In my first business school teaching job (1969), I ran into considerable
prejudice against law degrees, mainly from an associate professor of
marketing who insisted that the J.D. was a master's degree, but also
from the institution, which imposed entry barriers and forbade J.D.s
from undertaking certain faculty functions.  Another college in the
area had a written policy that holders of the J.D. or LL.B. could not
be promoted beyond assistant professor.  My present employer imposes
a few minor, nonpublic restrictions.
 
My dean at the time--an Ed.D.--had done a little research into the
history of the J.D. degree, and because he seemed to share the
marketing prof's view (despite the contrary message of most of his
survey evidence), I did an independent study.  The salient points I
recall from my small study of over 25 years ago are these:
 
1.  Initially, the way to become a lawyer in the U.S. was to "read
law" as an apprentice to a lawyer.  In some states, California
included, this method of becoming a lawyer is still available.  In my
15 years in CA, however, I've heard of only one person acquiring bar
admission that way.  She was prominently in the news for her
accomplishment.
 
2.  As the need for formal schooling for lawyers became apparent, law
schools cropped up, sometimes as independent institutions, but more
commonly as add-ons to universities.  They offered the LL.B.
Ordinarily one could enter law school without any prior collegiate
study, so the degree could be and was viewed as truly a bachelor's
degree.
 
3.  Law schools soon recognized the need for undergraduate foundations
for law study.  A common requirement was 90 hours of "theory work" for
law school admission.  That requirement was in place at Indiana
University when I first applied in the early '60s.  Since 90 hours is
less than a bachelor's degree, many argued that the law degree could
not be considered a graduate degree.  They overlooked the fact that
most law school applicants had a bachelor's degree.  I entered law
school with both a bachelor's and a master's degree, and the law work
was the most rigorous of my life.
 
4.  Initially, the J.D. was an "honors" designation, granted to the
upper 10% or so of the graduating class.  The rest received the LL.B.,
including many future law school professors.
 
5.  Eventually, the J.D. became the standard degree for the basic
three-year course of law study.  Harvard was one of the last LL.B.
holdouts, switching to the J.D. only in recent years.  (Decades?)
 
6.  Somewhere along the line, the law schools instituted a system of
advanced law degrees.  They followed the logic of the Ph.D. hierarchy
by adding the LL.M. and the S.J.D., thus reinforcing the myth
that the modern LL.B/J.D. is only a bachelor's degree or at most a
master's.  Between the LL.M. and the S.J.D. are variations such as the
J.S.D.
 
7.  The year I made my study, law schools in the U.S. granted 32
S.J.D. degrees.  The number of Ph.D.s granted that year was many
thousands.  Even after correcting for fields of study, the number of
S.J.D.s per thousand law students is miniscule in comparison to the
number of Ph.D.s, D.B.A.s, and Ed.D.s per thousand students in those
fileds.  The point is that the S.J.D. has never been considered a
necessary basis for professorship in either the law school or the
business school.  The J.D.--together with high law-class standing and
some law practice--is the norm for law school professorship.
Previously, the LL.B.--perhaps with an LL.M. for lower-standing LL.B
graduates--was the norm.  The J.D., a reasonably high law-class
standing, and widely varying additional background requirements are
the norm for teaching business law/legal
environment/regulation/ethics, etc., in business schools.
 
8.  A related point:  It was not only the LL.B. that could be traded
in for a "better" degrIt was not only the LL.B. that could be traded
in for a "better" degree.  Approximately 25 years ago, a former chair
of mine, a graduate of a major university in the Northwest, received a
Ph.D. in exchange for his earned D.B.A.  This was purely a mail-order
transaction with his university, entailing no further study or
dissertation.
 
I have always maintained that the J.D. is the functional equivalent of
the Ph.D. as a basis for collegiate teaching.  This view was
reinforced by my own study and by my review of my old dean's survey
materials.  The occasional lawyer with a Ph.D. argued that the Ph.D.
was "tougher," but more lawyers with Ph.D.s argued the opposite--that
the law program was tougher.  Such comments miss the point.  The J.D.
degree is valuable because it represents an immersion in a unique
field of study of major importance to business and to most other
disciplines.  Because of their law study and experience, J.D.s have
knowledge and insights unlikely to be possessed by non-J.D.s, yet
critical to a full understanding of the other disciplines.  Moreover,
J.D.s have qualities that are extremely valuable for developing
critical thinking:  A sense of facts and procedure, an analytical
objectivity, often not possessed by others, as attendance at almost
any general faculty meeting will quickly reveal.
 
     David Reitzel