After watching Catch Me if You Can with Tom Hanks, and seeing how that fella was able to pretend to be so many other professions, and then finding out that he actually passed the bar exam I began to wonder:
DO I have to go through Law School in order to become an attorney, or can I just study really hard and pass the bar?
For that matter, can I skip med school and just take my boards?
Do I have to go through Law School in order to become an attorney
Yes.
or can I just study really hard and pass the bar?
No.
And don’t believe any “law school” that tells you that you can. There are a lot of scam correspondence schools out there that will tell you “you can take the bar in X state, which doesn’t require you go to law school, and then you transfer your license to practice to another state and they have to recognize it.” It’s BS. All God’s chillun must enter through the narrow gate to Esquirehood.
Most (if not all) states require 3 things in order to be, and stay, a lawyer:
Now West Virginia, where I live, did not have these rules until the 50s. Before then, you simply had to GO to law school; the rules said nothing about graduating. And you had to TAKE the bar exam, passing was optional. Becoming a lawyer back then was more about being apprenticed to an already practicing lawyer and learning the ropes from them.
This is how Senator Byrd became a lawyer. Yes. He’s that damn old.
For example, right here in California. I’m looking at the November 25th copy of the Daily Journal (legal paper) and there’s an article on an independent study program called Law Office or Judges’ Chambers study.
Roughly speaking it’s a way to study law under the guidance of an experienced lawyer. There are a lot requirements on things like the time you spend studying, take the “baby bar” and other goodies - it doesn’t look easy at all but it’s specifically NOT law school or correspondence school.
If you make it through and pass the bar you’re a real honest-to-goodness lawyer.
I think that California is also one of the few states that will let people take the bar who have a law degree from a non-accredited school. IIRC their pass rate on the bar exam isn’t so hot but it’s OK to go that route.
As little as I know about CA rules I know even less about other states’ (IANAL but I work for a large law firm).
Here is a fairly recent article on the subject.
It seems that only seven states (Vermont, New York, Washington, Virginia, California, Maine, and Wyoming) allow this, and a current Vermont state Supreme Court Justice is a lawyer who has never attended law school.
The article finishes with a list of famous lawyers who never attended or didn’t finish law school, including Clarence Darrow and Strom Thurmond.
Actually, many jurisdictions (including my own) do not require continuing education in order to maintain a license to practice.
Vermont allows a person to “read law”, which generally means working in an attorney’s office and studying under his or her guidance. There are quite a number of lawyers practicing who did this.
As noted, a few states allow you to sit for the Bar by “reading” the law (apprenticing), but this is increasingly rare. Although I’m sure there are currently-practicing Virginia lawyers who got their license in this fashion, during my Virginia Bar review class one of the teachers, who is also a consultant to the Board of Bar Examiners, said that he’s not aware of anyone who’s tried it in many years.
–Cliffy
Almost. California has its own accreditation for law school. Most states require a juris doctor from an American Bar Association accredited law school, but in California you can take the bar with a degree from a California Bar Association accredited school. A CBA accredited school degree isn’t good in any other state, though.
Texas has required an ABA degree to sit for the bar for 30-40 years; my dad had to attend law school in 1968 or so. I don’t think there are too many lawyers who didn’t go to school here anymore.