History
In the United States the legal profession was originally passed on through apprenticeships. Someone seeking to learn the profession would apprentice or train under the direction of another experienced lawyer. After several years of training, the lawyer overseeing the apprenticeship would file a motion with the local court asking for admission of his apprentice to the BAR and the court would typically enter an order to admit the apprentice as an attorney.
The concept of law as an elite profession collapsed during Andrew Jackson’s era of American history and a typical law student would normally attend a short undergraduate program of around two years (or sometimes less) in length – this fulfilled degree requirements for a Bachelor of Laws or LL. B at this point in history. Individuals receiving this degree would then be expected to pass an oral examination in the private office of a local judge in order to become members of the BAR and begin practicing law.
The creation of today’s J.D. program is usually credited to Christopher Columbus Langdell, who was the Dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 until 1895. Langdell dedicated his life to reforming educational standards for the legal profession in the United States. It was his goal to turn the profession into a university educated practice – and not simply and undergraduate one, but one that included three years of post-graduate, specialized education. For the most part, Langdell was successful in remolding most American law schools to fit Harvard’s mold, since most other law schools of that era employed a significant number of instructors that were Harvard graduates.
In 1896 Harvard Law School became the first to officially require an undergraduate degree as a requirement for admission – even though this requirement wasn’t strictly enforced until around 1909. By the early 1920s, this rule had been adopted by several other law schools such as Columbia, Pennsylvania, Case Western Reserve, Stanford, and Yale.
In 1902, upon its opening, the University of Chicago became the first school to use the Latin term Juris Doctor or J.D. instead of the term Bachelor of Laws. Other law schools followed suit – at least to some degree – by awarding the Juris Doctor degree as a Latin honor for students with exceptional grades. This disparate treatment eventually led law schools abandoning the idea of such a distinctions and giving the Juris Doctor designation to everyone who completed all of the school’s academic requirements successfully. Yale was the last major law school to conform to this standard, awarding its first Juris Doctor degree in 1971.