As HSC students manically prepare for their upcoming trials, many with the hope of studying law once they graduate, the law schools around them are rapidly changing. While undergraduates – even from the most prestigious universities – face an unprecedentedly competitive job market, law schools are increasingly marketing more accessible and stripped-back degrees.

One in four law graduates cannot find full-time employment four months after finishing their degree, according to Graduate Careers Australia – the highest rate ever. As large Australian law firms undergo mergers with international firms and jobs are increasingly outsourced, graduates are entering a deeply volatile market.

The trend in these new degrees has included a shift to partially online courses, as seen at Macquarie University, or indeed, a wholly online course – as offered by ANU’s new postgraduate Juris Doctor program. Others, like UWS, Macquarie and UTS, offer a stripped back, three-year straight undergraduate law program, in contrast to the undergraduate five- year combined degrees offered by USyd, Monash and UNSW. A similarly “accelerated” JD program is offered at Monash, so the three-year masters program can be finished in just two years.

Today, 41 institutions offer a law degree in Australia. But not all are embracing the move to online courses. “While Sydney Law School is developing online teaching resources for the masters programs, there are no plans to change the teaching mode for the JD,” said a Sydney University spokesperson.

Advocates of the trend towards online learning argue this is largely a competitive response – particularly seen in JD programs – to meet the needs of mature age students, and to encourage their enrolment. Sceptics, however, suggest it’s a way to up enrolments while scaling back on resources, helping universities reap profit in an era where tertiary education funding is decreasing and unpredictable. These detractors also criticise the move as sacrificing quality courses that actually deliver employment benefits to graduates, whilst diluting the overall value of a law degree for those that do partake in traditional degrees.

Necessarily, JD programs as a postgraduate degree must focus on professional skills acquisition, as dictated by industry regulators. Intensive teaching – a mode whereby programs are taught in condensed periods of time, as in the JD three-year program – is also criticised for its inability to impart conceptual critical analysis. For JDs, the focus is on workplace experience, rather than critical analysis of law. This vocation-oriented approach to tertiary study sits in contrast with the traditional focus of a law degree emphasised at USyd.