Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. The first graduating class of Concord Law School sat at their computers last month, awaiting their bar exam results — which were supposed to be posted online at 6 p.m. Instant messages and e-mail flew back and forth, just as they have for four years among this unique, tight-knit group of would-be lawyers.
REFRESH. REFRESH.
Four hours later, the first 10 graduates of an Internet-based law school were still waiting to find out whether they had passed the test they need to practice law. A glitch at the California State Bar’s Web site was preventing the results from being available.
Among the 10: A stay-at-home dad. An earthquake engineer. A mother of two who 10 years prior sold off her independent movie studio to raise her kids. A small-town surgeon. And a former AT&T systems analyst. As they waited, they fired messages back and forth, hoping one of them would manage to get the results and pass them among the group.
After four years on trial as the first class of the newfangled online law school, what’s four more hours?
Refresh. Refresh.
These e-learning pioneers took a leap of faith when they enrolled as the first students at Concord Law School. Now, in addition to law degrees, the group shares a unique bond, formed by dependency on interactive chat tools to get them through a grueling four-year challenge in which all their classes were online.
That bond came in handy on that long Friday night two weeks ago, as they struggled to comfort and calm each other while waiting for test results.
“Finally, at some point, the anxiety wore off and it became comical,” said Laura Collins, the former filmmaker.
Chris Zouboulakis, the stay-at home dad, was being filmed by his son as he sat at the computer. Camcorder in hand, his son sat poised to videotape his reaction to the results. Eventually, the son ran out of tape.
“We have an hour and a half of me looking like Homer Simpson saying ‘Doh!” said Zouboulakis.
A little after 10 p.m., Zouboulakis brushed his teeth and got ready for bed, then walked over to the computer and hit refresh one more time.
He had passed, along with five others from the class, who will now be known as the first Web-trained lawyers. Four others failed, and will have to take the bar exam again if they want to practice law.
Farzad Naeim, the earthquake engineer, said the four frantic hours of instant messaging was a fitting end to the group’s four-year journey.
“The whole time, we talked to each other like crazy. We didn’t talk face to face, but every time something was tough we talked to each other on the phone or e-mailed each other,” Naeim said. “We became very good friends.”
‘SENSE OF CAMARADERIE’
That wasn’t supposed to happen at Concord Law School, which opened with much fanfare at the height of the dot-com craze. The school was launched in 1998 by Kaplan, the standardized test preparation company. (Kaplan is owned by the Washington Post Company, a content partner of MSNBC.com.)
Critics said an online-only education would suffer from the lack of social contact. But the Concord grads say they wound up with a bond that even might be tighter than those among traditional law school students.
“I cannot tell you what a sense of camaraderie there is,” said 48-year-old Collins.
The six successful bar applicants arrived at Concord from all walks of life. In addition to Collins, Zouboulakis and Naeim, they were: Pat Reilly, a 46-year-old patent agent who knew he needed a law degree to take the next step in his practice. Sandusky Shelton, 55, who retired from AT&T 10 years ago. John Jascob, a 39-year-old working in securities compliance at Deutsche Bank who needed legal training to get ahead in his office.
They did have a few key things in common: They were all self-starters with great self-discipline, capable of hours of independent work each day. They were voracious readers, with families already used to hours of quiet time. And they knew how to keep to a busy schedule.
“Essentially, I kept vampire hours,” Jascob said. “Anyone going into this (while working) should know it’s almost like a second full-time job.”
Students do without flesh and blood contact at Concord, but not without one-on-one attention from teachers. All six said they received constant virtual attention from instructors — more than they would have received at a traditional law school. Collins, who transferred to Concord after two years at Santa Barbara College of Law, said she once received a 45-page e-mail from a professor when she was having trouble in a class.
HOW IT WORKS
At Concord, students attend lectures as in traditional schools, with an average class size of 35. Lectures are heard over streaming audio in real time; certain guest lectures are also available by video at any time. Broadband Internet connections help, but they are not required: Shelton watched her lectures over a 56K modem.
Class Q&A sessions are replaced by chat room conversation — with the added benefit that students can pass virtual notes back and forth without annoying the teacher. And if a student flubs a challenging question, the teacher can choose either public or private humiliation.
