According to the American Bar Association, a law school can offer distance-education credit toward a Juris Doctor, but only under limited conditions. First, you must have completed at least 28 credits toward your JD. Second, you can not take more than four credit hours of distance learning per term. And third, you can not apply more than 12 credit hours of distance learning toward your JD. Check with your law school to find out what courses, if any, it offers through distance education. Exclusively online law schools and foreign correspondence law schools, however, are not approved by the American Bar Association and will limit your ability to sit for the bar examination in the jurisdiction(s) of your choice.
Awarded in most common law countries as the primary law degree, the Bachelor of Laws or LLB no longer is recognized in the United States as sufficient to practice law. If you intend to practice law in a foreign country, however, earning an LLB through a foreign correspondence law school might be a practical option. Several countries offer distance legal educations; they are, notably, Germany, South Africa, Great Britain and Australia.
Finding a distance-education law program, particularly abroad, can be difficult if you do not know where to look. With more schools embracing distance learning, however, you can check with the admissions department of any school that interests you. A comprehensive list of foreign law schools (see Resources) may be helpful if you are open to study based in different regions of the world.
Before embarking on a distance legal education, explore what limitations it might place on your ability to sit for the bar examination in the jurisdiction(s) of your choice. How your education was obtained matters. As of January 2011, California is the only state that does not require applicants to the bar to have graduated from an American Bar Association-approved school. Practicing in California for a period of years, however, may enable you to sit for the bar in other states. If you are interested in practicing in the United States, contact the state board of bar examiners in the state(s) to which you would like to gain admittance. Find out what admissions criteria you need to meet and the impact a foreign correspondence legal education has on your ability to satisfy them.