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Juris Doctor (see etymology and abbreviations below) is a first professional graduate degree   and professional doctorate      in law. The degree was first awarded by Harvard University in the United States in the late 19th century as a degree similar to the old European doctor of law degree (such as the Dottore in Giurisprudenza in Italy and the Juris Utriusque Doctor). Originating from the 19th century Harvard movement for the scientific study of law, it is the only law degree that has a goal of being the primary professional preparation for lawyers. It is the only professional doctorate in law and is a three year program in most jurisdictions. Like other professional doctorates in the United States (M.D., D.D.S., etc.), a research dissertation or thesis is not required. This degree primarily exists in the United States, but since about 1997 it has appeared in universities in other countries for the first time, although it has a unique form in each country.

Etymology and abbreviations
In the United States, the degree may be conferred in Latin as Juris Doctor or in English as Doctor of Jurisprudence. In United States academic tradition, degrees conferred in Latin may be abbreviated in Latin only, while degrees conferred in English may be abbreviated in English or in Latin&mdash;provided the degree has a Latin equivalent. Thus, Juris Doctor may only be abbreviated J.D. (or JD), while Doctor of Jurisprudence may be abbreviated either D.Jur. or J.D. (JD is also permissible, as above, but not DJur).

Origins of the law degree
The foundations of the first universities in Europe were the glossators of the 11th century, which were schools of law. The first European university, that of Bologna, was founded as a school of law by four famous legal scholars in the 12th century who were students of the glossator school in that city. The University of Bologna served as the model for other law schools of the medieval age. While it was common for students of law to visit and study at schools in other countries, such was not the case with England because of the English rejection of Roman law (except for certain jurisdictions such as the Admiralty Court) and although the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge did teach canon law until the English Reformation, its importance was always superior to civil law in those institutions.

The history of legal training in England


The nature of the J.D. can be better understood by a review of the context of the history of legal education in England. The teaching of law at Oxford University was for philosophical or scholarly purposes and not meant to prepare one to practice law. Professional training for practicing common law in England was undertaken at the Inns of Court, but over time the training functions of the Inns lessened considerably and apprenticeships with individual practitioners arose as the prominent medium of preparation. However, because of the lack of standardization of study and of objective standards for appraisal of these apprenticeships, the role of universities became subsequently of importance for the education of lawyers in the English speaking world.

In England in 1292 when Edward I first requested that lawyers be trained, students merely sat in the courts and observed, but over time the students would hire professionals to lecture them in their residences, which led to the institution of the Inns of Court system. The original method of education at the Inns of Court was a mix of moot court-like practice and lecture, as well as court proceedings observation. By the seventeenth century, the Inns obtained a status as a kind of university akin to the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, though very specialized in purpose. With the frequent absence of parties to suits during the Crusades, the importance of the lawyer role grew tremendously, and the demand for lawyers grew.

Traditionally Oxford and Cambridge did not see common law as worthy of study, and included coursework in law only in the context of canon and civil law and for the purpose of the study of philosophy or history only. The apprenticeship program for solicitors thus emerged, structured and governed by the same rules as the apprenticeship programs for the trades. The training of solicitors by apprenticeship was formally established by an act of parliament in 1729. William Blackstone became the first lecturer of law at the University of Oxford in 1753, but the university did not establish the program for the purpose of professional study, and the lectures were very philosophical and theoretical in nature. Blackstone insisted that the study of law should be university based, where concentration on foundational principles can be had, instead of concentration on detail and procedure had through apprenticeship and the Inns of Court.

The Inns of Court continued but became less effective and admission to the bar still did not require any significant educational activity or examination, therefore in 1846 the Parliament examined the education and training of prospective barristers and found the system to be inferior to the legal education provided in Europe and the United States. Therefore, formal schools of law were called for, but not finally established until later in the century, and even then the bar did not consider a university degree in admission decisions.

Legal training in colonial North America and 19th century U.S.
Initially there was much resistance to lawyers in colonial North America because of the role they played in hierarchical England, but slowly the colonial governments started using the services of professionals trained in the Inns of Court in London, and by the end of the American Revolution there was a functional bar in each state. As institutions for training developed in the colonies, because of the distrust of a profession only open to the elite in England, the institutions which developed in what would become the United States would be much different than those in England.

