First full-time online course in the field of law
The University of New Hampshire law school rolled out the country’s first hybrid online residential law program which will provide expertise in intellectual property. The first batch consists of 45 students who have initially enrolled.
The program started on Wednesday in Concord campus, where classes for orientation and a five-day session were conducted for the students. The age group diverged from 25 to 75 which included students and some working individuals. 43 out of 45 applicants were from outside the state of New Hampshire; they will go back to their homes after the session and complete the rest of the three and a half year program online.
Megan Carpenter, Dean of the UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law said, “We are revolutionizing legal education. The need for this type of economical and adjustable program had been felt for a long time, as the traditional method is facing a decline in students’ enrollment in recent times. The number reached around 52,000 for the country’s law school in 2010 but after that, the law education is on a slide. In 2017 it had only 38,000 applications and the University of New Hampshire was also not exempted from this declining trend.
The students can complete the whole program online
The new program has been popular among the students due to its unique nature. The data of the school shows that most of the students are from different part of the country such as Texas and California who has one or another kind of professional degree or working somewhere else. At least five of them are working in the area of patent and intellectual property.
The program needs permission from the American Bar Association before commencing the program. The law book says that degrees of law can be completed at most of one-third of total school hours by the means of distance learning and rest need to be completed on the school campus only. The University of New Hampshire Law School seems to be the fourth school to be exempted from this condition.
The school is selling the new program as one of the kind in the field of law which deals with the subjects such as trade secrets, databases, and privacy which comes under intellectual property. From the initiation of the institution in 1973, the Franklin Pierce Law center offering degrees in law. This new program is going to be the first fully online law course.
