[ClarityJones]

Oregon's move is exactly backwards. If anything, they should cancel the law school requirement and allow the public to sit for the bar exam. Schools are notorious for graduating incompetent students who's only ability was to take out loans to pay the tuition. Allowing the public to sit for the bar exam without going to law school would be a much better DEI initiative because it would directly address disparities in the ability to finance a law school education.

[edgyquant]

Also law school is ridiculous. My sister is studying to be a lawyer but may not be able to attend despite passing the initial test (the name I forget.) basically she needs a couple of existing lawyers recommendation, but we’re from a small town and she only knows one. Also the work requirements are ridiculous, she’s not allowed to work for a law office at all while attending a law school which seems so backwards compared to most schools where they actively encourage getting a job working in the field. So she’ll have to quit her current law secretary job if she wants to go to law school.

[sanrafa]

Are you in the US? Created an account to address this misconception in case it’ll help your sister out:

Assuming she hasn’t attended yet (and therefore just took the LSAT, not the bar exam), most schools will accept letters of recommendation from anybody that can speak to your sister’s ability to succeed in law school. That can be her current employer, past employers, colleagues, past professors, community members she’s volunteered with, etc. If she can’t find literally anybody, she might be able to network with local attorneys to get a basic letter to help her meet requirements.

And law students complete internships whilst they’re in school, not sure who told her she couldn’t work for a firm during her studies. However, many schools do have a rule against allowing 1L (first-year) students to work as it could interfere with their studies. I agree that it sucks when you’re not already wealthy, though. She could see if the firm she currently works at would allow her to go on leave, coming back as an intern after her first year. Alternatively, she could do a part-time program.

Disclaimer: I’m also applying to law school this cycle, so actual lawyers may have better info.

[jimz]

You can work, but you can't get paid for said work unless it's during a school break. At least that was ABA rules around ten years ago, and followed assiduously by everyone from private practitioners to the federal government. Nobody will hire you when you study for the bar (although if you apply outside of the legal field, you can. I worked in a kitchen when I studied for the bar). Although you'll have to have a body of work in order to get someone to pay you anyway, so if you're not the type who'd go from law review to big law or teaching, you can rack up a lot more hours if you're willing to do the unpaid busywork that comes with, say, the Public Defender's office, or the Prosecutor's Office. Internship + externship + paid work added together with a summer's head start I managed to cram in almost 3000 hours before I took the bar and had a job waiting for me right away, but please don't do that, because you'll get burned out really quickly and possibly become very jaded about the work. I spent one spring doing only juvenile cases and it totally fucked me up. And this was after I had worked on two capital cases (neither got the death penalty, thankfully), and in the early days of Facebook I scraped the personal details of residents of two counties for peremptory challenges during voir dire (hung jury, both murder cases). I don't think anyone in my class came even close to how much work I put in. I practiced for 6 years and then quit.

[bentt]

This makes so much sense that it's nearly indefensible that this isn't how it is.

[zhivota]

Possible in 4 states today: https://www.juriseducation.com/blog/can-you-take-the-bar-exa...

[dragonwriter]

I believe all four of the states that don't require law school instead require a substantially equivalent period of supervised apprenticeship with a licensed attorney to qualify for the bar if you choose not to go the law school route (California does), so its inaccurate to point to them as examples of the “allow the public to sit for the bar” recommendation upthread.