Initially in the United States the legal professionals were trained and imported from England. A formal apprenticeship or clerkship program was established first in New York in 1730&mdash;at that time a seven year clerkship was required, and in 1756 a four year college degree was required in addition to five years of clerking and an examination. Later the requirements were reduced to require only two years of college education. But a system like the Inns did not develop, and a college education was not required in England until the 19th century, so this system was unique.

The clerkship program required much individual study and the mentoring lawyer was expected to carefully select materials for study and guide the clerk in his study of the law and ensure that it was being absorbed. The student was supposed to compile his notes of his reading of the law into a "commonplace book", which he would try to memorize. Although those were the ideals, in reality the clerks were often overworked and rarely were able to study the law individually as expected. They were often employed to tedious tasks, such as making handwritten copies of documents. Finding sufficient legal texts was also a seriously debilitating issue, and there was no standardization in the books assigned to the clerk trainees because they were assigned by their mentor, whose opinion of the law may have differed greatly from his peers. It was said by one famous attorney in the U.S., William Livingston, in 1745 in a New York newspaper that the clerkship program was severely flawed, and that most mentors "have no manner of concern for their clerk's future welfare… [T]is a monstrous absurdity to suppose, that the law is to be learnt by a perpetual copying of precedents." There were some few mentors that were dedicated to the service, and because of their rarity, they became so sought after that the first law schools evolved from the offices of some of these attorneys who took on many clerks and began to spend more time training than practicing law.



It was considered eventually that the apprenticeship program was not capable of producing lawyers well capable of serving their clients. The apprenticeship programs often employed the trainee with menial tasks, and while they were well trained in the day to day operations of a law office, they were generally unprepared practitioners or legal reasoners. The establishment of formal faculties of law in U.S. universities did not occur until the latter part of the 18th century. With the beginning of the American Revolution, the supply of lawyers from Britain ended. The first law degree granted by a U.S. university was a Bachelor of Law in 1793 by the College of William and Mary, which was abbreviated L.B.; Harvard was the first university to use the LL.B. abbreviation in the United States.

The first university law programs in the United States, such as that of the University of Maryland established in 1812, included much theoretical and philosophical study, including works such as the Bible, Cicero, Seneca, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Montesquieu and Grotius. It has been said that the early university law schools of the early 19th century seemed to be preparing students for careers as statesmen rather than as lawyers. At the LL.B. programs in the early 1900s at Stanford University and Yale continued to include "cultural study," which included courses in languages, mathematics and economics.

In the 1850s there were many proprietary schools which originated from a practitioner taking on multiple apprentices and establishing a school and which provided a practical legal education, as opposed to the one offered in the universities which offered an education in the theory, history and philosophy of law. The universities assumed that the acquisition of skills would happen in practice, while the proprietary schools concentrated on the practical skills during education.

Revolutionary approach: Scientific study of the law
In part to compete with the small professional law schools, there began a great change in U.S. university legal education. For a short time beginning in 1826 Yale began to offer a complete "practitioners' course" which lasted two years and included practical courses, such as pleading drafting. U.S. Supreme Court justice Joseph Story started the spirit of change in legal education at Harvard when he advocated a more "scientific study" of the law in the 19th century. At the time he was a lecturer at Harvard. Therefore at Harvard the education was much of a trade school type of approach to legal education, contrary to the more liberal arts education advocated by Blackstone at Oxford and Jefferson at William and Mary. Nonetheless there continued to be debate among educators over whether legal education should be more vocational, as at the private law schools, or through a rigorous scientific method, such as that developed by Story and Langdell. In the words of Dorsey Ellis, "Langdell viewed law as a science and the law library as the laboratory, with the cases providing the basis for learning those 'principles or doctrines' of which 'law, considered as a science, consists.'" Nonetheless, into the year 1900 most states did not require a university education (although an apprenticeship was often required) and most practitioners had not attended any law school or college.

