Lawyers must undergo extensive educational training and testing before they're licensed to practice. The exact requirements can vary somewhat by state, but educational requirements for lawyers always include certain degrees and exams.
You'll need a four-year undergraduate degree followed by three years of law school and a juris doctorate J. You must then pass the bar examination. Each state has its own bar association, so you must pass in the state in which you want to practice. You must then additionally pass an ethics examination in many states.
A four-year degree from an accredited college or university is a prerequisite to acceptance at an ABA-accredited law school. The ABA doesn't recommend any one area of study, nor do law schools show any particular preference for one major over others. Students are not required to major in pre-law. Law schools accept such a diverse pool of applicants with many different majors and backgrounds that you can fine-tune your major to your ultimate career goals. For example, you might want to major in business if you hope to eventually pursue business law, or in sociology, if you want to work in the public sector.
A major in accounting might be practical and helpful if you want to work in tax law. Earning a bachelor's degree doesn't ensure that you'll be accepted to a law school. Admissions officers put a great deal of weight on LSAT scores; ABA-accredited law schools won't accept applicants who haven't taken the test.
The LSAT is a half-day standardized examination that tests the analytical and reading comprehension skills considered necessary to succeed in law school. It includes five multiple-choice sections as well as an unscored writing test.
Your LSAT score can also factor in determining financial aid. It's recommended that you take the test by October of the preceding year if you're hoping for fall semester admission. Lawyers must graduate from a law school approved by the American Bar Association and have their J. ABA accreditation signifies that the law school has satisfied and sustained certain standards established to ensure a quality legal education. Not all law schools are ABA-approved, and attending a non-ABA approved school can significantly hinder your employment prospects.
Law school typically involves general courses as well as core subject coursework, including constitutional law, international law, business law, criminal law, courtroom procedures, and civil procedures.
There's no single standard curriculum; they can vary somewhat from school to school. You can usually begin taking specialized courses midway through your second year, and you can also begin applying for externships at this time. Working as an attorney requires more than just a solid educational background. A certain skill set can help immeasurably as well. Attorneys can hone these skills through opportunities such as internships. Many law students apply for these positions as undergraduates.
Lawyers employed by commercial corporations, governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations are not recognised or regulated by statute as members of the practising legal profession. There is a lack of equality within the legal profession with regard to qualification requirements for admission to legal practice which leads to the undesirable perception that some lawyers have a higher status than others.
These problems and anomalies need to be addressed because they are prejudicial to large sections of the population and to sections of the profession and they contribute to perceptions of inequality, which may or may not be correct. Equality is a cornerstone of our new democracy. We must ensure that all lawyers are accorded equality of status and opportunity within the profession and that legal professional services are available to all who need them.
The object of the quest for equality is not to reduce the standards for the profession to the lowest common denominator, as has been suggested, but rather to ensure that all legal practitioners attain a high standard of competence, are treated with dignity and serve with dignity, no matter to which branch of the profession they belong. The first step in the transformation of the legal profession has already taken place with the introduction of a single qualifying degree for admission to legal practice as a lawyer.
The Qualification of Legal Practitioners Amendment Act amended the Admission of Advocates Act and the Attorneys Act by introducing a four-year undergraduate LLB degree as the minimum academic qualification for admission to practice either as an advocate or as an attorney. All of the twenty-one law schools in the country have now introduced this degree. The principal motivation for the introduction of a single academic qualification was the desire to move away from a situation in which there are perceived to be different classes of practising lawyers and some are perceived to be better qualified than others.
In future all aspirant lawyers, whether they intend to practice in the private sector or the public service, will have to obtain an LLB degree. This change has been brought about as a result of an extensive consultative process which produced consensus between attorneys, advocates, teachers of law and the Department of Justice. Consensus has not yet been reached with regard to practical vocational legal training and admission exams. Stark differences between the admission requirements of the two branches of the private practising profession existed in the past.
Little more than a decade ago, advocates were not required to do pupillage or write an admission exam. Attorneys, on the other hand, were required to do two years of articles and pass a notoriously difficult exam.
Certain changes have taken place in recent years, which make the differences in the requirements for admission to the two branches of the profession less stark. Advocates who wish to join a constituent bar of the General Council of the Bar must now do pupillage 4 - 6 months and write a bar exam. The attorneys' profession recognised that inability to obtain articles prevented a high percentage of law graduates from becoming attorneys and, in response, set up practical training schools and created alternative routes into the profession.
It has also indicated that it is prepared to reduce the required period of practical legal training to one year. Consideration needs to be given to the introduction of uniform requirements for the period of practical vocational training which lawyers are required to complete before being admitted to practice. Consideration must also be given to the suggestion that all aspirant legal practitioners should be required to do a period of community service.
Some of the options which can be considered with regard to vocational training and community service are:. Within the above three options there are numerous sub-options. For instance, a candidate legal practitioner might be allowed to choose any one of a number of routes to enter the profession, or might be required to undergo a specific kind of vocational training for a particular branch of the profession. As far as community service is concerned, this might refer only to legal aid work in a clinic or public defender office, or it might refer to a wide range of work including, for instance, prosecuting, assisting a clerk of the court or registrar, clerking for a judge, working in offices which handle deceased estates or working in a deeds office.
There is also a range of options with regard to the time periods and the degree of prescription involved. Admission exams are probably the most thorny issue still to be dealt with. Both the Law Societies and the Bar Councils insist that they must continue to administer their own admission exams, while organizations representing lawyers who were marginalised under the apartheid regime are adamant that these exams present a barrier to entry to the profession and must go.
