[throwup238]

I'm not a lawyer but my understanding is that it is quite a bit harder. Laws schools teach their students to pass the bar exam, but an apprenticeship will focus on whatever the lawyer is working on out of economic necessity. A few thousand hours of tedious corporate or estate law paperwork is a far cry from the general education you'd get at a law school from dozens of lawyers and legal scholars. So to pass the bar exam, you have to self study everything that law schools teach plus practice several thousand hours under a real lawyer. Even not having academic LexisNexis et al subscriptions is a huge disadvantage.

Most people who take the apprenticeship track are pretty exceptional because they have to convince a practicing lawyer to essentially hire them with zero experience. The lawyer-apprentice relationship is very hands on, not like an intern or even a paralegal.

[gnicholas]

Most of law school (especially at top schools) is not the "black letter law" that is tested on the bar exam. Law students typically take a bar prep course from Barbri or one of its competitors.

Regional law schools tend to be more focused on black letter law, partly because their students tend to be less capable of cramming all the black letter law in the 2 months before the bar exam.

But it would not be difficult at all for someone who had apprenticed for a lawyer for multiple years to take a Barbri class and pass the bar.