Therefore, the modern legal education system in the U.S. is a combination of teaching law as a science and a practical skill, implementing elements such as clinical training, which has become an essential part of legal education in the U.S. and in the J.D. program of study. Whereas in the 18th and 19th century, few U.S. lawyers trained in an apprenticeship "achieved a level of competence necessary to adequately serve their clients," today as a result of the development of the U.S. legal education system, "law graduates perceive themselves to be prepared upon graduation" for the practice of law.

Creation of the J.D. and major common law approaches to legal education
The J.D. originated in the United States during a movement to improve training of the professions. The didactical approaches which resulted were revolutionary for university education and have slowly been implemented outside the U.S., but only recently (since about 1997) and in stages. The degrees which resulted from this new approach, such as the M.D. and the J.D., are just as different from their European counterparts as the educational approaches differ.

Legal education in the United States
Professional doctorates were developed in the United States in the 19th century, the first being the M.D. in 1807, but the professional law degree took more time. At the time the legal system in the United States was still in development as the educational institutions were developing. The status of the legal profession was at that time still ambiguous (unlike that of the medical practitioners, whose place in society has always been well established), therefore the development of the legal degree took much time. Even when some universities offered training in law, they did not offer a degree. Because in the United States there were no Inns of Court, and the English academic degrees did not provide the necessary professional training, the models from England were inapplicable, and the degree program took some time to develop. At first the degree took the form of a B.L. (such as at the College of William and Mary), but then Harvard, keen on importing legitimacy through the trappings of Oxford and Cambridge, implemented a LL.B. degree. This was somewhat controversial at the time because it was a professional training without any of the cultural or classical studies required of a bachelors degree in England. Thus, even though the name of the English LL.B. degree was implemented at Harvard, the program in the U.S. was nonetheless intended as practical or professional training, and not, as in England, merely a bachelor of arts denoting a specialization in law.

Creation of the Juris Doctor




In the mid-19th century there was much concern about the quality of legal education in the United States. Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, dedicated his life to reforming legal education in the United States. The historian Robert Stevens wrote that "it was Langdell's goal to turn the legal profession into a university educated one &mdash; and not at the undergraduate level, but through a three-year post baccalaureate degree." This graduate level study would allow the intensive legal training that Langdell had developed, known as the case method (a method of studying landmark cases) and the socratic method (a method of examining students on the reasoning of the court in the cases studied). Therefore, a graduate high level law degree was established, the Juris Doctor, implementing the case and socratic methods as its didactic approach. The J.D. was established as the equivalent of the J.U.D. in Germany to reflect the advanced study required to be an effective lawyer. It was not a conversion of the LL.B. degree, but a graduate degree to be distinguished from undergraduate programs. It was established by the faculty of law at Harvard first. While it was still pending the approval of the administration at Harvard, the degree was introduced at all the best law schools in the nation, such as Stanford, Berkeley, and Pennsylvania. The University of Chicago Law School was the first institution to offer the J.D. exclusively.

Because of tradition, and concerns about less famous universities implementing a J.D. program, there was some reluctance by some institutions, such as Yale Law School, to implement the J.D. as the only law degree. By the 1960s every law school except Yale offered a J.D. as its sole professional law degree. Yale continued to confer the LL.B. as its professional degree in law until 1971. Nonetheless, the LL.B. at Yale retained the didactical changes of the "practitioners courses" of 1826 and was very different from the LL.B. in other common law countries.

Major common law approaches and the LL.B.
The English legal system is the root of the systems of other common-law countries, such as the United States. Originally common lawyers in England were trained exclusively in the Inns of Court, but even though it took nearly 150 years since common law education began with Blackstone at Oxford for university education to be part of legal training in England and Wales, eventually the LL.B. became the degree usually taken before becoming a lawyer. Nonetheless, in England and Wales the LL.B. is an undergraduate scholarly program and does not provide all of the training required before becoming licensed in that jurisdiction. Both barristers and solicitors must undertake two further periods of training (the Bar Vocational Course and pupillage for barristers and the LPC and a training contract for solicitors).