“Our professors were perhaps a bit kinder than they could have been,” Collins said. “If you blew it in an answer they would send you a side note and say, ‘We should talk about this after class.’ ”
Naeim, 48, said the format was a dream come true for him. As an earthquake inspector, his travel schedule is set by Mother Nature. Whenever there is a major disaster, he gets on a plane — making it impossible for him to attend a traditional law school.
“Every major earthquake that hits anywhere, I have to go,” he said. “So I could take my laptop with me, and the class would travel with me.”
Reilly also described online learning as the perfect solution for heavy travelers, who can make good use of otherwise annoying flight delays.
In the prestige-conscious arena of law, it’s unclear whether Internet-based degrees will carry some kind of stigma, and put a ceiling on the group’s legal careers. But the Concord graduates say no — in part because none of them aspire to make partner at a high-brow firm. And they claim to have received equal treatment during internships.
“When I got my internship, it never came up that I went to a cyberspace school during two interviews,” Zouboulakis said. He said he did feel some skepticism from fellow interns from more prestigious schools. “I never felt like one of them,” he said, but added that had as much to do with his age, 40, as his school.
NOT FOR EVERYONE
Concord is not perfect: To begin with, the school isn’t approved by the American Bar Association. The ABA has no provision for approving schools that offer their entire curriculum online, a spokeswoman said. That might hurt some graduates’ careers, as some jobs require applicants to hold a degree from an ABA-approved law school, and some states insist on the ABA seal of approval before graduates can take the bar exam.
InsertArt(1920284)Concord is accredited by the California Bureau of Private Post-Secondary and Vocational Education, which is only recognized by the California State Bar. So while interested students can earn a law degree from virtually anywhere, they can initially practice law only in California.
A few states, such as New Hampshire, have reciprocity agreements with California — meaning those who pass the California bar are automatically entitled to sit for the Vermont exam. Jascob, who lives in New Hampshire, said he might take that route so that he can practice law in his neighboring state.
And of course, not all Concord graduates passed the bar exam on their first try, though 6 out of 10 compares favorably with percentages at other law schools. Overall, 50.2 percent of first-time takers passed the California test, which was administered in February.
Those Concord students who failed found out that while online law school classes can be fit neatly around their tight life schedules, the intense studying and preparation classes required to pass the bar just could not.
Roberto Lee, the small-town surgeon, was one of the four to fail. He said he just wasn’t able to wrest enough time away from his practice to prepare. Elazar Harel, the chief information officer at the University of California in San Diego, gave a similar explanation. “I can’t afford to take two months off from my job for bar exam preparation,” he said.
Since Harel doesn’t plan to practice law, he figures he probably won’t take the test again, at least for a while. “My children are thinking of attending law school. Maybe when one of them prepares for the bar, I’ll try again then.”
It’s also unclear how many Concord students will even make it as far as sitting for the bar exam. While enrollment has swelled to nearly 1,200 students, the record suggests many might not make it: Four years ago, 33 students entered Concord’s initial class, but only 12 of those original students earned their degrees on schedule and several of them elected not to take the bar. Of those who haven’t made it, some are just behind schedule, while others dropped out completely. School officials weren’t able to provide a precise breakdown.
“Can people do it? Well, distance education does require an extreme amount of discipline and motivation,” said Jack Goetz, dean of Concord Law School.
NEW DOORS OPENED The students all said the intensely independent learning style isn’t for everyone.
“You have to kind of be a hermit, in a way. You have to be able to shut yourself off from the world, and not require interaction to keep going,” said Shelton. “If you’re the kind of person who won’t work out at the gym unless you meet a friend there, online law school probably isn’t for you.”
But now Shelton has the law degree she always wanted and hopes to land a job with a local judge who’s opening a family law clinic. Naeim will take over as in-house counsel at his engineering firm, and he figures he will be among the first to understand both the mathematics and the law surrounding earthquakes. Collins will open a “family-centered divorce mediation” center with her husband, a relationship therapist. Reilly and Jescott just hope their legal knowledge will help their current careers.
Zouboulakis said that, thanks to his wife’s salary, he doesn’t feel compelled to pick a direction just yet. For now, he will keep volunteering at the local district attorney’s office when his internship there ends.
But his degree is, he said, inspiring legal secretaries to finally follow the dream they secretly harbor with each snotty first-year lawyer they are assigned to — make the leap to law school themselves.
“They keep coming up to me and saying, ‘Should I do that?’ Every day now, one of them wants to have lunch with me,” Zouboulakis said.
“I tell them if I can do it, you can do it.”