Probably a stupid question(s) but (strictly for informational purposes):
In order to legally be a lawyer or a medical doctor does one HAVE to attend law/medical school or could you just study real hard and take the requisite licensing exams? For instance if I wanted to be a lawyer but for whatever reason couldn’t attend law school and get a degree, would I still be able to become a legitimate lawyer if I just studied really hard, memorized everything there is to know about the law and take the bar? Would I even be allowed to take the bar?
Note I’m not asking about being a GOOD lawyer or doctor, I’m merely asking about the minimal requirements to become a technically legitimate professional in either of those fields.
You used to be able to sit for the bar in some states by apprenticing in a law office (Clarence Darrow got his start that way). But you can’t take the exam if you don’t meet prerequisites like that, or a law school degrees.
AFAIK, all US licensing boards require a degree from a credentialed medical school as a part of the requirements to get licensed to practice medicine. Even then, you’ll need to have completed at least some post-doctoral residency training, and passed various exams. And the requirements for getting that training and taking that exam also include being in or having graduated from a medical school.
In addition, to be a medical doctor (even if unlicensed and nonpracticing), you still need a school to grant you a medical degree (MD or DO).
Here in Montana any old schmoe used to be able to “challenge the bar” (i.e. take the bar exam) until 1974 IIRC. I think we were one of the last if not the last state to let you do this.
Note that three years of supervised apprenticeship are required, on top of your one year of law school, so it takes a year longer than regular law school, and you are not eligible if you failed out of your year law school (you have to complete a year and be eligible to return).
Also “applicant must receive instruction from said attorney or attorneys in those subjects which are customarily taught in approved law schools” and “Compliance with the requirements of this section shall be proved to the satisfaction of the New York State Board of Law Examiners.” I’m not sure what that actually means, except that it might be very hard to find someone willing to supervise such a course of study.
I believe that Virginia still permits one to “read law,” i.e., do a supervised apprenticeship, instead of going to law school. One still would have to take the Bar exam.
In Vermont you can still “read law”, that is, serve an apprenticeship with an experienced attorney and take the bar without spending one day in law school. I know several lawyers who did it that way.
You can read law in six states: California, Maine, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. As previously mentioned, reading law in New York State requires one year of law school.
Abraham Lincoln famously read law, passing the bar in Illinois without ever having attended law school, at a time when that was much more common.
That wasn’t considered unusual in Lincoln’s time. In fact, I remember reading that John Calhoun, who became a lawyer a generation before Lincoln, was considered unusual because he studied law in a university rather than learn it in a law office.
In England and Wales, you need to have been called to the Bar by one of the Inns of Court and completed a year of Pupillage to be a Barrister. So strictly speaking it is not required to go to any Law School just get called and do a year of pupilage. Of course the Inn can just refuse to call you and they don’t sans the proper qualification (a law degree and a post graduate diploma).
Unfortunately, Engineering and Architecture are two fields where even though they can be vital to the health and safety of the public, anyone and their grandma is allowed to call themselves an “Engineer” or “Architect” in many States. I recently had an “Architect” out to my house, who revealed upon arrival that no, he was not Registered, and no, he didn’t even have a degree, he was working on a 2-year degree in CAD at a local community college - but despite working on it for 6 years, had still not graduated. Yet he had a business card which said “Architect”. :rolleyes:
To be a real, licensed Engineer or Architect, I think that now every State in the Union requires graduation from an ABET-accredited Engineering School with a BS, in addition to sitting for and passing 2 8-hour professional exams. There may be some old fogeys who were grandfathered in (my State allowed it for a while, and in the 1980’s or 1990’s told them that they had to go back to school and get a degree or give up their license. Two of the people in my graduating Bachelor’s Engineering class already had had PE’s before they started school, in fact, and were going back for the reasons aforementioned).
The national board recently debated changing the requirement to be a Master’s degree or higher by 2014; but that plan has been (wrongly, IMO) put on hold. But what they really should be doing, IMO, is cracking down hard on people who call themselves “Engineers” and “Architects” and who try to do design or analysis, and start sending them to jail, rather than the trivial $500 to $10,000 fines they hand out now.
You should send the card to your local state Architects licensing board. They take people calling themselves ‘Architect’ very seriously. I knew someone who used to work at our firm who wasn’t licensed and he went out on his own with another actual Architect and on his web page he kept referring to himself as an Architect. The board came down on him pretty hard and for good reason I think. Last time I checked all those references were gone off his web site.
The one that pisses me off is computer people who call themselves Architects. But it is part of the jargon now and I doubt it will change. Just glad I am almost at the end of my career so I don’t have to deal with it much anymore!
The guy I mentioned above is a registered architect here in NC so I guess he got in before the rules were changed to require a college degree. He used the apprentice route. He is also on the city council of Raleigh.