Purdue Global law students can’t become attorneys in most states, but say the experience is worth it anyway

Juggling a full-time job, family responsibilities and law school, Nina Boyd makes for an untraditional student.

The 40-year-old is a customer service clerk at a local county courthouse in Oregon during the day but spends her evenings and weekends studying law online.

“I've always wanted to get my JD, but I wasn’t able to because I was raising a family of four kids and teaching mostly special education,” Boyd said. “(After) three of my kids moved out, I felt like it was time for me to switch from education to law.”

Boyd is attending the law school of Purdue University Global, a public online university associated with Purdue and the nation’s first fully online law school.

But even though Purdue Global has taught at least 1,000 law students since it began in 2016, the American Bar Association can’t accredit the online program, preventing its students from taking the bar exam in most states.

Without being able to take the bar exam, Purdue Global’s law students won’t have a hope of becoming attorneys in most places in the country.

“(This) means (Purdue Global’s law school) doesn't meet the same standards that every law school that every other Indiana lawyer has attended had to meet,” said Linda Kampe, a limited-term lecturer of political science at Purdue. “Part of law is thinking on your feet, which you can't recreate in an online environment.”

However, Martin Pritikin, the dean and vice president of Purdue Global Law School, said the program’s curriculum requires students to get an adequate amount of experiential training in addition to attending synchronous lectures.

He said the annual Law School Survey of Student Engagement has even ranked Purdue Global highly in terms of frequency of class participation, preparation for oral advocacy and quality relationships with professors.

“I actually visited in-person law schools to see what their lectures are like and I will say that the way Purdue Global has set (things) up is for us to connect the dots,” said Ryan Bernal, a third-year law student in Purdue Global. “We're having discussions about how you apply (what you learn) and then how you translate into a bar exam?”

State-by-state basis

Those who earn their degree online from Purdue Global Law School are academically eligible to sit for the California bar and they can obtain a law license to practice in the state upon passing the exam.

But students interested in practicing law in Indiana, where Purdue Global is based, must petition the state before they are allowed to take the bar exam, after the Indiana Supreme Court amended state standards around practicing law in February 2024. And even still, the school can’t guarantee that an individual’s waiver petition will be granted, according to Purdue Global’s website.

When Purdue Global Law School first launched, Kampe said, a primary complaint from her and other attorneys in the state was that it was “lowering the standard for local law practice in Indiana” as it was entirely online.

Although Pritikin said Purdue Global administration isn’t sure how the Indiana petition process will work yet, Associate Dean of Academics Shaun Jamison said he doesn’t “anticipate (the specific waiver process) being unusually difficult.”

Upon receiving a law license in California or Indiana, students can also apply to take the bar exam in North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Despite the restrictions on where graduates can practice in the country, several students, including Boyd and Bernal, said they are primarily focused on pursuing opportunities in federal court or practicing in California.

“The federal court requirement is that if you passed a bar (exam) in one state, you can petition the Federal Bar in another state to ask to practice within the federal courts in that district,” said Nicki Bond, the diversity, equity and inclusion officer for Purdue Global’s student bar association. “So there is a little bit more flexibility when it comes to federal courts than it actually is in state courts.”

“I know that Dean Pritikin is very active in figuring out a way to get the school (American Bar Association) accredited,” Bernal said. “If the dean were not actively trying to change our accreditation status, that would probably have made me go a different direction.”

Students look for cheaper opportunity

Bernal, 42, said his financial situation prevented him from going into law school years ago, despite having an interest in law even before undergraduate school.

Now, he is on the path to taking the bar exam while caring for his 11-year-old daughter and running a consulting firm.

With an average student age of 42, the school was designed “for those who couldn't fit a traditional law school experience into their lives or their budgets,” Pritikin said.

“We have such a diverse group of students – diverse by age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, marital status…” Bond said. “We're online, so we live in a number of different places as well.”

Purdue Global’s 4-year JD degree costs $13,225 annually on average compared to the national average of 30,500 for in-state learners, according to Forbes. This means Purdue Global’s law students pay about $6612.5 per semester.

Pritikin said he saw “firsthand how the high cost of legal education would translate into the high cost of legal services.” He said students with lots of debt are pressured to take the highest paying job they can get as soon as possible instead of the most fulfilling job for them or the job that would fill the greatest societal need.

“The hope is that by making this school accessible for people to get a legal education, that would make law (services) accessible to others,” Jamison said.

But despite its relatively low price, Kampe believes that an online environment can’t make up for the experience of traditional law schools.

“Throwing a little money down a hole, throwing a lot of money down a hole, is still money down a hole,” Kampe said.

She said the law school, when first acquired by Purdue, was seen as “a little exploitative of its students because it has such a high dropout rate coupled with a very low bar passage rate” while still charging significant amounts of money.

The school has a first-time pass rate of 35% and an ultimate pass rate of 57%, according to its website.

“There is no student experience. That's the problem,” Kampe said. “There's a certain amount of networking inherent in going to law school. If you're online, I don't think you get to know to your classmates to the same extent.”

But some students said they disagree.

“If you're an in-person (student), you can go into a lecture hall, sit in the back corner, leave early and not talk to anybody. It's the same in the online environment; you can get early into your lecture and chat with people, or you can show up right when the professor shows up and only pay attention to class,” Bernal said. “It's not any more difficult. It's just a different way of being in touch with people.”