An executive MBA in law

Cite this Article
Larry Ribstein, An executive MBA in law, Truth on the Market (March 10, 2011), https://truthonthemarket.com/2011/03/10/an-executive-mba-in-law/

The Canadians show the way:

The year-long program, which runs in the evenings and on weekends, will examine the impact of globalization on laws, legal institutions and capital markets. * * * “This is a way for people to engage, in a more in-depth way academically, those issues they’re facing at work.” * * *

Business law professor Anita Anand, who will teach in the program, said: “We’re actually finding there is a lot of demand at the practitioner level for courses such as the ones we’re designing and putting out there.” Although the teaching lineup is not yet finalized, Ms. Anand will likely be joined by some U of T law school heavy hitters, including business professor Edward Iacobucci, law and economics professor Michael Trebilcock and capital markets regulation expert Tony Duggan. The $25,000 program will be open to non-lawyers with five years of executive experience, but it doesn’t qualify them to practise law in the province.

This is consistent with my vision of the future of legal education.  It’s not just some glorified CLE. It’s theory that matters in the real world, taught by a leading law-and-econ faculty to non-lawyers.  It will be interesting to hear the conversations between this program’s graduates and their lawyers.

An experiment U.S. law schools might try — if the ABA lets them.