In the mid-19th century there was much concern about the quality of legal education in the United States. Christopher Columbus Langdell, who served as dean of Harvard Law School from 1870 to 1895, dedicated his life to reforming legal education in the United States. The historian Robert Stevens wrote that "it was Langdell's goal to turn the legal profession into a university educated one—and not at the undergraduate level, but through a three-year post baccalaureate degree." This graduate level study would allow the intensive legal training that Langdell had developed, known as the case method (a method of studying landmark cases) and the Socratic method (a method of examining students on the reasoning of the court in the cases studied). Therefore, a graduate high level law degree was proposed, the Juris Doctor, implementing the case and Socratic methods as its didactic approach. According to professor J. H. Beale, an 1882 Harvard Law graduate, one of the main arguments for the change was uniformity. Harvard's four professional schools of theology, law, medicine and arts and sciences were all graduate schools, and their degrees were therefore a second degree. Two of them conferred a doctorate and the other two a baccalaureate degree. The change from LL.B. to J.D. was intended to end "this discrimination, the practice of conferring what is normally a first degree upon persons who have already their primary degree". The J.D. was proposed as the equivalent of the J.U.D. in Germany to reflect the advanced study required to be an effective lawyer.