The Lawyer’s Apprentice: How to Learn the Law Without Law School | Hacker News Reader

The Lawyer’s Apprentice: How to Learn the Law Without Law School

nytimes.com

82 pointse15ctr0n63 comments

I think people don't really understand the dynamics of the situation:

> Without loans to pay back, she argues, lawyers won’t have to chase big paychecks or prestige with corporate clients and could instead work in nonprofit, environmental and community law.

It's easier to get a job with a big paycheck at firm representing corporate clients than it is to get work at a nonprofit, environmental organization, or community organization with a small paycheck. The idea that graduates are shunning this sort of work in order to pursue big paychecks to pay off their law school debt is totally detached from reality. Public service jobs paying $40-60k/year are insanely competitive, and attract the top candidates that could easily get a job at a large firm if they wanted one.

The basic problem is that these clients couldn't even afford a paralegal without donor funding, and that's a limited resource. There's a fundamental barrier at issue. For something to be affordable to the masses, it must be mass-produced. But legal services are by their nature individualized. Some inner city kid gets thrown in jail, some old lady gets kicked out of her apartment, some worker loses a hand because his employer cheaped out on safety equipment: what can you mass-produce to help these people?

This is also compounded by the fact that, IIRC in some states and munis, the ultimate NGO job, public prosecutor, obsolves you of law school debt after a 5-10 year stint.

I have heard these are super difficult to get, and it is considered more prestigious in some circles than the high paycheck jobs.

Public prosecutors who become District / State Attorneys and acquire a high-profile can also go on to become Governor of the state [0]. Governors then get a chance to run for President. After retirement as President, you can pretty much write your own paycheck.

The man to keep an eye on at the moment is Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York [1], who has taken on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in a dogfight just 3 months before Cuomo seeks re-election [2]. Cuomo himself was a assistant district attorney in New York City before running for Governor [4].

[0] http://www.centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/ljs201...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preet_Bharara

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/nyregion/cuomo-responding-...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cuomo

Of course's there's Rudy Giuliani, who took on the Mafia as a federal prosecutor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Commission_Trial.

Ipso facto, public prosecution is a good career choice, since you can become President. headdesk

My point is that for an ambitious and talented person, public prosecution can become the first step on a long ladder to success in public service, which compensates for the lack of an immediate big paycheck at a private law firm. You could stop banging your head, look around you and count how many Presidents were Governors earlier and public prosecutors even earlier than that.

Not just public prosecutor, ten year in any job with a 501(c)(3) (i.e. most non-profits) or government employer (federal, state, or local) with PAYE, IBR, or ICR* payments and the remainder of your student loans are forgiven tax free.

Although it can be difficult to put an exact number on the size of this benefit, it does significantly narrow the pay gap between public interest and biglaw, and means that public interest generally beats out the non-biglaw private sector options, at least looking at those first ten years in isolation.

* PAYE is the newest program and allows you to make payments of 10% of annual income after excluding 150% of the poverty line for your family size. The other programs have somewhat higher payments.

Is this true even for school teachers?

Certainly does. In fact, I believe there are other programs specifically for teachers that kick in sooner, but I'm not sure of all the details.

Its extremely complicated.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellati...

Source: I'm related to several (five?) school teachers and ex-school teachers. The staggering number of hoops to jump thru and document are considered a huge PITA. Its such a PITA its best mentally treated as a bonus as opposed to a life plan. All you need is one principal who takes a personal dislike to you and your financial life will be ruined, so for your own mental health, go in like its a lottery winning.

> Public service jobs paying $40-60k/year are insanely competitive, and attract the top candidates that could easily get a job at a large firm if they wanted one.

Maybe that's because the people applying for them and getting them were such strong candidates that they had scholarships and didn't have debt to begin with?

That's pure speculation on my part, but it seems like it could explain both your post and the grandparent consistently.

I looked into doing this a few years back. Apprenticeship, or "reading the law," used to be a very common method of becoming an attorney.[0] However, state bar regulations standardization have removed this option in all but a few states. Which, quite frankly, is a shame. There are paralegals, clerks, etc. that could easily pass the bar.

The states' that did away with such programs should reconsider, and the states that allow reading the law should loosen their "in-office" training requirements, primarily by allowing remote work.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_law

EDIT: @Zany: Right, so test them using the bar.

It's quite ironic considering Abraham Lincoln was one such autodidact.

More importantly, John Marshall was too.

Though paralegals might only be experts in the area of law that the attorneys they work for specialize in. Very deep knowledge is possible by paralegals, but not for all parts of the law.

