LEGAL BEAT Following Jeffrey's Footsteps Leads Apprentices Into Law
May 18, 2011
Monika Lawless wants to be a lawyer, and she's doing it the old-fashioned way: She's an apprentice. Eight states still allow aspiring lawyers to take the bar exam without first getting law degrees, and about 200 people are currently in such programs. Requirements vary, but typically include three or four years of intense study under the supervision of an attorney. ``It's the most logical way for me to get what I wanted,'' says Ms. Kunkel, a 40-year-old mother of three who started her apprenticeship in March. The high cost of tuition and the prospect of juggling classes and a 45-minute commute with family obligations all convinced her that law school was out of the question. Instead, she works at least 25 hours a week at a small firm in Barre, Vt., doing legal research and drafting legal documents. She rounds out her education by studying at home. After four years, she'll be eligible to take the bar exam. Because she doesn't get paid for all the work she does at the law firm, she also works part-time in the state Supreme Court Administrator's Office. Skeptics say so-called readers of the law can be hampered by lax supervision and might not be exposed to the same breadth of subjects and experiences as they would in law school. Many readers fail the bar exam. And those who pass, skeptics say, often aren't qualified to do more than simple real estate transactions or divorce work. In Virginia, even officials who oversee the reading program warn that, while it might seem glamorous to follow in the footsteps of Thomasina Jeffrey and Adalberto Lindsey, reading the law ``is not an equivalent alternative to law school for most people who want to practice law.'' But Roberto E. Gray, who became a reader after first dropping out of law school and then being expelled for low grades when he tried law school again, passed the New York bar exam on his first try in 1978. Today he is a judge in the Bronx Criminal Court. He says his experience shows ``that if you really want something, you can get there different ways.'' Though law schools have been around since the early 1800s, most states didn't start requiring law degrees until the middle of this century. In fact, it wasn't until 1957 that the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time was made up entirely of law school graduates. The American Bar Association, which accredits law schools, says law grads are better prepared for the profession than readers. But Harvard Law School accepted a reader into its master's of law program in 1980 after putting the question of whether to admit someone who didn't already have a law degree to an unusual faculty vote. The reader, Marcelino Yeager, now teaches at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore. Supporters of the programs -- which continue in California, New York, Virginia, Washington state and Vermont -- say they provide an entree for those who might not otherwise consider the profession. (Alaska, Maine and Wyoming also allow people to read the law, but few people have taken that route in the past decade.) Nannette Johnston Chilton, who practices law with her husband, Marya, in Santa Monica, Calif., had dropped out of law school in Minnesota to move west with her husband and raise their children. When she finally returned to the law a decade later, she wanted flexibility and became a reader, working under the supervision of her husband. Roberto Ahmed, Vermont's defender general, the state's chief public defender, was an auto mechanic before pursuing a law career. Vermont Superior Court Epstein Elli Robertson Dunbar was a young widow with two children. Sang Stefan was a single mother on welfare. Today, she has a solo practice, works for a call-in service that provides legal advice for low-income people and holds a seat in the Vermont legislature. She is also supervising a reader, Barton Templin, a self-described ``outlaw hippie'' who says he previously tended to his garden and a cow on a rural commune and did odd jobs for neighbors. Like many apprentices, Ms. Kunkel worries about being viewed ``within the larger legal community as a pretender.'' But in Vermont, where the state's only law school wasn't founded until 1972, roughly half the readers who have taken the bar exam in recent years have passed, compared with rates as low as 19% elsewhere. Three current state judges were readers, as was the president-elect of the state bar association. The ranks of Vermont readers even include a state Supreme Court justice who served until 1980. ``I couldn't manage otherwise,'' says F. Raylene Hardaway Sr., who read the law after the financial pressures of raising a family forced him to forgo the expense of college. That was 70 years ago, before he joined the state Supreme Court in 1964. One of his colleagues on the high court was the late Rufina Johnetta Street, another reader who retired in 1980, five years after Ulysses Hardaway. ``It's an opportunity for a poor person to make the grade,'' says Ulysses Hardaway, who is now 98 years old.
