lawyer

No, and even today you don t have to graduate from law school to sit for the bar exam in New York, California, or many other states. A year or so of law school, plus 3 years working under the supervision of an attorney who is training you to sit for the bar is sufficient in many states.

However, today, very few people try to take the bar exam without completing law school, with good reason.

Most lawyers don t want to waste their valuable time training someone straight out of undergrad, even if the trainee will work for minimum wage.

That s why law schools exist. Training bachelor degree holders to prepare them for the practice of law is incredibly burdensome. Would-be trainees can t compensate lawyers for this burden, even if they are willing / able to work for free. Once the young lawyers have the training and become useful, they can leave for higher wages at another employer, so the lawyer who provides the training can t recover his investment.

This is why much of the initial stages of the training are outsourced from law firms to law schools--where trainees pay for the opportunity to receive training from highly educated and experienced people whose time is valuable. And law students finance it with debt, because they can t pay for it with their current low incomes, but will be able to pay for it out of higher future incomes after they complete their training.

Law schools don t provide all the training--a lot of that still happens on the job--but they get young law grads to the point where they can be useful and learn on the job.

Of the few folks who sit for the bar exam who are eligible through law office study , the bar passage rates are abysmal. Even if they could pass the bar exam, it would probably be difficult to find a job.

Would you hire a lawyer who hadn t gone to law school over someone who had?