training functions of the Inns lessened considerably and apprenticeships with individual practitioners arose as the prominent medium of preparation.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|pages=434, 436}} However, because of the lack of standardization of study, and of objective standards for appraisal of these apprenticeships, the role of universities became subsequently important for the education of lawyers in the English-speaking world.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=436}}

In England in 1292 when [[Edward I]] first requested that lawyers be trained, students merely sat in the courts and observed, but over time the students would hire professionals to lecture them in their residences, which led to the institution of the [[Inns of Court]] system.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=430}} The original method of education at the Inns of Court was a mix of [[moot court]]-like practice and lecture, as well as court proceedings observation.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=431}} By the fifteenth century, the Inns functioned like a university, akin to the [[University of Oxford]] and the [[University of Cambridge]], though very specialized in purpose.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=432}} With the frequent absence of parties to suits during the [[Crusades]], the importance of the lawyer role grew tremendously, and the demand for lawyers grew.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=433}}

Traditionally [[Oxford and Cambridge]] did not see [[common law]] as worthy of academic study, and included coursework in law only in the context of [[canon law|canon]] and [[civil law (legal system)|civil law]] (the two "laws" in the original Bachelor of Laws, which thus became the [[Bachelor of Civil Law]] when the study of canon law was barred after the Reformation) and for the purpose of the study of philosophy or history only. As a consequence of the need for [[practical education]] in law, the apprenticeship program for [[solicitor]]s emerged, structured and governed by the same rules as the apprenticeship programs for the trades.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=434}} The training of  solicitors by a five-year apprenticeship was formally established by the Attorneys and Solicitors Act 1728.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=435}} [[William Blackstone]] became the first lecturer in [[English common law]] at the University of Oxford in 1753, but the university did not establish the program for the purpose of professional study, and the lectures were very philosophical and theoretical in nature.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=435}} Blackstone insisted that the study of law should be university based, where concentration on foundational principles can be had, instead of concentration on detail and procedure provided by apprenticeship and the [[Inns of Court]].<ref name="Moline-2003">{{cite journal
 |last=Moline
 |first=Brian J.
 |year=2003
 |title=Early American legal education
 |journal=Washburn Law Journal
 |volume=42
 |url=http://www.washburnlaw.edu/wlj/42-4/articles/moline-brian.pdf
 |access-date=10 January 2009
 |archive-date=9 May 2009
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090509032640/http://www.washburnlaw.edu/wlj/42-4/articles/moline-brian.pdf
 |url-status=dead
 }}</ref>{{rp|pages=775, 793}}

The 1728 act was amended in 1821 to reduce the period of the required apprenticeship  to three years for graduates in either law or arts from Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, as "the admission of such graduates should be facilitated, in consideration of the learning and abilities requisite for taking such degree".<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=avNMAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA74|title= 1 & 2 George IV. c. 48 |date=8 June 1821}}</ref> This was extended in 1837 to cover the newly established universities of Durham and London,<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FfVQAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1153|title=1 Vict. c. 56|date=15 July 1837|last1=Chitty|first1=Joseph}}</ref> and again in 1851 to include the new [[Queen's University of Ireland]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i6RKAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA640|title=14 & 15 Vict. c. LXXXVIII.| date= 7 August 1851|last1=Britain|first1=Great}}</ref>

The Inns of Court continued but became less effective, and admission to the bar still did not require any significant educational activity or examination. In 1846, Parliament examined the education and training of prospective [[barristers]] and found the system to be inferior to that of Europe and the United States, as Britain did not regulate the admission of barristers.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=436}} Therefore, formal schools of law were called for but were not finally established until later in the century, and even then the bar did not consider a university degree in admission decisions.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=436}}

Until the mid nineteenth century, most law degrees in England (the BCL at Oxford and Durham, and the LLB at London)<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l8UUAAAAQAAJ|title=Oxford University Calendar|date=1833|last1=Baxter|first1=W.|access-date=2 September 2017|archive-date=9 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409145105/https://books.google.com/books?id=l8UUAAAAQAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kt8NAAAAQAAJ|title=Durham University Calendar|date=1844|access-date=2 September 2017|archive-date=9 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409145106/https://books.google.com/books?id=kt8NAAAAQAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3uENAAAAQAAJ|title=London University Calendar|date=1845|last1=Univ|first1=London|access-date=2 September 2017|archive-date=9 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409145111/https://books.google.com/books?id=3uENAAAAQAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref> were postgraduate degrees, taken after an initial degree in arts. The Cambridge degree, variously referred to as a BCL, BL or LLB, was an exception: it took six years from matriculation to complete, but only three of these had to be in residence, and the BA was not required (although those not holding a BA had to produce a certificate to prove they had not only been in residence but had actually attended lectures for at least three terms).<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ad4NAAAAQAAJ|title=Cambridge University Calendar|date=1833|access-date=2 September 2017|archive-date=9 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230409145111/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ad4NAAAAQAAJ|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VoMPRz8nYQEC&pg=187|title=A History of the University of Cambridge:, Volume 3; Volumes 1750–1870|pages=187–190|author=Peter Searby|year=1988|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-35060-0}}</ref> These degrees specialized in Roman civil law rather than in English common law, the latter being the domain of the Inns of Court, and thus they were more theoretical than practically useful.<ref>{{cite web|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Ol0qAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA533|title=The Solicitors' Journal|date=29 April 1865}}</ref> Cambridge reestablished its LLB degree in 1858 as an undergraduate course alongside the BA,<ref name="LL Cantab">{{cite web|url=http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001669/18581020/082/0003|title=Cambridge|date=20 October 1858|via=[[British Newspaper Archive]]|work=Norwich Mercury|url-access=subscription}}</ref> and the London LLB, which had previously required a minimum of one year after the BA, become an undergraduate degree in 1866.<ref name="LLB Lond">{{cite book|title=University of London Calendar|date=1866|page=95|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IeQNAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA95|last1=Univ|first1=London}}</ref> The older nomenclature continues to be used for the BCL at Oxford today, which is a master's level program, while Cambridge moved its LLB back to being a postgraduate degree in 1922 but only renamed it as the LLM in 1982.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/courses/llm/the_history_of_the_llm.php|title=LLM|publisher=Cambridge University Faculty of Law|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071102202003/http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/courses/llm/the_history_of_the_llm.php|archive-date=2 November 2007}}</ref>

