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Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington will launch a new master’s program this fall aimed at non-lawyers.
The master of legal studies will work in conjunction with some of the university’s other academic disciplines to provide non-lawyers with the opportunity to take law classes specialized to their already chosen career field.
IU Maurer Dean Christiana Ochoa said she’s already seen interest from non-lawyers on the law school’s own staff.
“There was a lot of interest from staff inside the building … who work in the HR or the employment, employer relations side of the operation, or in compliance or finance, who thought that this credential would be really beneficial to them,” Ochoa said.
Ochoa also sees the program as a way to help address Indiana’s lawyer shortage in the state. The people who complete the program will not be able to practice law, but they will have other skills that will help them fill in gaps caused by the shortage.
“What they will be trained to do is know when they actually need to pick up the phone to call a lawyer, and when they can actually work themselves through the questions that they otherwise would not have been able to solve themselves and that we’re very excited about,” Ochoa said.
The law school hopes to have the applications for the program online by February. Ochoa said the school doesn’t currently have a set number of students it plans to accept but the expectation is around 10.
“Initially we expect the program to be relatively small. It’s just getting off the ground,” Ochoa said.
She said she expects the program to grow pretty quickly and would not be surprised if it has 30 or more students in the next few years.
It is set up as a 30-credit degree that should be finished within a year in-person at the Bloomington campus. Ochoa said undergraduate students can really take advantage of the program.
The law school is also working on an accelerated master’s program with the College of Arts and Sciences. Undergraduate students who participate in the accelerated program can count 10 credits towards the master’s degree and their undergraduate degree.
For those 10 credits, undergraduate tuition and scholarships apply rather than graduate-level tuition, Ochoa explained.
“There’s a lot of really exciting possibilities here for undergraduates,” she said.
The program is designed to have four entry-level classes that are required. From there students get to choose what courses they want to take with law school students. One capstone course would wrap up work for the degree.
However, IU Maurer is not the first law school to implement a program like this.
A tailored curriculum
IU Maurer is joining a growing number of law schools offering degrees for non-lawyers.
Currently, 66 of the nation’s 198 accredited law schools offer master’s degree programs, according to the American Bar Association.
Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis has had its Master of Jurisprudence for a decade now after launching in 2014.
Associate Dean of Graduate and International Program Lloyd Wilson Jr. said the program has had about 90 graduates and currently has 32 students.
The Indianapolis law school program is designed a little differently. Students who are full-time can complete the program in a year but part-time students can take longer.
Wilson said the majority of students who participate in the program are part-time.
“Most of them are already professionals pursuing a career, and they’re enrolling in the MJ to better understand how law intersects with their career and their professional lives,” Wilson said.
The MJ program is 30 credit hours with two required courses.
“It’s an extra credential that somebody moving up through the career could point to. It is also, our alumni tell us, valuable for them in doing their jobs better, because they’re more able, better able to understand the legal environment in which every business and every person operates,” Wilson said.
Wilson said students are able to tailor their classes to their profession.
“If a student comes in and says, ‘my nine to five job is regulatory compliance, I want to take every regulatory compliance related course you have to offer,’ then we can meet that,” Wilson said.
IU McKinney Dean Karen Bravo said the law school takes pride in its MJ graduates.
“IU McKinney is dedicated to broadening access to legal education including equipping non-lawyers in our MJ program with the legal knowledge to enhance their professional success,” Bravo said. “Our MJ students also bring diverse perspectives and valuable life experiences that enrich the classroom and strengthen our law school community.”
In action
Angie Lyon participated in the dual-degree option. She graduated with her MJ from IU McKinney and a Master of Arts in Philanthropic Studies in 2023.
“It was the perfect intersection of the things that I was interested in,” Lyon said.
Lyon said that she decided to look into graduate school during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
She said that she liked that she had great flexibility to pick the law school classes most applicable to her interests.
“I think it is a really unique opportunity. And if you don’t want to practice law, but you want that experience, it’s such a wonderful degree,” Lyon said.
She currently works at Indiana Legal Services as the director of fund development and marketing and her dual degrees have made the job a perfect fit.
“It gave me a rather unique situation or position,” Lyon said. “I have, I think, earned the respect of my colleagues and the supporters of the organization, because I know what it’s like to sit in a chair in law school even before I get a JD.”•
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