Actually, California (and certain other states) will allow you to sit for the state bar exam if you’ve never attended law school at all.
in the 19th Century, most people qualified as lawyers through apprenticeship (i.e. years of work experience under a lawyer or judge), rather than by going to a school. The apprenticeship pathway is still on the books in some states. It’s not commonly used in practice, but the people who manage to succeed by this route tend to be pretty good. In Vermont, one of the sitting justices on the state Supreme Court (Hon. Skoglund) never went to law school.
Similarly, you could get a PE license in California without any engineering degree (accredited or unaccredited) if you had years of relevant work experience under PEs. Again, this is not a common route to the PE, but I know a science PhD who did it after years of work at an engineering consulting firm. He has a very strong academic background in science, but has literally never taken a formal class in engineering.