The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is a law school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, part of the Louisiana State University System and located on the main campus of Louisiana State University. Because Louisiana is a civil law state, unlike its 49 common law sister states, the curriculum includes both civil law and common law courses, requiring 97 hours for graduation, the most in the United States. In the Fall of 2002, the LSU Law Center became the sole United States law school, and only one of two law schools in the Western Hemisphere, offering a course of study leading to the simultaneous conferring of a J.D. (Juris Doctor), which is the normal first degree in American law schools, and a B.C.L. (Bachelor of Civil Law), which recognizes the training its students receive in both the Common and the Civil Law. The Paul M. Hebert Law Center is unique among university-affiliated law schools because it is an autonomous campus of, rather than a dependent college of, its larger university. This structure has been criticized for impeding the development of joint degree programs and indirectly lowering the university's rankings due to a lowering of aggregate aid to the university system. Its designation as a Law Center, rather than Law School, derives not only from its campus status but from the centralization on its campus of J.D. and post-J.D. programs, foreign and graduate programs, including European programs at the University of Lyon III School of Law, Lyon, France, and Louvain Belgium, and the direction of the Louisiana Law Institute and the Louisiana Judicial College, among other initiatives.