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, law schools in England took on a more central role in the preparation of lawyers and consequently improved their coverage of advanced legal topics to become more professionally relevant. Over the same period, American law schools became more scholarly and less professionally oriented, so that in 1996 Langbein could write: "That contrast between English law schools as temples of scholarship and American law schools as training centers for the profession no longer bears the remotest relation to reality".<ref name="Langbein1996" />

===Legal training in colonial North America and 19th-century United States===

Initially there was much resistance to lawyers in colonial North America because of the role they had played in hierarchical England, but slowly the colonial governments started using the services of professionals trained in the Inns of Court in London, and by the end of the [[American Revolution]] there was a functional bar in each state.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=775}} Due to an initial distrust of a profession open only to the elite in England, as institutions for training developed in what would become the United States they emerged as quite different from those in England.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=429}}

Initially in the United States the legal professionals were trained and imported from England.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=438}} A formal apprenticeship or clerkship program was established first in New York in 1730 — at that time a seven-year clerkship was required, and in 1756 a four-year college degree was required in addition to five years of clerking and an examination.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=439}} Later the requirements were reduced to require only two years of college education.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=439}} But a system like the Inns did not develop, and a college education was not required in England until the 19th century, so this system was unique.

The clerkship program required much individual study and the mentoring lawyer was expected to carefully select materials for study and guide the clerk in his study of the law and ensure that it was being absorbed.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=781}} The student was supposed to compile his notes of his reading of the law into a "[[commonplace book]]", which he would try to memorize.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=782}} Although those were the ideals, in reality the clerks were often overworked and rarely were able to study the law individually as expected. They were often employed to tedious tasks, such as making handwritten copies of documents. Finding sufficient legal texts was also a seriously debilitating issue, and there was no standardization in the books assigned to the clerk trainees because they were assigned by their mentor, whose opinion of the law may have differed greatly from his peers.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=782, 783}}

It was said by one famous attorney in the United States, [[William Livingston]], in 1745 in a New York newspaper that the clerkship program was severely flawed, and that most mentors
: "have no manner of concern for their clerk's future welfare ... [T]is a monstrous absurdity to suppose, that the law is to be learnt by a perpetual copying of precedents".<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=782}}
There were some few mentors that were dedicated to the service, and because of their rarity, they became so sought-after that the first law schools evolved from the offices of some of these attorneys, who took on many clerks and began to spend more time training than practicing law.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=782}}

[[File:Tapping Reeve.jpg|right|thumb|[[Tapping Reeve]], founder of the first law school in North America, the [[Litchfield Law School]], in 1773]]

In time, the apprenticeship program was not considered sufficient to produce lawyers fully capable of serving their clients' needs.<ref name="Sonsteng-2007">
{{cite journal
 |last=Sonsteng |first=J.
 |orig-year=2007
 |url=http://ssrn.com/abstract=1084098 |type=abstract
 |title=A legal education renaissance: A practical approach for the twenty-first century
 |journal=William Mitchell Law Review
 |volume=34 |number=1 |pages=13–19
 |date=2 April 2008 <!-- date text was revised -->
 |access-date=26 May 2008
}}
</ref>{{rp|page=13}} The apprenticeship programs often employed the trainee with menial tasks, and while they were well trained in the day-to-day operations of a law office, they were generally unprepared practitioners or legal reasoners.<ref name="Stein-1981" /> The establishment of formal faculties of law in United States universities did not occur until the latter part of the 18th century.<ref name="Stein-1981" />{{rp|page=442}} With the beginning of the American Revolution, the supply of lawyers from Britain ended. The first law degree granted by a United States university was a Bachelor of Law in 1793 by the [[College of William and Mary]], which was abbreviated LB; Harvard was the first university to use the LLB abbreviation in the United States.<ref name="Kirkwood-Owens-c2012">
{{cite report
 |first1=M.  |last1=Kirkwood
 |first2=W.  |last2=Owens  |name-list-style=amp
 |date=n.d.
 |title=A Brief History of the Stanford Law School, 1893–1946
 |publisher=[[Stanford University]]
 |department=[[Stanford University|S.U.]] School of Law
 |url=http://www.law.stanford.edu/school/history/historysls.pdf
 |access-date=26 May 2008
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120407053200/http://www.law.stanford.edu/school/history/historysls.pdf
 |archive-date=7 April 2012
}}
</ref>

