How many years does it take to be a criminal justice lawyer?
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At the universities of most countries, law is taught by a faculty of law, which is a department of a university's general undergraduate college. Law students in those countries pursue a Bachelor of Laws degree. In some countries it is common or even required for students to earn another bachelor's degree at the same time. Nor is the LL.B. the sole obstacle; it is often followed by a series of advanced examinations, apprenticeships, and additional coursework at special government institutes.
In a few countries, particularly the United States, law is primarily taught at law schools. In the United States and countries following the American model, (such as Canada with the exception of the province of Quebec) law schools are graduate/professional schools where a bachelor's degree is a prerequisite for admission. Most law schools are part of universities but a few are independent institutions. Law schools in the United States award graduating students a J.D. (Juris Doctor/Doctor of Law) (as opposed to the Bachelor of Laws) as the standard law degree. Many schools also offer post-doctoral law degrees such as the LL.M. (Legum Magister/Master of Laws), or the S.J.D. (Scientiae Juridicae Doctor/Doctor of the Science of Law) for students interested in furthering their knowledge and credentials in a specific area of law.
The methods and quality of legal education vary widely. Some countries require extensive clinical training in the form of apprenticeships or special clinical courses. Others do not, like Venezuela. A few countries prefer to teach through assigned readings of judicial opinions (the casebook method) followed by intense in-class cross-examination by the professor (the Socratic method). Many others have only lectures on highly abstract legal doctrines, which forces young lawyers to figure out how to actually think and write like a lawyer at their first apprenticeship (or job).Depending upon the country, a typical class size could range from five students in a seminar to five hundred in a giant lecture room. In the United States, law schools maintain small class sizes, and as such, grant admissions on a more limited and competitive basis.
Some countries, such as the United States, tend to have a preference for full-time law programs while students in other countries like the United Kingdom, Brazil and India often work full- or part-time to pay the tuition and fees of their part-time law programs.
Law schools in developing countries share several common problems, such as an overreliance on practicing judges and lawyers who treat teaching as a part-time hobby (and a concomitant scarcity of full-time law professors); incompetent faculty with questionable credentials and textbooks that lag behind the current state of the law by two or three decades.
A lot
7 years...3 for law..
To be a lawyer, whether criminal or civil, you'll need to get a 4 year Bachelors degree first--usually in pre-law. And then you'll need to attend law school, which is another 3 years to get your J.D. And then you'll need to pass the bar exam(s) for the various states in which you plan to practice law.
So you're talking about 7 years of schooling.
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