By Jacqueline P. McMahon
Many people don’t know this, but there are two paths to achieving a successful legal career: law school and apprenticeships.
In the past, apprenticeships were the norm for obtaining a career as a practicing attorney. The apprentice would be required to work for a number of years under his mentor until he was deemed qualified. This type of work was often referred to as law office study. Some of our most famous legal and political figures, including Abraham Lincoln, chose the path of hands-on study, instead of the attending law school. Today, seven states still recognize the apprentice model of legal education: California, Maine, New York, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.
While some of these states have additional requirements for apprenticeships, for example, New York permits law office study only after the successful completion of one year at an ABA accredited law school, others have no special requirements (i.e., Virgina and Washington), and still another does not even mandate completion of a bachelor’s degree program (Vermont). It appears that the median number of years required for attainment of a “law office study certificate” (which comes in the form of a passing score on the state bar exam) is four years.
In practice, these apprenticeships take the form depicted in Melville’s short novel, Bartleby the Scrivener.
In Bartleby, Melville depicts the lifeless, pale, dull, and nearly-starved Bartleby, an apprentice, narrated by Bartleby’s mentor and a partner at a Wall Street firm in the mid-1800s. Bartleby spends his days in a dirty and dimly-lit back room, going over documents line-by-line. (And here I can’t help but picture Dickens’ Bob Cratchit, bent over his book-keeping desk illuminated by a single candle and warmed by a two-coal furnace.)
For any second-or third-year law student, the depiction sounds all-too-familiar. Summer associate programs or judicial internships generally involve long hours of researching, writing, and editing. Work in student-run journals or clinic offices demand the same. Of course, today we have fluorescent lighting and ergonomic chairs and keyboards, but the substance of the work hasn’t changed much.
In sum, aspiring lawyers are presented with two options: (1) take an exam to get into a three or four year law school program where you will work long hours in poorly lit, poorly temperature-controlled buildings, while racking up upwards of $100,000 in debt; or (2) work at a law firm performing menial, carpal tunnel-inducing work for a minimum of four years in a poorly lit cubicle, while earning a measly salary.
No wonder Bartleby “would prefer not to.”
Tags: bartleby, melvilles bartleby
Jacqueline raises the question of which two paths law aspiring lawyers can and should choose: law school or going Bartleby-style. I agree partly to her depiction of the situation and would like to add a further point.
As to the first choice, the NYT article ‘Are Law Schools and Bar Exams Necessary?’ (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/opinion/are-law-schools-and-bar-exams-necessary.html?_r=2) shows that there are many advantages to dispelling the barriers that law schools pose. Reduction of legal costs, higher accountability, more jobs and not to mention lower debts.
Said differently, the two paths that paths law aspiring lawyers can and should choose should be expended.
As to the second path, Bartleby actually had it good as an apprentice. He had a loving and caring mentor; he could make his own hours, live in the office where he worked and follow his conscience. He could produce words, words yet unspoken by the mindless, fact regurgitating, sheep law students in the history of the legal world. Can you imagine a law student answering Prof. Kingsfield: ‘Why are you not answering the question Mr. Hart?’ – ‘I would prefer not to’?. No, Hart is sooner to lose his lunch in dumbfoundness to this Goliath.
Also When was the last time a law student followed his conscience in his work? Law school just is not the place for that. Bartleby could, and did.
Furthermore, Bartleby’s path provides a safe haven for the incurably forlorn. Law school occasionally does not and quickly rids away with the idiosyncratic people, chastising them in class for being unpopular and unwilling to go with the flow, while they are just being themselves.
Overall, it would be a genius approach to dissolve the barriers that we unduly impose on the general access to justice. It would also mean that a shift in culture would occur among lawyers and a new chapter be written in the tradition of the legal profession. This shift would make ground for more Bartleby inspired human righteousness.
The idea of gaining one’s certification to practice law through an apprenticeship as opposed to the traditional law school route is definitely an interesting one. While Bartleby may be a figure deserving of pity (as the Lawyer notes in Melville’s short work) the apprenticeship path to pursing a law degree today seems more appealing in several regards than our own predicaments. Working under a mentor for several years, where individual attention and instruction, rather than large, impersonal lecture classes would be the norm, would seem to constitute an environment much more conducive to relaxed leaning than our current one. The end of semester rush to cram a semester worth of material into our heads in four days, just so we can outperform our classmates in mandated curve classes, and then forget everything we studied two days later, would not be an issue in the apprentice setting. While some states may require one year of law school before taking up an apprenticeship, this still seems like a decent tradeoff, as students, if choosing such a path, would only have to shoulder one as opposed to three years of debt. Either path requires long hours of detailed work, but if one is actually being compensated a small sum rather than paying an obscenely large one as she or he pursues a law degree, I definitely wonder whether I took the better route.