The legal resources that can be furnished through the use of a “pro bono” service can include the preparation of essential legal documents to the provision of advice as is needed in the event of a criminal or civil trial. Advice in of itself is an essential legal resource and one that at under normal conditions can be the cause of a person facing a substantial bill. The array of legal procedures devised for dealing with the many cases that can arise may include too great a number to allow even the ingenious amateur to have much of a hope in comprehending its complexities. The legal resource of pro bono legal consultation is thus held by many observers of and practitioners in the legal field to be an essential component of ensuring an equitable legal system with a commitment to enacting measures aimed at promoting the cause of social justice. “Pro bono,” “for the good,” comes from the longer Latin phrase “pro bono publico,” meaning “for the public good.” Since the professionals who are training in furnishing legal resources to people in need possess ample opportunity through the practicing of such a function to be subject to substantial monetary compensation, the “pro bono” concept is intended to ensure that a degree of commitment to using legal resource services for overall well being remains a component of the legal resources profession. One sobering finding that has been made by the law student activist group Building a Better Legal Profession in the interests of providing law students with the means to exercise some degree of selectivity in their choice of which law firm would be best to join consists of the finding that large law firms fall short of offering this legal resource at recommended rates.

One such possible path that should thus be considered by an individual facing a dilemma like this one is the use of correspondence schools, an institution which has long existed in the traditional form based on the mail services but in the recent growth of the digitally driven economy has taken on a new form in the shape of services offering legal studies online.

Use of such services carries with it a set of disadvantages and limitations based on the high premium placed on ensuring that the graduates of a course in legal studies are adequately prepared for the real world responsibilities and duties of being a lawyer. In the past the correspondence-based educational institutions that predated today’s legal studies online sites played an important role in opening up paths to legal studies and a law degree to people who faced prejudice and disadvantages at that point in the American social landscape. For instance, the first woman allowed by the Indiana Supreme Court to practice law in Indiana, Antoinette Leach, graduated from one such course in legal studies conducted through the mail, the first, Sprague Correspondence School of Law, in Detroit, Michigan, which would later be renamed, without a loss in prestige, Blackstone School of Law.

Another institution offering correspondence-based legal studies can be found in United States history in the form of La Salle Extension University, which was set up in Chicago in 1908 and helped provide a career jump start to several people who would go on to become prominent African American politicians. It was closed in 1980, making today’s oldest surviving correspondence law school the Northwestern California University School of Law, founded in 1982, which transitioned to an entirely online form in 2002.

Today any person seeking out the services of a correspondence law school to conduct legal studies online should be aware that under current law the only state to allow graduates of such programs and of snail mail-based correspondence education programs to sit for the bar is California. Thus a person interested in the opportunity of legal studies online may be strongly inclined to put such an education to professional use by moving to California, since the only allowance made by the legal rules of other states is to sometimes allow the licensed graduate of a Californian program in legal studies online or by correspondence to sit for the bar in their states. The services which offer legal studies online are officially classified by the state of California as “distance learning schools.” There are five online law schools in all that are officially recognized as such by California.