Life Musings

I once asked some people abou the propriety of lawyers calling themselves "doctor" or referring to their degrees as "doctorates." (The title "J.D." means "juris doctor.")

Here is what one J.D. told me:

Way back a half century or so ago, most US law schools gave their graduates the LL.B. degree (Bachelor of Laws). This stemmed from back earlier when law schools did not require a separate undergraduate bachelors degree befofe admission.

Eventually, some bright lawyer recognized that in federal government employment, someone with a doctoral-level degree was paid more than someone with merely a bachelors. The law schools were convinced that it was not preposterous to award a J.D. (Juris Doctor) degree to students who had completed a three-year post-bachelors program (as a bachelors was pretty much required for admission by then), so they switched the degree they awarded from the LL.B. to the J.D. They also permitted their LL.B. graduates to "trade in" their LL.B. for a J.D. if they wanted.

Even though law school graduates were now awarded "doctoral" degrees, the profession had the unusual situation where it was mostly the new graduates who had doctoral-level degrees and the more experienced lawyers (and judges) who had "mere" bachelors, so there was virtually no movement to start calling J.D. law graduates "doctor."

Also, in addition the LL.B. (now J.D.) degree, there are "graduate" law degrees awarded by some American law schools: LL.M. (Master of Laws) and S.J.D. or J.S.D. (Doctor of Juridical Science). The S.J.D./J.S.D. degree is a research degree, considered in equivalent to the Ph.D. in other fields. Once more there is the odd inversion where the initial degree is doctoral level and the advanced degree is a masters, but nobody worries about that.

Internationally, in many Continental European (particularly German-influenced) countries, practicing lawyers will have doctoral degrees and be referred to professionally as Doctor. In many other countries, universities commonly have undergraduate programs in law leading to the LL.B. degree, with graduate programs for LL.M. and LL.D. (doctor of laws) degrees. Often the LL.B. graduates will not become practicing lawyers in the same way that, say, biology graduates will not become biologists, though each may work in related fields.

In short, in the U.S., most lawyers have a doctoral-level degree (though we realize that it is sort of a doctoral-lite degree), but are not referred to professionally as "doctor" (unless possessing another doctoral degree or unrestrained pretentiousness).