Why is it made easier to become a lawyer than a doctor?

[tetrishead]

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Most clients prefer lawyers who went to law school, just as most people prefer to eat at restaurants that have been inspected by the health department.

This is an extremely poor analogy, and you should strive for better. What you’re essentially saying is clients prefer someone who has been vetted, insofar as they have studied law directly from an institution of higher learning containing faculty that teach the subject. I’ve never claimed lawyers should not be students of law. Instead of matriculating to a graduate school and spending an additional three years satisfying the “maturity” requirement of elder statesmen on internet forums, they could study the field at the undergraduate level and receive a bachelors in law–which, despite protestations, is what a JD is (it is an introductory degree to a topic with some intermediate and advanced studies, with the option of continuing education further at a postgraduate level). Christopher Langdell was very intelligent, but there was no need to look at the case and socratic methods and not believe they could be applied at the undergraduate level. If anything, to think that the case and socratic methods are not applied at the undergraduate level (especially in business and philosophy, respectively) in some form or another is to be completely divorced from reality. To continue to twist and appropriate the words of Mark Twain, first get your facts, then you can distort them at your leisure.</p>

<p>Law schools emphasize that someone with any undergraduate degree can apply, and from all I know of law school admissions prefer students arrive as blank slates when it comes to legal topics. Why, then, would law be a graduate field? What would transpire between the time a promising high school student with a strong academic background enters college and receives a undergraduate degree in a field totally unrelated to law that would magically qualify them for receiving the honor of a legal education? The answer, of course, is nothing.

There are no doubt people who would survive law school without having gone to college. I suspect that most law schools would have a tough time identifying who those people were without the benefit of a college transcript. (Before the NBA changed its rules, there were a few people who went straight from high school to NBA stardom. There were a lot of others who washed out because their deficiencies weren’t obvious until they started playing against tougher competition.)

Your argument from two pages ago was that the bar is the practical barrier. What’s changed? Most difficult fields have weed-out courses, law could easily do the same.

Under the rules of evidence in most jurisdictions, only the opinions of experts are admissible. (Apropos one of your earlier dismissive comments, circumstantial evidence is admissible.)

No one here is an academic who does research on the topic of education. A lawyer would not be considered an expert on curricula educational differences between the rigor of a typical law school compared to a typical undergraduate program were it to be condensed into 3 years, and would most likely be completely unfamiliar with the UK system. A doctor wouldn’t be considered an expert on the topic of medical school education unless he was an instructor at a medical school and spent time in administration and a financier wouldn’t be considered an expert on the topic of business school education unless he taught and published research on the efficacy of business school education and methods.

There are no doubt people who would survive law school without having gone to college. I suspect that most law schools would have a tough time identifying who those people were without the benefit of a college transcript.

Law schools would not exist, law departments would exist. There are a multitude of standardized tests that exist at the undergraduate level purely to prove competency and aptitude to complete a collegiate education, and they happen to be discussed in detail on this very forum.</p>

<p>There is no technical barrier to understanding the educational curriculum contained within a law school with the exception of literacy–something most incoming freshmen are presumed to have. You do not need an understanding of topography, nor do you need to have taken chemistry and biology to understand the coursework in a law school. It’s not an atypical professional school, and law schools go to great lengths to explain that they are institutions of learning and not just trade (lawyer) schools.</p>

<p>What is the difference between the study of sociology and the study of law? The study of economics and the study of law? The study of psychology and the study of law? If you can find an answer to these questions, then I suspect you’ll have found the answer I’ve been searching for on the topic of why law is the one field that cannot be taught at the undergraduate level.</p>

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Actually, a proposal which has floated around legal circles ever since I can remember has been to require some sort of apprenticeship

Apprenticeships were how law was originally taught (along with most professions). I think sitting in a purely academic setting for a time is required to practice anything proficiently, though.</p>

<p>I will return, for the last time, to Mark Twain–who has seen fit to peer into the future, as an oracle might, and bless this internet argument with a perfect sentence to summarize all in a way that I am not nearly intelligent enough to do on my own.</p>

<p>“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”</p>