Programs Overview

Concord is a law school that happens to be online.

As California's pioneering online law school, Concord's mission is to provide accessible and affordable legal education of the highest quality. Our Juris Doctor and Executive JD curriculum develops the abilities, skills, and perspectives in legal fundamentals, professional and practical skills, and critical thinking skills that result from a sound program of legal education. Students learn the law-the U.S. Constitution, state and federal statutes and regulations, and the case law that applies and interprets those laws. They also explore the policies that provide the underpinning for those laws, judgments, and decisions. In short, Concord students learn how to think like a lawyer, and they learn how to do the research and writing essential to their craft. 

Concord has never been just about innovative technology. We are a law school-that happens to be online. That means the Concord platform provides all the services and support a student should expect to find in the hallways of a campus-based law school.  Concord students access course materials, watch video lectures, attend live classes, take exams, check their module progress, go to the library, meet with other students in outside of class, and contact their professors and the administrative staff-all through our online learning platform.

Curriculum designed for student success

 

A successful law student who goes on to be a successful practicing attorney or advocate in another arena needs to master three skills: the knowledge of the law, the ability to analyze the law, and the ability to express the law. Concord courses are carefully designed by our academic deans and professors to promote student mastery of these skills through a system that provides multiple modalities to learn the law, continuous practice, interaction, and feedback.

Courses by Module

Each Concord course is organized in a series of modules. In a year-long course, students work through 30 modules on an optimum pace of about 11 days per module. Modules function as an interactive syllabus, providing access to assignments and organizing one’s studies. Building on the past, each module includes repetition and reinforcement of legal concepts through reading assignments, video lectures, organized discussion, writing assignments, multiple-choice quizzes, and other exercises.

Asynchronous Recorded Lectures Available 24/7

Lectures by prominent legal experts and academics are integrated into the courses. In a bricks-and-mortar program, professors generally use the classroom for both lecture and discussion. Concord creates a more flexible learning environment with the use of audio and video lectures available on the Internet 24/7 with the opportunity to review the content throughout the course.

Synchronous Live Classes

Students meet with their professor online in live classes. Professors may challenge students to learn how to apply law to a fact pattern through the use of hypotheticals and cases not yet decided. Or they may use the time as a forum to demonstrate the uncertainty of law. Whatever the topic, the diversity of student experiences at Concord contributes to the vibrancy of the discussions and helps create learning communities where respect is shown to others with whom one might disagree.

Systematic Feedback

Unlike many traditional law curriculums, Concord is committed to providing students with continuing feedback. Students answer numerous essay questions and perform other writing assignments throughout the courses. The exercises are thoroughly reviewed and critiqued. The paperless technology facilitates tracking and the prompt return of assignments. Students also practice on thousands of multiple choice questions. Through our quiz system students immediately get back a graded response to that quiz providing the right answers, explaining why the wrong answers were incorrect, and citing reading material or some other part of the curriculum to which students can return to review that particular point of law.