I'm not sure that's less true of attorneys. There's likely a statistical difference in typical depth and breadth, but you said "possible".

Well, theoretically aren't attorneys supposed to get that wide ranging exposure to different parts of the law in law school? Regardless of what they later practice, a newly minted JD will probably on average have a greater knowledge of more sectors of the law than any paralegal.

Lawyers should have it, many paralegals will fail to, but you've not at all established that it's not possible for an autodidact paralegal to acquire similar depth and breadth.

Not any. You're forgetting that people are "geeks" about everything, including the law. Some of them haven't gone to law school for various reasons, usually either another compelling interest or cost. Complex litigation paralegals might know everything from criminal to tax to probate, and can effectively self-study the rest.

Remember, reading the law is not new, and Supreme Court justices have both used this path, as did a huge portion of the professors who taught justices in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, in brief where most of our modern legal framework was laid.

Lawyers look down on paralegals generally. But at every firm, there's a few paralegals that the attorneys treat with respect because they get shit done. Those are the ones that I think could become excellent lawyers with self-study.

Why not let them take the test? If they fail, they fail.

Well said.

I don't disagree with you, but a paralegal working in criminal law for the past 20 years may not be up to snuff on probate or tax law.

I think the solution is to drastically scale back the number of newly minted JDs (there's a vast oversupply of lawyers) as well at the same time reduce law school to 2 years.

> I don't disagree with you, but a paralegal working in criminal law for the past 20 years may not be up to snuff on probate or tax law.

Neither are newly minted JDs for the most part. That's why there are bar study courses. Those courses are expensive but still vastly cheaper than three years of law school.

How do you scale back the number of newly minted JDs? Do you prevent some capable people who want to be lawyers, from becoming lawyers?

Do you support the taxi medallion system, on the basis that it prevents there from being too many taxis?

I checked this out and in-office trained would be layers tend to fail a lot: "61 percent of the 39,313 examinees from California- and ABA-approved law schools passed the bar. In contrast, just 26 percent of the 39 law readers who took the bar exam made the grade. (Of the 10 who passed, only 2 were first-time takers.)"

It does not seem to be easy method at all.

[1] https://www.callawyer.com/Clstory.cfm?eid=916106

I'm sure those who spent three years and $100k are encouraged that law school makes one twice as likely to pass the exam.

The 39% who apparently can't pass the exam after all that are probably even more discouraged.

It is disconcerting how difficult we've made it in America to practice law. The law is the cornerstone of our nation. It protects our rights. It compels behavior. It is how we as a nation formally decide allowed and prohibited behavior. And yet, you cannot professionally participate in the core of this system without years of school (or perhaps a long apprenticeship). This strikes me as a classic case of using licensing to keep out competition and keep wages high. Imagine how much worse off we'd be as a society if we required a similar system for professionally developing software.

There is no shortage of lawyers in usa. America produce so many lawyers, that they have trouble to find work. Plus, there is no country in a world where law practice does not require years of study.

In many countries (e.g. my home countries Brazil and Japan) you can get in law school like in any other major; no need to have a tertiary degree beforehand. The bar exams are still very hard, so it's not like lawyers aren't qualified.

>>Plus, there is no country in a world where law practice does not require years of study.

No, but there are many countries where getting a law degree(or any degree for that matter) doesn't cost you a dime, where you get out of uni with zero debt, not crippling few hundred thousand dollars to pay off.

No arguing with that, really. You are right.

Imagine how much worse we would be if we have unqualified lawyers and medical doctors. Hidden in every libertarian geek's logic when it comes to this is stuff is the implicit assumption that the world is is just teaming with autodidact geniuses that have no use schooling. It's fun to think but I don't think reality is cashed out in this way

Qualification == passing the bar exam

Schooling == 4 years of law school

Qualification != Schooling

You do get more coverage with both though. I mean, we talk on HN all the time about how exams are flawed at measuring knowledge, and can be gamed. School is also flawed and does not guarantee learning, but with both school + exam you can have greater confidence in your candidates...

Going the opposite direction, I grew up in a (the?) state that auto-stamps "pass" on the exam if you graduated from an in-state school. Not a figure of speech, you're auto-admitted if you have an in-state accredited law degree.

Are you talking about Wisconsin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_privilege

Yes although the location isn't as important as the concept that in a discussion of removing one half of "diploma plus test" we have a lot of experience with removal of the other half of the requirement.

