Concord is a division of Kaplan (with whom many of us are intimate thanks to the dreaded bar exam and the Kaplan “to the rescue” bar review course). Kaplan has a 60-year track record in education and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the $2.1 billion dollar in revenues (in 1998) Washington Post Company. I'd say Concord has some serious financial backing. And speaking of serious, they have a serious group of students. 40% of Concord students (average age 40 years old) already hold other graduate degrees, ranging from M.B.A.'s to M.D.'s and hold responsible positions, from Assistant Vice Chancellor at a state university to CEO of a public accounting firm.
For years, Dean Jack Goetz, founder of Concord, mulled over the reasons that people who wanted to attend law school never did. The usual reason was family or career responsibilities prevented them from doing so. After learning about the Internet in 1995 and viewing demonstrations of lectures placed on the Internet, he got the idea for an online law school to accommodate those people. Dean Goetz realized that its curriculum could always be available to its students if offered over the Internet, making law school accessible to anyone. Students would be able to customize their "class-time" to fit their own hectic schedules. This flexibility could also accommodate those who may not otherwise be able to attend a traditional law school due to geographic constraints or physical limitations.
However, while studying other distance learning models, he discovered that the dropout rate was 40-50%. By increasing the level of interactivity, he surmised that he could beat those odds, and sure enough, Concord has a 75% retention rate. At Concord, the "classroom" presentations are made either via audio-only Web lectures or audio/ video Web lectures, by nationally recognized faculty such as Harvard Law School Professor Arthur R. Miller (Civil Procedure), among others. While the “video professors” do not interact directly with Concord students, interactivity, the keystone to Concord's high retention rate, is insured by the following methods: (1) other faculty members lead discussion groups for an hour each week, similar to a "chat" session; (2) students can arrange to meet with professors during their "office hours" and (3) students form study groups with other students, all via the Internet.