The bachelor's degree originated at the University of Paris, which system was implemented at Oxford and Cambridge. The "arts" designation of the degree traditionally signifies that the student has undertaken a certain amount of study of the classics. On continental Europe the bachelor's degree was phased out in the 18th or early 19th century but it continued at Oxford and Cambridge. Today Oxford offers the bachelor's degree in law (B.C.L.) as a second entry program, contrary to the practice of all other English universities. Cambridge followed the same practice until relatively recently, renaming its LL.B. degree as LL.M. in 1982.

Because the English legal education is undergraduate and provides a general education (retaining some of the characteristics of the liberal arts degree advocated by Blackstone) a great number of the graduates have no intention of becoming solicitors or barristers. The approach of the English degree can be seen in the required curriculum, in which there is no study of civil procedure, and relatively few courses in advanced law such as business entities, bankruptcy, evidence, family law, etc. There has been a trend in the past twenty years in England to introduce more professionally relevant courses in the curriculum, particularly in "qualifying law degrees," and the law school has taken a more central role in the preparation of lawyers in England, but the degree is still more scholarly or academic than those in North America. This is also the case for other commonwealth jurisdictions such as in Australia, India and Hong Kong.

Legal education in Canada is exceptional among commonwealth countries. Even though the legal system of Canada is an implant of that in England, the Canadian system is unique in that there was no Inns of Court, the practical training occurred in the office of a licensed attorney, and that since 1889 it required a university degree as a prerequisite to initiating a clerkship (which requirement was not implemented until much later in England). The education in law schools in Canada was similar to that in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, but with a greater concentration on statutory drafting and interpretation, and elements of a liberal education. The bar associations in Canada were influenced by the changes at Harvard, and were sometimes quicker to nationally implement the changes proposed in the United States, such as requiring previous college education before studying law.

Modern variants and curriculum
Legal education is rooted in the history and structure of the legal system of the jurisdiction where the education is given, therefore law degrees are vastly different from country to country, making comparisons among degrees problematic. This has proven true in the context of the various forms of the J.D. which have been implemented around the world.

Until about 1997 the J.D. was unique to law schools in the U.S. But with the rise in international success of law firms from the United States, and the rise in students from outside the U.S. attending U.S. law schools, attorneys with the J.D. have become increasingly common internationally. Therefore the prestige of the J.D. has also risen, and many universities outside of the U.S. have started to offer the J.D., often for the express purpose of raising the prestige of their law school and graduates. Such institutions usually aim to appropriate the name of the degree only, and sometimes the new J.D. program of study is the same as that of their traditional law degree, which is usually more scholarly in purpose than the professional training intended with the J.D. as created in the U.S. Various characteristics can therefore be seen among J.D. degrees as implemented in universities around the world.

Variant characteristics
Only until very recently (about 1997) the only institutions to offer the J.D. were in the United States. Universities in other jurisdictions have slowly been introducing the degrees that are called a J.D., but have important differences from the J.D. as originally intended, and that fit the needs of the various legal systems in which they are found.

Standard Juris Doctor program
As stated by James Hall and Christopher Langdell, two people who were involved in the creation of the J.D., the J.D. is a professional degree like the M.D., inteded to prepare practitioners through a scientific approach of analysing and teaching the law through logic and adversarial analysis (such as the Casebook and Socratic methods). It has existed as described in the United States for over 100 years, and can therefore be termed the standard or traditional J.D. program. The J.D. program requires a bachelors degree for entry. The program of study for the degree has remained substantially unchanged since its creation, and is an intensive study of the substantive law and its professional applications (and therefore requires no thesis, although a lengthy writing project is sometimes required ). As a professional training, it provides sufficient training for entry into practice (no apprenticeship is necessary to sit for the bar exam). It requires at least three academic years of full time study. Strictly defined, the United States is the only jurisdiction with this form of a J.D., but the University of Tokyo (in Japan) and the University of Melbourne (in Australia) are attempting to follow this model closely.

For graduates of other departments
There has been an increase in the popularity of entering the professions, and to meet this demand some schools offer a program for students who have already graduated from another department to return to school to earn a law degree. Many of the participants in this kind of program already have some work experience. The best example of this form are the J.D. programs in Hong Kong and some in Australia. Those programs are more or less identical to the LL.B. programs, except they are usually more intensive and thus take less time to complete. Because such programs are essentially a LL.B. program, this kind of program is academic in nature, shorter than other J.D. programs, and more training is required before a graduate is qualified to apply to the bar for admission (such as the PLT and an apprenticeship).

