California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington still allow people to take the bar exam and become lawyers without going to law school. I was wondering if any lawyers(or anyone else) knew someone who became a lawyer through reading the law. How are they regarded in the legal profession among those who went to law school? Are they looked down upon?
It’s rare, but not unheard of in Washington. I don’t think they’re looked down upon by my segment of the bar (P.I. lawyers, criminal defense lawyers, etc)
I expect it might be hard to get a job at one the big ugly firms.
Personally, I think they’re probably getting a better practical education then we got in law school. (And I assume great variation among those who went through this process, so it may be hard to generalize)
Once your a practicing lawyer, I’m not sure it would even come up very much. People learn your reputation as a lawyer, and don’t often look up where you went to law school (or if you did)
I know two people who went to unaccredited law schools in California, which isn’t quite the same thing. The first was never in the running for any prestigious or high-paying jobs but she has worked steadily in the public sector doing litigation on behalf of children. She is very well-respected and successful. It’s not a snobby area of law so anyone who tried to hold her credentials against her would look like a pretentious boor.
The other just recently passed the bar exam and is still looking for a job so the figurative jury is still out on how the profession will regard him. A number of people who pass the bar never wind up practicing. He could be one of them.
I know several practicing attorneys who read law in Vermont. One of them (non-practicing now) was in the state legislature.
I had a friend, (more of a “Friend-of-a-friend”, but I got to know him pretty well) who badly busted his leg one summer working installing power lines and was bedridden for several months, who just to keep his head occupied (this would have been back before the internet in the late 1980’s) studied his dad’s old law journals and when he was healed up he somehow got permission to take the Oklahoma State Bar Exam, purely just for the S&G’s, and somehow ended up passing it, although he wasn’t at all serious about it.
He was a nice enough guy, but didn’t seem particularly intellectual, and damn sure liked to smoke the Mean Green like no tomorrow…
There’s the story of [Shon Hopwood](Shon Hopwood) who had TWO SCOTUS certs while he was in prison for bank robbery.
He did eventually go to law school and is currently a professor of law at Georgetown.
Yes.
Somehow I screwed up the link
Try Shon Hopwood
I once heard that you should never read the law. You have to study it.
I know / have met one person who qualified in Aus, then married and moved to California. Having already done it once, he seemed to find doing it the second time by himself not much different.