The legal landscape is changing. The modern lawyer must be grounded in both legal theory and specialized fields like engineering, medicine and biotechnology. And the Stanford Law School has finally found a way to incorporate this need for legal diversification into its programming.

The Law School launched joint degree programs with 11 graduate departments and schools on May 3, making it the nation’s leader in the number of joint degree programs offered. More formal joint degree programs are planned for the near future.

Law Prof. Mark Kelman said such programs will help future lawyers learn necessary background in their respective areas of law.

“One can’t help frame good environmental policy with nothing but pure legal skills,” he said in an email to The Daily. “One simply must understand some of the environmental science, some economics. Doing effective human rights advocacy without a strong background in IR theory, without a comparativist’s knowledge of the cultures [in which] one might intervene, is simply very difficult.”

The Law School’s joint degree programs also make a getting a Master’s degree or a Ph.D. in addition to a J.D. much faster. The new programs allow law students to do interdisciplinary work and take advantage of other graduate programs in preparation for the demands of increasingly specialized legal careers.

“Whether it is environmental lawyers and policy makers working with people from earth sciences or lawyers involved in high tech IP who work with bioengineers, top-flight lawyers often bridge disciplines,” Kelman said, “We hope that Stanford will be a leader in producing lawyers most capable of building these bridges.”

Law Prof. Mark Lemley ‘88 said that the new programs were most relevant to scientific fields like biotechnology.

“Part of working in high-tech legal areas like patent law is understanding the science,” he said. “And one of the biggest areas of scientific change is biotechnology. So it was natural that we work with the bioengineering department on a joint degree program. We hope that this will be the first of several collaborations between law and science.”

Kelman anticipated that the programs would be popular and successful.

“Putting the programs together has required the cooperation of people throughout the University and has required overcoming some technical glitches,” he said. “My feeling is that we’ve gotten superb cooperation and that the technical glitches can all be overcome.”

Jenny Allen J.D. ‘07, a former Daily writer, said the joint degree programs are particularly beneficial to students who are uncertain of their future legal careers.

“Having a Master’s or Ph.D. in addition to a J.D. will likely open more doors for students,” she said, “and appeal to those who are not certain they want to work in a traditional legal job for the rest of their lives.”