For students looking to attend law school, Auburn will begin offering a law and justice degree for undergraduate students.
The plan was recently approved by the Alabama Higher Education Commission, and it will be officially offered in the upcoming fall semester.
According to Steven P. Brown, one of the architects of the major and professor in the political science department, said the degree will emphasize skills such as reasoning, interpreting case law, research and oral and written communication, which he said are all needed in law school.
“If someone is bound and determined to go to law
The curriculum for the major will include courses from the communication and journalism, political science, philosophy and history departments.
The degree is intended to give students experience and practice with the skills they will need in law school and eventually in their career.
At this time, there will be no new courses created. The degree will solely draw on courses already offered, it was just a matter of bringing together the right combination of courses.
The degree will be housed in the political science department.
“You have a lot of law-related majors and different things that are out there that say they’re preparing you for law school, and by that, they mean they’re preparing you to get in, and we don’t take that approach,” Brown said. “Getting in is on you. But once you’re in, we think we’ll have already given our undergraduates some skills they need to do well in law school.”
Brown said he has had former students come back after their first year in law school and tell him that law school was nothing like what they expected. This major will allow students to explore what a career in law would be like without having to take out student loans and go into debt, he said.
Since 2013,
Shortly after the idea was floated, the University of Arizona developed an undergraduate degree in law, which gave Auburn a blueprint to model the law and justice degree after.
“We thought this was fascinating because they were recognizing that you can start to prepare undergraduates early for law school,” Brown said.
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