Becoming a lawyer without law school.
 

FAQ | Like Lincoln

I found this quite interesting.

There were not that many law schools prior to 1840 or so. Tracing legal education 19th century style | The Legal Genealogist

There are plenty of Home Made Lawyers on TOTV'S who post daily. I'm guilty sometimes. I do know who's lawyer I'm going to call if I ever get jammed up. The Firm is in Chicago.

I actually did talk to a Tampa/Chicago law firm back around 2003 but decided on a different option that the one offered by them. Honey is better than vinegar.

My godfather is a WI lawyer who the last I looked is still practicing around age 85.

Anyone with a legal issue should use their local law libraries especially if there is one like the U of FL available to them. Dig into what is out there. Lots available through the Law Library of Congress.

And you might learn something new. I do all the time and have read four degrees worth of books, scholarly articles and the like.

California is one of the states that admit people to the bar who do not have from a JD degree from an ABA approved law school. Florida is not one of them. PDF.js viewer

I just read an article that Kim Kardashian is studying to be a lawyer in California without law school.

Kim Kardashian aims to become a lawyer in same unusual way as Abraham Lincoln - syracuse.com

I saw that too. She seems to be well with the tests she is taking.

It took me years to get my JD from the U of MN in 1989 but I had gone to BYU Law school in 1982 and was very challenged by the law library part of the First Year. I was only at BYU for ten days and decided to get a MA in Librarianship first and then maybe go back after working somewhere. Did get the MA from the University of Denver in May of 1984. Worked for a publishing company for almost two years near San Francisco and then started at U of MN. Wanted to become a law librarian.

I had met a lot of law students at BYU, some at the University of Denver in the Graduate Student apartments and many the almost five years I was connected to the U of MN Law School and Library. Worked at the law library for two years after I graduated in 1989.

Hope Kim Kardashian makes it. The CA Bar is one of the hardest to pass.

Law librarians are not allowed to practice law in their law libraries and often move around a lot. I did take the MN bar twice but missed the cut with a 251 out of a 260 needed to pass the second time but was moving out of MN right after that anyway.

Never tried the CA bar when I lived there and so no need to take the FL bar during the 23 years I have lived here.

As the old saying goes: "everyone hates/reviles lawyers...until they need one." :D


Then they want the meanest, toughest one...they can afford.


An old lawyer golf buddy of mine, who charged top scale, once told me that his favorite words/attitude from a client were: "It's not the money...it's the principle." :1rotfl:

I know a lot of people who like lawyers some actually love some of them.

Kardashian could do good work with a legal license.

I have had some problems with various lawyers but that was more about small town politics here in Florida.

"Family"...doesn't count. :1rotfl:



J/K :D

Actually the only lawyer in my family was my great grandfather Trueblood on my mother's side who was a railroad lawyer and became some kind of leader in getting materials to the troops during WWII via the trains. He probably was in his 50s in the 1940s.
He married a Stimson. My great uncle talked about the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson being around at times but I do not know if I should believe that. My great grandfather did important work though and had a high rank in the Army in the 1940s in WWII.

My great uncle did like to stretch stories quite a bit though. Henry L. Stimson was a lawyer but I am not sure if we are any relation at all.

My godfather is a lawyer but I have not seen him in 50 years.

American legal system
 

My experience-
The system for better or worse forces you to hire an attorney for a court case. You end up paying roughly $300 per hour. Even if you win, you will be in a hole.
The other option is contingency. The attorney will not even take a case unless it is a sure win. You will pay all the expenses and the attorney will take a third of the total.

I have no experience with the English System but from what I think I know, you appear before a judge. In theory he knows the law and is not influenced by the fact that you are charming, good looking, remind him of his father etc. Oh and if someone sues you and looses, they have to pay your legal costs. HUM-far fewer cases and far lower percentage of attorneys in England.

Example of what is wrong. Our current issue-sexual harassment. What is the common link for all the men being charged? Right or wrong is not the question I asked.
The common link is deep pockets.

Can you validate your claims or is this heresay ?

"If you want to become a lawyer without going to law school, pick your location carefully. Only four states (California, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington) allow potential law students to skip law school entirely. Three others (Maine, New York, and Wyoming) require some law school experience, but allow an apprenticeship to substitute for one or two years of law school."

How to Become a Lawyer Without Going to Law School

Interesting premise, but as you know Tal, not easy to really get a law degree.

Best of luck to Kim.

Just remember that half of all lawyers, and doctors, finish in the bottom half of their classes. Reminds me of a joke. What's the difference between a lawyer and a catfish? One is a bottom dwelling scum sucker, and the other one is a fish : )

Two of my cousins are lawyers, and I've read the entire Connecticut General Statutes, the paper version at the public library - voluntarily, because it was interesting. Does that count?

Cannot say that I have read all the Minnesota General Statutes. Lots of them in many areas though. That is one of the ways they teach the law at a public university in some state. You get a lot of that state's law touched on by classes and most of these involve business of some kind.

The top twenty law schools though have quite the reputation. If you graduate from one of these you do have a few steps up the ladder from those who graduated from lower ranked schools. And the top five law schools grads get a lot of breaks no matter where you were in that class.

Same with medical schools I assume.

Degrees from Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and the U of Chicago do make a big difference. Access Denied

It started out because a neighbor wanted her ex-boyfriend to relinquish any claim on their son so her fiance could start adoption proceedings. Ex-boyfriend was out of the picture since before the fiance met the neighbor, before the baby was born.

So I volunteered to look for her. First stop - the library, CT General Statutes to check on state custody law. But first I had to figure out which volume of the CTGS it was in, since there are like - 20 of them, a few of them 2 inches thick.

I started with the index - which was its own volume. Found some interesting topics so I wrote those down to get back to them another day. By the end of my visit I had two pages of "interesting things to read when I have time" and still hadn't found the custody info.

After a few months I had all the info for my neighbor, and had gone through every volume of the CTGS.

Only if you stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.. :jester:

That makes some sense now.

Some of my clients in the Clinical program Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners had me looking at a lot of MN law as well as Federal law. A lot of those cases involved divorces, child support, name changes and the like.

Law librarians just show you how to use some source and leave you to find what you might need.

Some libraries now seem to be hiring social workers to help those dealing with some kind of trauma when they come into a library which is quite an improvement IMHO.

I love looking stuff up. I'm a google freak, and I get a kick out of weeding through the chaff to find the wheat. My "bathroom reading material" is the weekly local paper, the AARP bulletin - and a reverse dictionary. Discovering new things that I didn't know before is fascinating to me, and I'm not particular about the topic.

Law is fascinating, only because there's so much I don't know about it, that I can learn about it. It's probably why I didn't become a newspaper editor: I learned everything I needed to learn, in order to become one. And then it ceased to be interesting. The process was what grabbed and kept my attention.

I've learned a lot about medicine too, dentistry in particular. I became a certified aromatherapist because an accident and subsequent surgery to repair bones left me with aching muscles near the incision site, and the doctor recommended wintergreen. So I looked it up and just kept going.

I have no doubt at all that with enough sincere, personal interest or fascination with a topic, someone with good retention skills can learn enough about anything, to qualify to pass a test in that subject. That doesn't require formal training or schooling. It requires interest and dedication to the discovery process.