[2] Several institutions offer basic legal education (leading to the LLB degree), the oldest of which is the University of London External System.
[8] Among the La Salle Extension University[9] graduates who went on to make contributions in law and politics are governors Harold J. Arthur and Eurith D. Rivers, Senator Craig L. Thomas, U.S.
Representatives John S. Gibson and William T. Granahan, and African-American leaders Arthur Fletcher, Jessie M. Rattley, and Gertrude Rush.
It is the first online law school to offer Internet based and faculty led videoconferencing sessions for students for some courses.
[10] In 1996, Abraham Lincoln University began a hybrid in-class and correspondence approach to law school, designed to offer scheduling flexibility to students, before adding an online component in 2004.
[16] Such technology provides direct communication between professors and students in live “real time” virtual classrooms.
In this teaching method, students are assigned case opinions and statutes to read and brief before each class session.
It is believed that such pedagogy helps prepare the students for the rigors of law practice, as well as teaching them how to engage in the type of analysis necessary to perform well on state bar attorney licensing exams.
[22] Utilization of the Socratic Method pedagogy by online law schools in the traditional “interactive” direct question and answer format occurs through audio broadcast over the Internet of live sessions with professors calling on students and receiving immediate responses.
This method of instruction has the advantage for online law schools that there is immediate “give and take” interaction in the questioning, answering, discussions and debates by and between the students and professors.
[27] Proponents of such exclusions argue that without ABA accreditation, there is no effective way to check that a law school meets minimum academic standards and that its graduates are prepared to become attorneys.
[31] Law professor Michael Froomkin made a similar point, "The losers in the new era of legal education will be second- and third-tier institutions that lack name recognition and its concomitant prestige, and their faculties ...
"[32] Graduates of California online schools have commenced legal actions in order to sit for the bar exam in their home states.
Mel Thompson, a 2005 graduate of the West Coast School of Law, attempted to sue the ABA and the Connecticut Bar Examining Committee, alleging that Connecticut's refusal to let him sit for the bar exam violated due process, equal protection, and served as an "arbitrary" and unlawful restraint on trade.
[34][35] In 2007 Ross Mitchell, a 2004 graduate of Concord Law School, filed suit against the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners.