Published on Concord Monitor (http://www.concordmonitor.com)

A new path to law school

By Karen Langley
Created 04/23/2010 - 00:00
Salem
College to wrap up baccalaureate
So you're a community college student working full time and looking for a path to law school.

A college designed for you is close to opening, pending approval by Gov. John Lynch of a bill that cleared the House on Wednesday. The American College of History and Legal Studies would enroll students for their final two years of college and award bachelor's degrees in one field: history and legal studies. Classes would meet in Salem three nights a week, and the $10,000 tuition - modest for any baccalaureate institution - would be cut in half for students awarded a scholarship.

The college guarantees students with high grades admission to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, and it allows high achievers to shave a year from their studies by combining their final year of college with their first year of law school. It wasn't a difficult arrangement to make. The dean of the independent law school, Lawrence Velvel, is the founder and dean of the new college.

Velvel began work on ACHLS after seeing bright students shut out of the legal profession because of a modest economic background or youthful inattention to their studies.

"A lot of people think that they cannot go to law school, that there is no way they will be admitted," Velvel said. "It gives a chance to people who otherwise academically wouldn't have the chance."

ACHLS describes itself as the only college in the United States to focus solely on history. Velvel had planned to establish it in Massachusetts but found state law did not allow a college that offers only junior and senior years. He found no such difficulties in New Hampshire, where the recent legislation would allow the college to grant degrees. The school plans to open in rented space in a Salem office building.

The college would offer only classes related to the law and history, though those categories are broad, including topics such as "The History of Films About the Legal Process" and "The History of Physics in the 20th Century." Velvel said the degree would provide a broad education to any student, but the focus is designed with a particular objective: ensuring that more of America's leaders, so often lawyers, have a thorough grounding in history.

"Unfortunately, one of the reasons our country keeps getting in trouble, particularly abroad, is Americans do not know about and do not care about history," Velvel said.

Historian Joseph Ellis, a member of the college's board of trustees, recalls being intrigued by the recognition of his discipline as the central liberal art. Ellis, who teaches at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, said there are parallels between the processes of historians arriving at conclusions and judges arriving at verdicts.

"Both lawyers and historians are forced to make sense out of complex and conflicting pieces of evidence," he said.

The college would keep its expenses low by offering little besides classes. They would be small and discussion-based, a combination Velvel said would allow ACHLS graduates to compete with graduates of the many storied universities of New England. As at the Massachusetts School of Law, which does not require applicants to take the LSAT and sells itself to "deserving persons who have been unfairly excluded from law school," Velvel said ACHLS aims to level socioeconomic inequities.

Only people willing to be part of a new idea need apply to the school, Velvel said.

"Of course, there are some people who wouldn't try a new idea if you paid them in gold," he said. "So those kind of folks will have to go to the standard school, presuming they get in."

College officials are now selling their school to students at community colleges throughout New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

On a recent afternoon at Manchester Community College, Maureen Mooney, chief operating officer at ACHLS and a past minority leader of the New Hampshire House, stood at an information table, asking students walking by about their major. She pitched the college to Tracey Fils-Aime, a 20-year-old education major.

After hearing about the night classes and low tuition, Fils-Aime said the college would be a great option for students looking to become lawyers.

"It caters to the real life," she said. "Most people leaving high school are not just students. They have to work."

Fils-Aime had hoped to attend a historically black college in Baltimore but was dissuaded by the idea of taking out thousands of dollars in loans. She works full time with adults who have disabilities and plans to transfer to a four-year university so she can become a high school history or English teacher.

"At this point, it's hard not to have a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and live well," she said.

Another student, Andrew Johnson, said a tuition bill that could dip to $5,000 would counteract any worries of enrolling in an untested college. Johnson, 19, said he does not know what he wants to study, but he would keep the college in mind if he leaned toward law.

"Saving a year, that could save so many people time and money," he said.

The college expects to finalize its first class by July.

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