Replacement for the LL.B.
Some universities have law programs that are very similar to the J.D. programs in the United States, such as the University of Melbourne (in Australia), University of Toronto (in Canada) and Osgoode Hall Law School (also in Canada). Therefore, when the J.D. program was introduced at these institutions, it was a mere re-naming of their second-entry LL.B. program and entailed no significant substantive changes to their curricula. The reason given for so doing is because of the international popularity and recognizability of the J.D., and the need to recognize the demanding graduate characteristics of the program. Because these programs are in institutions heavily influenced by those in the U.K., the J.D. programs often have some small scholarly element. And because the legal systems are also influenced by that of the U.K., an apprenticeship is still required before being qualified to apply for a license to practice. Yale University is sometimes cited as an example of this kind of program, but actually Yale had participated in the academic reforms that led to the creation of the degree, and even though Yale retained the LL.B. title for reasons of tradition until 1971, when the degree was implemented, the program was identical to the other J.D. programs in the United States, which were true professional doctorate programs.

Australia
As in all other commonwealth countries, the standard law degree in Australia is the LL.B. Although the J.D. is "growing in popularity," only 10 of the 30 law schools offer the J.D., and the J.D. has replaced the LL.B. in only one of them. The main purpose of the J.D. in Australia is to give the opportunity for non-law graduates to study law, therefore it is supplementary to, and not a substitute for, the LL.B. The LL.B programs are usually combined with an arts degree (BA/LL.B) and can be completed in 5 years, or are offered as second entry programs. The LL.B. curriculum is less scholarly than that in the U.K., usually only requiring one jurisprudice or theory course. Many universities such as Australian National University, Bond University, University of Southern Queensland, University of New England, University of Melbourne, Monash University, Murdoch University, University of Technology Sydney, and the University of Notre Dame Australia now offer the J.D., usually for graduates from non-law programs who wish to study law. But at the University of Melbourne the J.D. degree, like at the University of Toronto, has completely replaced the LL.B. as the degree of law. A first degree is required for admittance to all J.D. programs in Australia. The program lasts three years and the courses, like the LL.B. program, are professionally oriented. But for both the J.D. and LL.B. programs, a graduate cannot be licensed to practice until after completing an articled clerkship program or practical legal training course. Bond University offers a J.D. program that has core requirements that are identical to the LL.B. However, Bond University J.D. students are also required to complete 5 masters level elective subjects. The Bond University J.D. program can therefore be described as an integrated bachelors and masters degree Even more unusual is the "LL.M. (J.D.)" at Monash University, which is the same as the Bond University program, and that institution also states that their degree is not a professional doctorate. The LL.M offered at Monash university is also offered at several other Australian universities including the University of Adelaide and the University of Western Australia. A Masters Degree is a lesser degree to the PhD program which is available across Australia. Completion of the PhD program enables the candidate to refer to themselves as "Doctor".

