Rebeca Piccardo/Assist. News Director
The issue of finding solutions to reduce the cost of higher education has been a heated topic in the past few years. On August 23, President Obama suggested that law schools should consider eliminating their third year to reduce the cost of earning a law degree.
Professor Margaret Maisel, the director of the FIU College of Law Clinical Program, said “I think President Obama’s comment, raising the issue of should the third year of law school be eliminated, has surface appeal largely because we know that so many law students are graduating with tremendous debt.”
Eros Miranda, the president of FIU Phi Alpha Delta Prelaw, a junior and a political science and international relations double major, said that although it would relieve the financial burden, he would prefer having three years’ preparation.
“The law field is not only very competitive, but extremely demanding,” said Miranda, “having a third year of preparation can be highly beneficial.
According to Dean Alexander Acosta, of the FIU College of Law, some law schools have become so expensive that they are inaccessible to students. However, FIU College of Law is not nearly as expensive as other schools.
“FIU, for example, has a much lower tuition and so the students don’t graduate with nearly that amount of debt,” said Acosta.
In the New York Times, President Obama said that the third year of law school is mostly spent gaining work experience, which students could go out and do as graduates with a two-year law degree.
However, according to Maisel, three years of law school may be too long, but with two years, students are not prepared enough.
Law students at FIU have the option to do externships, which give them the opportunity to receive practical experience outside of the University and FIU has eight in-house law clinics, which allow students to practice on behalf of the law school.
Maisel, who runs the Health Law clinic, said, “students who take law school clinics are involved in what President Obama was talking about—they are involved in practical training.”
According to Maisel, law clinics allow students the opportunity to handle real clients with real cases, but under faculty supervision.
“Overall, we had more than 200 students providing more than 50,000 hours of legal services to the community and in the process getting practical, hands-on experience,” said Acosta.
According to Acosta, if law schools did opt for a two-year degree, then there would be a distinction among lawyers who finished three years and those that finished two.
“On one hand, some people have said to make third year optional and have two kinds of lawyers—a limited license lawyer and regular lawyer,” said Acosta, ”on the other hand, do we want to start making these distinctions?”
Maisel considered that if law students graduated in two years, a students would go back to school to earn a more specialized master’s of law degree, thus still paying for a third year of school.
“I believe this is a difficult decision that FIU should really analyze before making,” said Miranda.
Although President Obama’s suggestion has been made before and has gained support in some law schools, not all schools spend as much or cost as much, which is the case for FIU.
I think at FIU we are lucky, because tuition is lower than other law schools around the country,” said Maisel.
According to Acosta, it is important to keep our options open.
“Bottom line, these are all good ideas. We need to think about how to reduce the cost of legal education—part of that can be more experiential learning, part of that may be reducing the number of credits—and it’s important to not take anything off the table,” said Acosta.
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