In practice I don't think the horror stories really matter... if we graduate roughly 2 to 3 times as many new lawyers as there are jobs for them, then by definition we only employ roughly the top 1/2 to top 1/3 of grads, so horror stories about what could theoretically happen if an idiot got past the idiot filter are not entirely relevant if only the far right side of the bell curve will ever get jobs in the field anyway.

Yes, that is true in the typical HackerNews geek libertarian sense. Sure. But this is only the case in a small number of genius autodidacts, perhaps like yourself (minus the statistical knowledge gap). Think of the actual education as a more thorough exam and preparation, even if it is not "sufficient" as some have indicated.

no it's true in any sense. for those committed to credentialism, why not increase the difficulty of the bar exam until is a sufficiently thorough mark of preparation for a legal career, and then do away with the jd altogether?

i'm really not sure it's possible to launch a robust defence of the three year JD, bearing in mind the goals of the average student (not a life of scholarship) and the cost of full time education.

This comes up almost every time someone questions the need for full medical or law school. There is a middle ground. I personally would support multiple paths to the bar (and to medical practice). I read (and kind of enjoyed) Milton Friedman's "abolish the AMA", but I wouldn't really go that far. I do, however, think that the AMA and ABA exercise far too much power to deny others there right to practice, and I think it's healthy to have more than one path.

For instance, I recently read about a seismic engineer who attended an on-line law school (Kaplan - the article was in us news). He will take over as corporate council for his engineering firm, but he will have to take the bar in California. All other states (minor hand waving here) ban pure online law degrees. It sounds like a reasonably rigorous degree (4 years, many hours of study, interaction with students and professors), and he had to pass the bar. How could the public interest possibly be served by preventing this guy from practice? What 25 year old history major from a 4th tier law school is denied a job because a mid career seismic engineer was allowed to join the bar?

I also think that law is particularly unique in that it regulates almost every element of society. People talk about "broad liberal arts educations", but I think most pre-law students are pretty narrowly educated (they tend to avoid math heavy majors, and go straight to law school, never really understanding how other fields work). I think that the ban on on-line learning, combined with an unnecessarily long degree may actually prevent the best people from becoming lawyers - in short, rather than ensuring quality, it may simply ensure a myopic profession that still goes out and regulates everybody else.

Would someone with a grad degree from a strong program in engineering or CS and accelerated one year law degree who passed the bar be a threat to the public? Personally, I'd much rather hire someone who majored in a very rigorous undergrad field (with humanities coursework as well) and got a grad degree from a top school plus an accelerated law degree than a b- history major who partied his way through a mediocre 3 year jd and barely passed the bar. I also don't think that these two groups would compete for the same jobs. At the very least, I'd say people should have the option of pursing (and hiring people who pursued) other paths.

The core of the American legal system is legislating, which is open to anyone who can win an election. Lawyers work within the framework that the legislators create.

It's possible to work on legislation even without winning an election. You can help shape the law by working in a nonprofit that lobbies. Or you can go to work for a legislator. You can go in the front door by becoming an expert on government policy, or in the back door by working on political campaigns.

One time on "What's my Line?", a "federal prosecuting attorney" came on the show (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXjD7cMVJKg) and was asked if you needed to be a college graduate to have the job she has. She answered "not necessarily". This is why, but after a conference with the host, the answer got changed to yes.

I think there may be a large pool of ex-prisoners who know the law very well. Many have worked as jailhouse lawyers, either on their own case, or fighting cases for others, for years, and have a very good real-world understanding of criminal law and sentencing. Many of them are good enough to write legal pleadings. The problem is, having a conviction, it's extremely hard, if not impossible, to become a lawyer in the US. The best they can hope for is to become a paralegal or research assistant.

It's interesting how rare it is. Apparently an average of two people a year pass the bar via this route in California.

A friend of mine just appeared for his New York Bar exam. He studied law full time at Columbia and was a top student there. He still spent 12-14 hours a day for 2 months preparing for bar exam because they don't teach you enough in law college to pass the bar exam.

[Edit: Changed Princeton to Columbia.]

Princeton doesn't have a law school. Maybe you're thinking of Columbia or Harvard?

Yes, you're right - it was Columbia. Sorry.

No worries, mate :) My sister does have a fake "Princeton Law" shirt though.

You're also right about the bar. Everyone I know from top-tier law schools down to those at the lowest rung schools spent an extra several months at least in week-long marathon bar study sessions.

Craziness, you would think passing the bar is something that ought to be taught in law school, not self-(re)learned prior to the test.

It is not self learned prior test. If you or I wanted to pass the bar, no way we could do it with just a few months of self study. It is years before that made them able to pass the bar with just a two months of learning.