Canada
The typical degree to practice law in Canada is the LL.B., which requires previous college coursework and is very similar to the first law degree in the United States, except there is some scholarly content in the coursework (such as an academic research paper required in most schools). Many law schools in Canada have also begun to institute the J.D. to replace the LL.B., but without any changes to the curriculum. The programs consist of three years, and have similar content in their mandatory first year courses. Beyond first year and the minimum requirements for graduation, course selection is elective with various concentrations such as business law, international law, natural resources law, criminal law, Aboriginal law, etc. Some universities such as the University of Toronto, Osgoode Hall Law School, Queen's University, and University of British Columbia have changed the name of their degree to that of a J.D., and the law faculty at the University of Western Ontario, Dalhousie University, and University of Calgary in 2008. Despite changes in designation, schools opting for the J.D. have not altered their curricula. Neither the J.D. or LL.B. alone are sufficient to qualify for a Canadian license, as each Province's law society requires an apprenticeship and successful completion of provincial skills and responsibilities training course, such as the British Columbia Law Society's Professional Legal Training Course, the Law Society of Upper Canada's Skills and Responsibilities Training Program. and the École du Barreau du Québec. Although the main reason for implementing the J.D. in Canada was to distinguish the degree from the European counterpart that requires no previous post-secondary education, the American Bar Association has yet to recognize the degree as awarded by any Canadian institution. In the eyes of the Canadian educational system the J.D. awarded by Canadian universities has retained the characteristics of the LL.B. and is considered a second entry program, but not a graduate program. (This position is analogous to the position taken by Canadian universities that the M.D. and D.D.S. degrees are considered second entry programs and not graduate programs.) Nevertheless, disagreement persists regarding the status of the degrees, such as at the University of Toronto, where the J.D. degree designation has been marketed by the Faculty of Law as superior to the LL.B. degree designation. Some universities have developed joint Canadian LL.B and American J.D programs, such as York University (Osgoode Hall) and New York University, the University of Windsor and the University of Detroit Mercy, and the University of Ottawa Michigan State University program. Before any law schools in Canada offered the J.D. degree, some graduates from Canadian law schools incorrectly translated their Canadian LL.B. degree as a J.D., because they believe the two degrees to be substantially comparable, a practice sometimes seen in other countries as well.

Hong Kong
The primary law degree in Hong Kong is the LL.B., which is more or less identical to the LL.B. in England. The J.D. degree is currently offered at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the City University of Hong Kong, and it will also be offered at the University of Hong Kong from September 2009 onwards. The degree is known as the 法律博士 in Chinese, and in Cantonese it is pronounced as Faat Leot Bok Si. The J.D. in Hong Kong is almost identical to the LL.B. and is reserved for graduates of non-law disciplines, but the J.D. is considered to be a graduate-level degree and requires a thesis or dissertation. Like the LL.B. there is much scholarly content in the required coursework. Although the universities offering the degree claim that the J.D. is a two-year program, further study of their website reveals that completing the degree in two years would require study with no summer break. There seems to be much confusion of the role or status of the J.D. in Hong Kong, as the City University website states that their J.D. is not a doctorate. Neither the LL.B. nor the J.D. provides the education sufficient for a license to practice, as graduates of both are also required to undertake the PCLL course and a solicitor traineeship or a barrister pupillage.

Japan
In Japan the J.D. is known as Homu Hakushi (法務博士) and has replaced the bachelor of law as the first entry law degree. The program generally lasts three years. This curriculum is professionally oriented, but does not provide the education sufficient for a license, as all candidates for a license must attend the Legal Training and Research Institute.

Philippines
In the Philippines, the J.D. degree is similar to the J.D. in Canada, but is unique in that it is also more scholarly than the Ll.B. in the Philippines. The J.D. exists alongside the more common Ll.B., and like it, requires four years of study. Like the standard Ll.B. program in the Philippines, the J.D. is considered a graduate degree, requiring a college degree as a prerequisite to admission. The J.D. also covers core subjects required for the bar examinations, and fulfills the requisite education to sit for the bar examination. However, unlike the Ll.B., the J.D. requires students to finish the core bar subjects in just 2 1/2 years, take elective subjects in advanced scholarly topics (such as legal theory, philosophy, and sometimes even theology), as well as undergo an apprenticeship and prepare a thesis. The degree was first conferred in the Philippines by the Ateneo de Manila Law School, which developed the program model adopted by most schools conferring the J.D. in the Philippines, such as the University of Batangas College of Law and the Far Eastern University Institute of Law. In 2008, the University of the Philippines College of Law began conferring the J.D. on its graduates, the school choosing to simply rename its Ll.B. program into a J.D. because the "nomenclature does not accurately reflect the fact that the Ll.B. is a professional as well as a post baccalaureate degree. "

China
Officially there is no such thing as a J.D. in the People's Republic of China (P.R.C.), as the government does not authorize professional doctorates. The primary law degree in the P.R.C. is the bachelor of law. Starting in the fall of 2008 the Shenzhen campus of Peking University started the School of Transnational Law, which attempts to introduce a U.S.-styled graduate education in law. Even though this program has not yet received full accreditation by the P.R.C. government, the program has sought accreditation by the American Bar Association, the first institution outside of the U.S. to do so. The program misleadingly advertises in English that it confers a J.D. degree, but in Chinese the official degree awarded is a master's degree of international law (国际法律硕士). The curriculum of the program appears to be nearly identical to that of a J.D. program at a U.S. university and requires three years of study.