The first university law programs in the United States, such as that of the [[University of Maryland School of Law|University of Maryland]] established in 1812, included much theoretical and philosophical study, including works such as the Bible, [[Cicero]], [[Seneca the Younger|Seneca]], Aristotle, Adam Smith, [[Montesquieu]] and [[Grotius]].<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=794}} It has been said that the early university law schools of the early 19th century seemed to be preparing students for careers as [[politician|statesmen]] rather than as lawyers.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=795}} At the LLB programs in the early 1900s at [[Stanford University]] and [[Yale]] continued to include "cultural study", which included courses in languages, mathematics and economics.<ref name="Kirkwood-Owens-c2012" />{{rp|page=19}} An LLB, or a Bachelor of Laws, recognized that a prior bachelor's degree was not required to earn an LLB.

In the 1850s there were many proprietary schools which originated from a practitioner taking on multiple apprentices and establishing a school and which provided a practical legal education, as opposed to the one offered in the universities which offered an education in the theory, history and philosophy of law.<ref name="Sonsteng-2007" />{{rp|page=15}} The universities assumed that the acquisition of skills would happen in practice, while the proprietary schools concentrated on the practical skills during education.<ref name="Sonsteng-2007" />{{rp|page=15}}

====Revolutionary approach: scientific study of law====
[[File:Joseph Story.jpg|thumb|[[Joseph Story]], United States Supreme Court Justice, lecturer of law at Harvard and proponent of the "scientific study of law"]]
In part to compete with the small professional law schools, there began a great change in United States university legal education. For a short time beginning in 1826 Yale began to offer a complete "practitioners' course" which lasted two years and included practical courses, such as pleading drafting.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=798}} United States Supreme Court justice [[Joseph Story]] started the spirit of change in legal education at Harvard, when he advocated a more "scientific study" of the law in the 19th century.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=800}} At the time he was a lecturer at Harvard. Therefore, at Harvard the education was much of a trade school type of approach to legal education, contrary to the more liberal arts education advocated by Blackstone at Oxford and Jefferson at William and Mary.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=801}} Nonetheless, there continued to be debate among educators over whether legal education should be more vocational, as at the private law schools, or through a rigorous scientific method, such as that developed by Story and [[Christopher Columbus Langdell|Langdell]].<ref name="Stein-1981">{{cite journal
 |first=Ralph Michael
 |last=Stein
 |year=1981
 |url=http://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/228/
 |title=The Path of Legal Education from Edward to Langdell: A History of Insular Reaction
 |journal=Chicago-Kent Law Review
 |volume=57
 |issue=2
 |pages=429–450
 |access-date=25 May 2008
 |archive-date=3 March 2021
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210303194828/https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/lawfaculty/228/
 |url-status=live
 }}{{rp|page=445}}</ref>{{efn|For detailed discussions of the development of [[Christopher Columbus Langdell|C.C. Langdell's]] method, see la&nbsp;Piana (1994)<ref name=la-Piana-1994>
{{cite book
 |first=William P. |last=la&nbsp;Piana
 |year=1994
 |title=Logic and Experience: The origin of modern American legal education
 |place=New York & Oxford
 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]
 |url=https://www.questia.com/read/90428553?title=Logic%20and%20Experience%3a%20The%20Origin%20of%20Modern%20American%20Legal%20Education
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090506183208/http://www.questia.com/read/90428553?title=Logic%20and%20Experience%3A%20The%20Origin%20of%20Modern%20American%20Legal%20Education
 |url-status=dead
 |archive-date=6 May 2009
 |via=
}}
</ref> and Stein (1981)<ref name=Stein-1981/>{{rp|pages=449–450}}
}} In the words of Dorsey Ellis, "[[Christopher Columbus Langdell|Langdell]] viewed law as a science and the law library as the laboratory, with the cases providing the basis for learning those 'principles or doctrines' of which law, considered as a science, consists.{{' "}}<ref>
{{cite journal
 |last=Ellis |first=D.
 |year=2001
 |title=Legal education: A perspective on the last 130&nbsp;years of American legal training
 |journal=Washington University Journal of Law & Policy
 |volume=6 |page=166
}}
</ref> Nonetheless, into the year 1900, most states did not require a university education (although an apprenticeship was often required) and most practitioners had not attended any law school or college.<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=801}}

Therefore, the modern legal education system in the United States is a combination of teaching law as a science and a practical skill,<ref name="Moline-2003" />{{rp|page=802}} implementing elements such as clinical training, which has become an essential part of legal education in the United States and in the JD program of study.<ref name="Sonsteng-2007" />{{rp|page=19}}