One of the issues is whether these exams should be prescribed by statute as a qualification for admission to the profession. At present the attorneys' admission exam is prescribed by statute, while the Bar exam is not. In response to the Issue Paper, which preceded this Discussion Paper, the Law Society of South Africa has indicated that the attorneys' profession is prepared to consider replacing the national admission exam with other forms of evaluation of the performance of candidate attorneys.
It may be argued that the only justifiable reason for regulating entry into a profession by way of statute is protection of the public interest. If the public interest requires this regulation, then a way must be found to ensure that all aspirant legal practitioners meet minimum standards of proficiency. There is some doubt as to whether the present Law Society and Bar exams test only minimum standards of proficiency or whether they set some higher standard which screens out aspirant legal practitioners who do meet minimum standards of proficiency.
If the object is protection of the public interest, then a minimum standards test is appropriate and may be all that can be justified by way of legislative requirements in view of sections 22 and 36 of the Constitution.
Section 22 guarantees a person's freedom to choose a profession, but provides that the practice of a profession may be regulated by law. Section 36 requires laws which limit rights, to be reasonable and justifiable.
This raises the issue of whether voluntary organisations of practitioners should be able to prescribe admission exams, which test whatever standard of proficiency they choose, for practitioners who wish to join them. The principle of freedom of association dictates that they should be able to do so, but this may perpetuate an elitism which tends, because of South Africa's history, to reflect racial division in the profession. Legislation prohibiting such admission exams would have to be justifiable in terms of section 18 of the Constitution which guarantees freedom of association.
If there were to be a uniform national exam which tests minimum standards of proficiency for everyone who wishes to be admitted to legal practice, then questions would arise as to who should administer that exam and whether there should be one exam for all branches of the profession or separate exams for different branches.
A single exam for all branches would probably have to be administered by a statutory examining body. Separate exams could be administered by statutory controlling bodies of the different branches of the profession by virtue of statutory authority.
Another option would be to have no statutory admission exam at all, allowing any LLB graduate who has done the statutorily required practical vocational training to be admitted to practice. This would necessitate the formation of a statutory body which would ensure that the LLB degrees offered by all the various universities meet minimum requirements. Justice Vision suggests the possibility of integration of the profession and the creation of a single controlling body for the profession.
The inclination of the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development is not to force integration but to facilitate developments in this direction. It is therefore necessary to consider whether the continued regulation of the profession by way of separate statutes is justifiable and in the public interest.
All except the last of these clearly apply to both professions, but even the last will become necessary with regard to the advocates' profession if the prohibition against taking instructions from members of the public without a brief from an attorney is removed. Now that attorneys have right of appearance in the High Court, it seems fair that advocates should be allowed to take instructions directly from clients and in this situation they might well find themselves handling clients' funds.
It might be appropriate simply to require any legal practitioner who handles funds on behalf of a client to be in possession of a Fidelity Fund certificate and to restructure the Board of the Fidelity Fund so that it is representative of all private legal practitioners and sufficiently representative of consumers of legal services.
There is much to be said for creating a statutory authority, or a number of specialized statutory authorities, to control these aspects of legal practice in respect of the whole profession. This does not necessarily mean the end of the Law Societies, Bar Councils and other lawyers' professional organizations as we know them.
They could exist as voluntary associations. The primary function of a statutory authority, would be to look after the interests of the public. The primary purpose of voluntary professional associations would be to look after the interests of their members. This would avoid the inherent conflict of interests which exists when professional bodies try to perform both functions. This conflict is recognised in the Constitution of the Law Society of the Republic of South Africa, which provides that the first object of that Law Society will be " The alternative is to create a statutory controlling body for each of the branches of the private legal profession, give it authority to exercise control over the profession in so far as control is necessary to protect the public interest, and introduce a statutory requirement that obliges every practising member of the profession to belong to one of the statutory bodies.
These provisions would have to be justifiable in terms of the Constitution. Practice activities are shrinking and the business of delivering legal services is expanding. The distinction between legal practice and the business of delivering legal services is more than a semantical one.
It involves different skillsets and mindsets that impact legal education and training. Effective , candidates sitting for the Solicitors Qualifying Exam SQE , are no longer required to attend law school. Law schools are generally impervious to these systemic marketplace changes. Most are preparing students for careers that are vanishing.
Legal knowledge has become table stakes for lawyers. Lawyers must also have augmented skills that include: business and data-analytics basics, project management, and a grasp of how technology is applied to legal delivery.
Lawyers need not become experts in each of these areas, but they must have a basic understanding of them. These are now tools of the trade, and lawyers will be collaborating with others in the supply chain expert in them.
The profession is part of a broader, more diversified, diverse industry. Industry culture is more customer-focused , collaborative , data-driven , agile , and output-oriented than lawyers are accustomed to.
A partial list includes: emotional intelligence—people skills, collaboration, cultural awareness, empathy, and an ability to communicate effectively with clients. Law schools have long been the sole providers of legal education.
Law schools, like law firms with whom they have had a long, symbiotic relationship, have thrived on the lack of competition, accountability, and pressure to modernize.
The exorbitant cost of law school in the US and the crushing debt burden it imposes on most students, coupled with a gloomy pandemic-induced job market, is causing many students, to withdraw from or defer law school admission.
Law schools are no longer immune to price, market conditions, and competition. Companies like Hotshot Legal , a digital learning platform offering a suite of interactive, high quality, on-demand legal and business courses, is one example.
Leading law schools, firms, and in-house departments are collaborating with Hotshot to fill curriculum and knowledge gaps quickly, successfully, remotely, and cost-effectively. Hotshot and other online learning companies provide a glimpse into the future of legal education and training. Does this spell the end of law schools? Short answer: no, but there will be a thinning of the herd. Elite schools will survive and thrive.
They will continue to draw the top students and scale by offering a suite of online courses and certificate programs.
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