We’ve all heard it dozens of times over the past few years: COVID-19 changed the way we live and work. For some, this change has been welcomed and for others, not so much. Any way you slice it, much of the pandemic-era changes are here to stay.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, I learned a colloquial phrase from undergraduate college students who were required to transition to an online platform to continue their schooling. They began calling their school experience “Zoom University.” Perhaps because they were not gung-ho about the requirement of an online environment (especially for students paying for the experience and atmosphere of high-dollar universities), this coined phrase was said dripping with a bit of disdain for how COVID-19 reared its ugly head.

Nevertheless, I do wonder if these students realized that they were America’s test subjects for what we all know now as the “new normal” in higher education. These days, hybrid or fully online higher education is no longer the exception but more often the rule. But what about for law school? Can the academic rigor of the law school education take place in an online environment?

The 15 law schools that have launched American Bar Association (ABA) approved hybrid programs would argue “yes.” While some of these law schools adopted a hybrid option before the pandemic, many law schools have adopted a hybrid version after the onset of the pandemic because of the normalization of online education that COVID-19 brought. I should highlight that I use the term “hybrid” law school and not merely “online” law school because many of these schools require in-person lecture hours each semester. What this looks like is a school organizes weeks or weekends for law school students among the same cohort to attend their classes on campus.

In the fall of 2021, I enrolled in the hybrid program at the University of Dayton School of Law (one of the first law schools to launch an ABA-approved hybrid law school option). Of course, that first semester as a part-time 1L, my classmates and I were only taking torts and a legal writing course, along with a not-for-credit “student success” course that taught us how to brief a case, manage time, create an outline and more. The credit hours vary by semester throughout the entire program, but at least for the first year, my law school considered it wise to ease us into law school with manageable course loads.

But I know what you’re thinking: how does one even do law school classes online? While law schools approach their hybrid programs differently, my school uses a mixture of pre-recorded lecture videos by a course professor, a live Zoom call (this would be “class”) to teach the class material once a week (and yes, there is cold calling), and interactive learning activities, such as MBE multiple choice questions and practices essays to test students’ knowledge on the lectured material. These pre-recorded lectures are organized by modules that make up the 12-week course for each class, and each module should be completed ahead of the weekly class to be prepared for the live Zoom call lecture by the designated course professor. The digital education platform my law school colleagues and I use to complete the class material is called Canvas. Professors usually conduct quizzes and a midterm during the semester to better prepare students for the final exam and the bar exam. Midterms and final exams are taken on ExamSoft for the most part, which is what many states use to conduct bar exams today. All the classes offered to students in my hybrid program are the same classes offered to the University of Dayton’s traditional, residential law students, including doctrinal classes, skills classes and extra-curricular courses such as moot court, law review and mock trial. In other words, any learning opportunity offered to a residential student is offered to a hybrid student.

I have been encouraged by the students who belong to the first-ever hybrid cohort at my law school (those who enrolled in the fall of 2019). Nine students in this cohort sat for the February or July 2023 bar exams and passed! These results show that it’s possible to succeed in either a Zoom classroom or a real classroom.

Why Hybrid?

So why attend a hybrid law school program? For me, it was an easy decision.

First, I am an active-duty military spouse who isn’t guaranteed three years in any location in the United States to complete a law degree, let alone be in a location with a law school nearby. My spouse and I believe service to our country through the military is a privilege and at least in this season of life, it does take priority.

Second, attending a part-time hybrid law school allows me to continue working full-time and building a set of skills in a career. It also allows me to “pay as I go” and dodge the notorious debt crisis lawyers face after financing law school.

Third, a hybrid law school program option removes barriers for students who have family responsibilities. Law school students who are parents can continue caring and providing for their families because they do not have to relocate the family to the law school’s location, and they can continue working to provide for the family’s needs.

And lastly — and this should hit home for all lawyers — hybrid law schools are the most efficient form of legal education! There’s no commute to and from the law school; your class can be taken from the comfort of your own home; and your class is recorded on Zoom, so if the need arises, you may miss class with little penalty. And of course, we all know time is money…or for law students, time saved in these areas means more time spent with family or on hobbies (better than money, in my opinion).

But with all these pros, there must be some cons, right? Well, yes. While you can juggle all these other commitments and complete your law degree, the workload becomes heavy very quickly. While I don’t encourage anyone to push themselves beyond a capacity that is sustainable for their physical or mental health, you can adapt because you will quickly learn the art of “imperfection.” Law students are typically very type A and tend to aim for perfection in everything they do. With holding a full-time job and attending a part-time law school, life leaves you with no time to waste on rumination or perfection: you must work with the limited time you’re allotted to complete that memorandum or prepare for that Constitutional Law quiz because dinner needs to be on the table, and kids need to be bathed and tucked into bed tonight!

The greatest lesson this hybrid law school experience has taught me is not the Rule Against Perpetuities, but rather to go ahead and embrace the messy, imperfect, never-enough-time-in-the-day ways of life now. There’s beauty in the chaos.

America is remote today. A Pew Research Study shows that, following the COVID-19 pandemic, 35 percent of workers with jobs that can be held remotely are working from home consistently. Much like America’s workforce, hybrid law schools are the future of legal education.

Claire Perez is a Tennessee native, a North Carolina resident, an active-duty military spouse and a part-time hybrid law student at the University of Dayton School of Law.