From the issue dated January 21, 2000

LOGGING IN WITH ... JACK R. GOETZ Founding Dean of Online Law School Defends Its Approach By SARAH CARR Concord University School of Law, the first all-online law school, has aroused strong opinions and emotions since it opened a little more than a year ago. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg weighed in last September, saying she was "uneasy about classes in which students learn entirely from home." But Jack R. Goetz, dean of the school (http://www.concord.kaplan.edu), stands behind his vision. Concord, which is not accredited by the American Bar Association, is a division of Kaplan Educational Centers, the test-preparation company, which is owned by the Washington Post Company. Q. How did you become involved with Concord? A. The idea for Concord University came from me, actually. I presented the idea to Kaplan Educational Centers in December 1997. It had been the culmination of 20 years that I spent in legal education, trying to understand why people who would want to attend law school have been closed out of the fixed-facility system. Concord's mission is primarily to provide accessibility for legal education to mid-career persons who are well-established already in life, but are looking perhaps for a change in scenery in their job. Or maybe they are looking to enhance their own careers with a legal background and the skills that come from studying law. ... If you look at the way law schools demographically are situated in the United States, in some of the big cities you can find a lot of law schools, and then you can find vast stretches where law schools are not easily accessible. In fact, many of our students live dozens -- if not hundreds -- of miles away from the nearest law school. Q. What is your current enrollment? And do you have any enrollment projections for the next couple of years? A. We have a rolling admissions policy, and we had 157 students enroll with us the first year we were in operation. We are now two months into our second year. We currently have 175 people in the school. We believe by the end of 2000 we will have closer to 500 people in the school. The Concord education as it currently exists is just the first and second year of a four-year curriculum. In other words, students who want to transfer in from other schools who are in their final years are generally turned away at this point in time because we don't have the curriculum to handle them. ... Q. How would you respond to critics who say that legal education loses something when students learn in isolation? A. The critics who claim that have never taught online. ... There is no question that the process loses something when someone learns in isolation, but with the on-line education that Concord has devised, nobody is learning in isolation. They are in small groups. They are in communities that we have set up. They have more interaction with the professor than you would get at a fixed-facility law school. So I can agree to the statement that the process loses something in isolation, but I wouldn't agree that online education actually means isolation. Q. Because Concord is not accredited, some of your graduates may be limited in where they can practice law. How big of a drawback is it not to have accreditation? A. It is obviously discouraging for students who understand the kind of caliber education we have here and that they may be limited in terms of what kind of law they can practice. A student who attends Concord in the juris doctor program could sit for the California bar later, and upon passing the California bar, other states, depending upon their reciprocity rules, may open up to him or her. There probably would be a lot more students who would want to attend the juris doctor program if it were completely accredited, so that they could practice in any state. But, having said that, if you understand our market, most of our students who are attending here are not necessarily going to put down everything and practice law afterward. They are looking, perhaps, for an ability to interact with the corporate legal departments better, or an ability to understand the contracts that run by their desks a little bit better. So in that sense, it hasn't been a deterrent to them at all. So we keep trying, and in fact we have met with various accrediting bodies, and we keep putting forward the message. I think it is just a question of time, and over time we will gain acceptance. And I think the quality of our graduates will speak very well for the school. http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A45 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article