Re: Schlessinger (Was Re: One Tower, Two (or more) States)

["A. Joseph Ross" <lawyer@world.std.com>]

At 07:02 PM 3/12/00 -0500, Martin J. Waters wrote:

         IMO, most of the public in the U.S. hears doctor and thinks,
>medical doctor. I also know from many years doing PR for a college that
>there are two schools of thought in higher education, generally, as well as
>specifically among people who have doctorates. One is that using Dr. for
>Ph.D. or other academic doctorate is pompous and silly and, in my
>experience, most professors at the leading schools don't do it.

Interesting.  When I was in college, all professors who held doctorates 
were called "doctor."   There were very few professors who didn't have a 
doctorate.

Lawyers are not usually called "doctor," and this is partly because, prior 
to the late 1960s, the law degree was LL.B., and earlier in the 20th 
Century, it was common for people to go to law school without having 
completed an undergraduate degree.  Completing an undergraduate degree 
before going to law school was only just starting to be required in the 
mid-1960s, when I was applying to law school, even though by that time it 
was usual to do so.  After the law degree was formally a post-graduate 
degree, a few law schools began changing the degree to J.D.  The movement 
only really gathered steam in the late 1960s, and my law school changed it 
about a year before I graduated.

Many law schools even allowed their past graduates, if they had another 
bachelor's degree, to convert their LL.B. degrees into J.D.s, on payment of 
a fee.



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  A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                                     617.367.0468
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