U.S. News has started working on the law school rankings that will be published at the end of March 2009. One of our goals with this edition is to produce our first-ever rankings of part-time J.D. programs. These programs enable many who can’t afford to attend law school full time to get a law degree and pursue successful legal careers. We believe that there’s a need to assess the relative merits of part-time J.D. programs because many prospective law students are trying to determine the best part-time program in their metropolitan area (or even nationally) in order to help them decide which law school they should attend.

According to the American Bar Association, around 10 percent of all first-year law students are enrolled part time at around 80 law schools. Part-time programs typically take four years to complete instead of three years for full-time ones.





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