记者（Reporter）：Many Chinese student do not know what the exact meaning of J.D. Whether is it a master’s degree or Ph.D. So can you explain what is J.D.

    许多中国学生不知道J.D到底是指什么？它是硕士课程还是博士课程？您能够为大家解释一下吗？

    雷蒙教授（Doc Lehman）：Yes, J.D program began in North America in United States and Canada. And it has several different characteristics, one characteristic is that students are admitted to a J.D program as a graduate program like LLM or SJD, or Ph.D，that is to say it’s not a bachelor’s program. To be admitted to a J.D program one has to first spend four years receiving a bachelor’s degree in some other subject. Then after doing that, the content of the program is defined in part by the method of teaching. And so the core teaching method in a J.D program involves what is known as the Socratic method, the case method of instruction.

    This was developed at Harvard by professor Langdell, and the essence is that students when they come to class do not just listen to a lecture by a professor, they come having read a case, and professor asks questions that lead students to see that the case could be understood in several different ways, and the students are taught to be able to see problems from multiple perspectives at the same time. And this is really the essence of the J.D education. And the reason why it is so important that in a globalizing world, we are trying to harmonize many different systems. We try to harmonize civil law system, common law system. We are trying to harmonize western perspectives, Asian perspectives, European perspectives. All of those perspectives are important. And a great lawyer now needs to be able to see things from all of these perspectives and develop a sense of how to build a harmony among all of them. And that is the core of the J.D education. It is not so much to teach students a substantive body of law, it is more to teach students in approach to law, a way of thinking about law, that has become the principle way what transnational lawyers especially in the business world think about law.

    J.D项目始于北美的美国和加拿大两个国家。它具有几个特点，一个特点是，进入J.D项目学习的学生是以研究生项目开展的，好比LLM法律硕士、SJD法学博士等，也就是说它不是学士学历的项目。学生如果想报考J.D课程，必须先花4年时间拿到一个任意专业的本科学历。在进入J.D课程后，课程教学内容在某一方面由教学方法来决定。J.D课程的核心教学方法是称之为“苏格拉底式教学法”，也就是案例教学法。

    这种教学形式是由美国哈佛大学的兰戴尔教授创立，它的主要特点就是，学生进入课堂后不仅仅只是听教授授课，学生们会阅读一个案例，然后教授会提出一些列问题来引导学生从多个层面，多方位的来理解这个案例，学生同时就学会了从多个角度来看问题的能力。这就是J.D课程教育的精髓所在。J.D项目在全球化世界如此重要的原因是我们正在试图将不同的法律体系进行协调。我们在协调民法体系和普通法体系，我们在把西方观念、东方观念、欧洲观念进行融合。所有这些观念都很重要。一个优秀的律师应该具备从各个不同的角度来看问题并且能够在其中建立起协调关系。这就是J.D的教育核心内容，它不是教法律实体内容，而是教学生法律的思维方式，这已经成为了全球商业中国际律师的法律思维法则。