India
At this time the Juris Doctor does not exist in India, and no official entity in India authorizes the award of a Juris Doctorate degree. However, a new venture Jindal Global Law School aims to start an academic program with a recognized Juris Doctor degree starting in September 2009.

Italy
No university in Italy awards a Juris Doctor degree, nor are there any plans to implement the degree. However, because the law degree in Italy is more advanced than a standard undergraduate program, and lawyers in Italy often use the title of "doctor" (Italian law authorizes all university graduates, including undergraduates, to use the title of doctor) lawyers in Italy believe that the best translation of their degree is "J.D." which commonly appears on their resumes and profiles.

Titles
Although persons licensed as attorneys in the United States often use a variety of titles and suffixes, the titles "Attorney," "attorney-at-law," "Esquire" ("Esq.") and "lawyer" must be distinguished from "J.D.". Generally, the designation "J.D." indicates a person who has received the degree from a law school, whereas "Attorney" and the like indicate the person is licensed to practice law. Some states restrict the use of the "J.D." suffix to those licensed to practice law. Arizona, for instance, forbids the use of "J.D." as a title if it is "reasonably likely to induce others to believe the person or entity is authorized to engage in the practice of law in Arizona". (In all states, a person who is not admitted to practice law but who represents or implies that he or she is an attorney may be subject to penalties for the unauthorized practice of law or impersonating a lawyer, both of which are criminal offenses in many jurisdictions.)

Executive Juris Doctor
The Executive Juris Doctor degree was independently pioneered by two proprietary distance education schools to meet the needs of working professionals (e.g., medical doctors, dentists) who desired a legal education without having to meet the strict requirements of the California Bar (i.e., FYSLE "Baby Bar" exam). William Howard Taft University is a nationally accredited institution of higher education (accredited by the DETC, an accrediting body recognized by the US Department of Education). Concord School of Law at Kaplan University is also a an accredited institution of higher education and is both nationally and regionally accredited (accredited by the DETC and also the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation-both recognized by the US Department of Education). Neither university program is accredited by the ABA (American Bar Association). While Juris Doctor graduates can sit for the California bar exam, Executive Juris Doctor graduates currently cannot. However, Executive Juris Doctor graduates can sit for certain state (and foreign) bar exams (e.g., D.C.) if they also hold a L.L.M. degree.

Debate about academic status
The J.D. is a first professional degree and a professional doctorate. However, the J.D.'s status as a professional degree does not imply status as an academic degree. As a result, there has been considerable debate as to whether or not the J.D. is a doctoral level degree as the classification is understood in academia.

Evidence that the J.D. is a doctoral level degree

 * The American Bar Association permits J.D. holders in the United States to use the title of "Doctor"
 * The J.D. in Japan is known as Hōmu Hakushi (法務博士) and in China it is called 法律博士 ( Faat Leot Bok Si in Cantonese, or Falü Boshi in Mandarin). The characters 博士 in Japanese and Chinese mean "doctor" and this is the same title given to holders of both professional and academic doctorate degrees.
 * Academic and professional organizations recognize the J.D. as a professional doctorate.

Evidence that the J.D. is not a doctoral level degree

 * The Master of Laws (LL.M.) requires the J.D. as a prerequisite, and the Scientiae Juridicae Doctor (S.J.D.) requires the LL.M., and in turn the J.D., as prerequisites. This suggests that the J.D. is not the highest degree in law.
 * Academic institutions have stated that, despite its name, the J.D. is not a doctoral level award and graduates are not entitled to use the honorific title "Doctor".
 * The J.D. is not a terminal degree.

Notes and references
Law degrees Category:Law degrees

Juris Doctor Juris Doctor 法務博士 (専門職) Doctor juris Juris Doctor Juris doktor 法律博士