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Building the Future of the Legal Profession | AI and Technology in Legal Education | The Clinic As Classroom | Opening Doors to the Profession | Building the Bar
Reimagining the JD
Flexible Pathways and the Future of Legal Training
The traditional Juris Doctor degree—three years, full-time, on campus—has long been the only recognized path to a legal career. But for millions of working adults, caregivers, rural residents, those adhering to religious schedules, and career changers, that structure has created a barrier to pursuing what may have been a dream career.
The following honorees have reimagined when, where, and how legal education is delivered—reducing cost and time, expanding access, and in some cases rethinking what a law degree needs to look like in order to serve the communities that need lawyers most.
Elon University School of Law has been offering a 2.5-year Juris Doctor since 2015, and in the decade since, its outcomes have made the case that accelerated legal education is not a compromise but a competitive advantage.
Students complete seven consecutive trimesters, culminating in a required 10-week, full-time Residency-in-Practice in which every student works in a judicial chamber, law firm, business, or agency under supervision. Elon Law graduates have completed residencies in 23 other states and as far away as New Zealand.
The outcomes are compelling: an average of 90% of their graduates have secured employment within 10 months of graduation since 2017, including 96% of the Class of 2023. In February 2026, the Class of 2025 achieved a first-time North Carolina bar passage rate of 91.96%, significantly exceeding the statewide average of 78.8%.
Loyola University Chicago School of Law launched its Weekend JD in 2016 as one of the first weekend part-time law programs in the nation, and is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year with a meaningful redesign.
Beginning this fall, the program will shift to three on-campus weekends per semester, with approximately 70% of coursework completed online. The change is driven by equity: flying to Chicago seven times a semester is expensive for non-local students, and the redesigned format reduces those costs while preserving the in-person community that students and faculty value.
The program has attracted students from their 20s through their 60s from across the country and abroad, and its alumni include an Illinois human rights commissioner, the strategic executive partner in the office of the Chicago Bears’ president and CEO, and a candidate for Illinois lieutenant governor.
The University of South Dakota Knudson School of Law has reimagined the pathway to licensure itself. The Public Service Pathway (PSP), established in February 2025 by the South Dakota Supreme Court as a five-year pilot, offers an alternative route to licensure that does not require passing the bar exam.
Instead, PSP students complete 500 hours of work in a public sector legal office during the fall of their final year, develop a portfolio of written work assessed for minimum competence, complete additional coursework in the spring, and then commit to two years of public sector legal work in South Dakota after graduation.
The inaugural cohort of nine students has completed the program, with all nine accepting positions in South Dakota’s public legal sector—directly addressing a persistent shortage of attorneys willing to serve in rural and public interest roles across the state.
As one graduate described it, the person who walked into the Pennington County State’s Attorney’s Office at the start of the program was not the same person who emerged at the end.
Mitchell Hamline School of Law’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, launched in 2022, stands as a compelling demonstration that rigorous clinical legal education is possible in an online format.
Working in collaboration with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Conviction Review Unit, students investigate claims of innocence in pairs, working through thousands of pages of case files including trial transcripts, forensic results, and witness recordings.
Each semester includes structured online instruction, biweekly team supervision sessions, and an on-campus capstone week dedicated to on-the-ground investigation—visiting clients in prison, reviewing physical evidence, and interviewing witnesses.
Students have described it as the most educational experience of their law school careers. As more law schools develop online programs, Mitchell Hamline’s experience demonstrates how rigorous clinical education can be delivered across distances without sacrificing depth.
