On Thursday, I took my final exams for my final year of school at Northwestern California University School of Law. Assuming I passed my exams, I now have a law degree making me eligible to take the February 2019 California Bar Examination, which I shall do.

If you’ve been following, you know NWCU is a distance learning school. They combine reading assignments, live online classes, recorded coursework, and a message board to accomplish a legal education. The American Bar Association categorically refuses to accredit law schools that offer distance learning, so graduates are left to take the bar exams of states that do not require the ABA’s blessing. That said, four years at NWCU cost me about a tenth of a traditional law school (~$15,000 — total, not per year), and I was able to do it without giving up the day job.

The graduation rate at NWCU seems to be in the range of 15%, based on a count of students in each year, so it shouldn’t be thought that this law degree is easy. It also requires passing California’s First-Year Law Students’ Examination after the first year, which is probably the biggest driver behind the low graduation rate given that the pass rate for that exam hovers around 20%.

I posted a review of my experience at around the 2 month point and the 2 year point. I still think those are fairly reflective of my experience: you must be self-motivated, have 2 hours per day, every day for 4 years, pay attention to deadlines, and know that if you don’t, no one’s going to remind you until it’s too late. It would probably be in eveyone’s interest if the school did more to keep people on track, but then again, you’re an adult in law school, and as a lawyer, no one is going to hold your hand to make sure you file that brief on time. I do also wish NWCU would update some of their materials that have obviously aged quite a bit, but then again, for most areas of the law, the curriculum hasn’t changed that much.

I look forward to beginning my bar prep shortly. I feel well-prepared and appreciate that I was able to learn the law with minimal disruption to my life. Three months until the exam…