Speed learning

When the going gets tough, some of the tough go back to school.

With that in mind, the University of Pennsylvania's Law School and its Wharton School are recruiting on Wall Street for their new joint program that packs a J.D. and M.B.A. into three years. Students spend the first year at the law school, attend summer classes, then spend the second year at Wharton. They split their time between the two schools in the third year.

The program's designers say it saves time and money -- it would normally take five years to complete both a business and a law degree -- and that it will better prepare both lawyers and bankers to work on Wall Street at a time when legal and regulatory issues are coming to the fore.

"One of the great virtues of both the J.D. and M.B.A. is you increase your potential selection of jobs," says Edward Rock, a professor at Penn's law school and one of the program's architects. "I would think the uncertainty in the world will make that credential diversification much more attractive."

Many universities, including Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Penn itself, already offer a four-year joint J.D.-M.B.A. And Northwestern University has been offering a three-year version since 2000 (and just launched a two-year J.D.). But Penn is confident that it will have no trouble filling the 20 slots it's planning for its incoming class of 2009, especially given the troubled job market. "It's already clear that both J.D. and M.B.A. applications are way up this year," says Rock. "The applications start with a bunch of people who were just laid off."

To help structure the program, Penn turned for advice to its network of alumni on Wall Street, including those involved with its Institute for Law and Economics, which Rock co-directs. These include Perry Golkin, a partner at Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts & Co. (who has degrees from both Wharton and the law school); Robert Friedman, the chief legal counsel at Blackstone Group LP; Casey Cogut, global head of M&A at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP; Richard Schifter, a partner at TPG Capital; and Paul Levy, a founder of private equity firm JLL Partners Inc.

"Increasingly, what law firms are looking for in corporate lawyers are people comfortable not only with the law and research, but people who understand the business context," says Joseph Frumkin, an M&A partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, a Penn law school alum and co-chair of the Institute for Law and Economics. "And it only gets more complex with every passing year."

The three-year program does have its critics among Penn alumni, who question how much can effectively be crammed into what is traditionally five years of education. "Obviously, that means spending less time taking certain classes," says a law school graduate who did not want his name used. "The real issue is that there is a real sacrifice in terms of the depth of the education you are receiving."

But other alumni say they wished they had access to such a program before they launched their careers.

"I started out as a person who had no financial background whatsoever. I had a liberal arts education in college, went to law school and therefore had to learn an enormous amount on the job," says Friedman, who was a corporate M&A lawyer at Simpson Thacher for 32 years before joining Blackstone. "If I had an M.B.A. as well, I would have been way, way ahead."