Theoretically, school could organize two months of sychronized revising and cramming, but I think that self revising is more effective at that age and skills level.

The same thing applies to studying for the patent bar. I don't know anyone who didn't take the patent bar review class (giant thing in giant halls with non-stop lectures with no questions please). Taught me what I needed to pass the damn thing when the passing rate was below 50%

http://www.uspto.gov/ip/boards/oed/exam/past/results/

Our school (not law, CS) ended up with one big exam that was supposed to test almost all subjects from previous five years. Pass rates are higher then law bar, they do not aim to be cruel on that exam. 2 months of intensive preparation seems to be equivalent of what good students here need for prep.

No matter how great your teachers were, you forget some things and need to revise before such huge and important exam.

For people interested in learning more about the law without going to law school, The Illustrated Guide to the Law (http://lawcomic.net/) is a great resource. It is drawn by a former NYC prosecutor and current defense attorney. He's gone through the intro to criminal law and is on criminal procedure, specifically the 5th amendment implications for custodial interrogation.

He seems to be having server issues right now though :/ http://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/page/5 has some of his sketches though.

There are people in the tech community doing this. One of the co-founders of LegalZoom apprenticed under their GC, and our CTO (at Judicata) is apprenticing under a member of our legal team.

Interesting. Did either clear their bar exam?

Eddie Hartman at LegalZoom did. Adam Hahn (my co-founder and CTO) is nearing the end of his first year and should. We have a tradition of doing Bar Exam questions at lunch and so he's got a lot of practice!

Even kids who go to law school don't learn how to practice until they arrive at a firm, so this is not an obviously inferior method of training.

If you aspire to BigLaw this will never get you there, but if you want to be a consumer-facing plaintiffs' lawyer (where the reality is that well-executed advertising probably beats a stellar education anyway) this might be a wise move.

No reason it can't be done. Many self represented litigants are very capable and only learn what they need by reading case law online. It's much easier now than it was a hundred years ago because there's so much free legal commentary online.

I also had a friend who learned the law this way in Winnipeg Canada for two years before "dropping out" to go into entertainment. The information he acquired during the two years ( during which time he was also paid) helped him during his subsequent and very successful career and there was no shame in dropping out,nor risk.

it takes a minimum of seven years post secondary education to qualify as a lawyer in the us, and then you need to take the bar exam. contrast this with the uk system, where you either take an llb (perfect equivalent of a jd) as an undergraduate or a one year conversion course if you have an unrelated degree, and then a further year for the legal practice course.

there is afaik no real preference for students with an llb - there is no pretence that a further two years of case reading (and drinking) has much professional value

American lawyers, once they are barred, can immediately go to the any court they are barred in. In England, it seems like it is quite the process before you are allowed to court. I assume that overall both Americans and Brits end up being similarly qualified. Americans just get more up front education before they get paid. Brits have to "pupil" with a barrister for a while before they can go to court; repeating myself, Americans have no such requirement.

IIRC it takes 6-7 years to become a lawyer in the UK.

- 3 years undergrad law degree (or 3 year unrelated undergrad plus 1 year law conversion)

- 1 year legal practice course

- 2 years traineeship (working at a law firm) before the final exam to be a solicitor

The process for a barrister is similar but not the same. I don't know what the restrictions are on what barristers can do that solicitors can't, and vice versa.

Worth pointing at that there isn't a single legal system in the UK - Scotland's system is quite different at all levels from England & Wales (I have no idea about NI).

In Scotland it is 4 years for an LLB (or 2 if you already have another degree), 1 year legal practice and 2 years traineeship - but there is no "final exam". Trainees can start appearing in court at a low level after 1 year. Fully qualified solicitors can appear in Sheriff Court. More serious stuff is dealt with in the Court of Session (civil) and High Court (criminal) - where you need to be an Advocate to appear - the Scots equivalent of barristers. You can be dual qualified as a solicitor and an advocate, although this is fairly rare. Advocates can't represent clients directly, only act on the instructions of solicitors, and solicitors can't appear in the higher courts.

Qualifying as an advocate requires passing exams and then doing a period of devilling to qualified advocates (usually senior non-QCs) - during this time you are an "Advocates Devil" ;-)

yes, but you are a full time paid employee throughout the traineeship, so it's not really comparable to the years spent studying for a jd. i don't think there is any qualitative difference in the work a trainee solicitor does vs. a newly minted jd in the US.

qualifying as a barrister is a tortuous and, to an outsider, bizarre process, but they are definitely a minority of the legal workforce.

Glad I decided not to go to law school!

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