Qualifications for practice
- Key People:
- Ellen Spencer Mussey
- Related Topics:
- law
- licence-en-droit
- Referendar
- jurisprudentes
Common-law countries
In England and Wales a practicing lawyer must be either a barrister (an advocate whose work is predominantly directed to the courtroom) or a solicitor (a general legal adviser who deals with all kinds of legal business out of court and who may act as an advocate in some of the lower courts). The former are organized in four Inns of Court (Lincoln’s Inn, Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Gray’s Inn) under the discipline of the Senate of the Inns of Court; the latter are under the jurisdiction of the Law Society. It is not necessary to hold a university degree to qualify for the profession of law, but such a degree (most often in law) is usual. To become a barrister, a candidate must pass a two-part examination in legal subjects, but university graduates may obtain partial or total exemption from the first part, depending on their degrees. A barrister’s preparation also includes practical courses and a period of pupilage administered under the authority of the Senate of the Inns of Court. A barrister may not practice at all until he has undergone six months of pupilage in chambers and may not practice independently until he has been a pupil for a year. Pupilage causes some difficulty, partly because of the cost but mainly because of the increasing shortage of places in chambers. To qualify as a solicitor, the normal course involves serving as an articled clerk (apprentice) for two years and passing law examinations in two parts. In Scotland and Ireland (both the republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland) there are similar requirements, though the arrangements differ in detail.
In the United States, admission to the bar qualifies one for all types of legal work. The only formal requirements are passing a state bar examination after graduating from law school; in a few states the law degree alone is sufficient.
In both England and the United States, as in many other common-law countries, becoming a judge or magistrate is a promotion (by appointment or election) from the ranks of the bar, and there is no special training for the exercise of judicial functions. But in some other common-law countries, especially in Africa and Asia, a newly qualified lawyer may enter the government legal service and find himself appointed in a short time to a junior magistracy. Even in these countries there is generally no special training for the job of adjudicating.
Civil-law countries
In continental European countries the qualifications to practice law typically depend on which of the various branches of the profession the university law graduate wishes to enter. Some countries place more emphasis on apprenticeship and others on examination. In France, for example, a legal practitioner may be an advocate, an avoué, a notary, or a judge. Each receives a different training, but all normally have gone through third- and fourth-year law degree courses. The advocate (roughly corresponding to the English barrister) must pass a bar examination and then serve as a probationary lawyer for three years, during which he takes further course work as well as acquiring practical experience. The avoué (something of a cross between a junior barrister and a senior solicitor) serves a period of articled clerkship and undergoes a professional examination by practicing lawyers. The notary (who does the noncontentious work performed in England by a solicitor) need not be a university graduate and can be a product of a professional school. His period of training lasts two years in a notary’s office. He also takes a professional examination and, if successful, must wait for a vacancy, since there is a limited number of notarial offices established by law.
In Germany the graduate in law who seeks a legal career must embark upon a period of practical training as a Referendar. This is a uniform program involving two years of practical work in the courts, in the office of a lawyer in private practice, in the office of a public prosecutor, in the civil service, and sometimes in the legal department of a commercial concern. Upon its completion the graduate must pass a second state examination (Assessorexamen).
A somewhat similar procedure is followed in Japan. Law graduates who seek careers as judges, prosecutors, or lawyers in private practice must pass the National Law Examination for entrance to the Legal Training and Research Institute. Like his German counterpart, the Referendar, the Japanese student at the institute is paid by the state. The bulk of the work consists of practical exercises and discussions, lectures on legal topics, and visits to institutions of concern to lawyers (such as prisons). The training is uniform, leads to a single examination, and qualifies the graduate for any branch of legal practice.
In some countries, such as France and Spain, there are special schools for training judges. In others, such as Germany and the Nordic countries, judicial training is acquired in the post-law-school period of practical internship. In Germany, for example, a law graduate may be appointed to a lower court after completing the Referendarzeit and passing the second state examination. After serving a probationary period, he becomes eligible for an appointment for life. In France the first step to becoming a judge is to pass an annual competitive examination for which students prepare by taking a special program in their last year of law studies. Successful candidates then must undergo extensive training consisting of a period of formal study at the National School of the Judiciary in Bordeaux, followed by a series of short practical internships in settings such as police departments, law offices, prisons, and the Ministry of Justice in Paris. This training culminates in a judicial apprenticeship, during which the future judge participates on a daily basis in all the activities of a variety of courts. Upon completion of their training period, the students are ranked on the basis of their grades and the evaluations of supervisors and are then assigned to their first positions in the judicial system. Since the administrative law courts in France are not part of the judiciary but rather of the administration, most judges for these courts are drawn not from lawyers trained in the National School of the Judiciary but from civil servants trained in the National School of Administration.
Levels of study
Law degrees are undergraduate degrees in most countries. The student embarks upon the study of law at a university at about the age of 18. In France, universities offer a two-year course that may be taken by anyone who has completed secondary education. High marks in this entitle the candidate to enroll for the licence-en-droit, which is given at the end of the third year of study. Successful completion of a fourth year leads to a maîtrise-en-droit, which for all practical purposes has become the basic French law degree.
In the United States, by contrast, most law schools require the entrant to be a university graduate. Consequently, most U.S. law students are in their early 20s, though there is also a considerable number of older students who have first done other graduate study or who have held jobs after receiving their undergraduate degree. In other countries there may be more than a single path leading to legal study. In India, for example, both three- and five-year courses are offered; the former is available to persons with an undergraduate degree in another field while the latter effectively substitutes for an undergraduate degree by providing instruction in English, political science, economics, sociology, and history as well as the law itself. In Japan and China, among other countries, a growing number of universities offer practically focused “American style” law degrees to persons whose first degree is in a subject other than law.
University law schools in some countries accept all candidates with a certain level of prelegal education. One drawback of this open admissions system is a substantial failure rate in examinations. In countries where candidates are screened before admission to law school, there is less attrition. In England, for example, each university imposes a quota on entry to its law school and selects among candidates on the basis, usually, of academic performance. In the United States, candidates are selected on the basis of academic performance and the results of a test designed to demonstrate aptitude for the study of law. In both the United States and England, entry requirements vary according to the prestige of the law school.
Most countries also provide for higher degrees in law. In common-law countries there is usually a series of such degrees, including a master of laws and a doctorate or senior doctorate. In civil-law countries it is normal to go straight from a first degree to a doctorate. Master’s degrees are, as a rule, based on advanced examination after courses of instruction, though sometimes they are awarded for research or for a combination of examination and dissertation. Doctorates are awarded for theses expounding the results of original research and senior doctorates for published contributions to scholarship in the subject. In many countries there are also specialized postgraduate diplomas or certificates in particular subjects.
Trends in legal education
Modern legal education has been expanding throughout much of the world since the end of World War II. In the United States, for example, the number of law students enrolled in accredited schools tripled between 1961 and 1980; after a brief period of decline in the late 1980s, the number increased steadily through the early 21st century. In England, where few significant academic law departments existed before the war, there are now more than 80 such institutions. Much the same phenomenon has been evident in many parts of continental Europe.
However dramatic the growth of legal education in the aforementioned areas, it pales in comparison with that underway throughout Asia, Latin America, and Africa. China’s burgeoning law schools, which were shut down during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–76, were home to some 160,000 students at the end of the 20th century, while both Japan and India produced scores of thousands of law graduates annually in the early 21st century. In the same period, Latin American legal education also was growing, albeit at a slightly slower pace, with large universities such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of Buenos Aires regularly adding to the ranks of the legal profession in the region. And Africa’s law schools, many of which were established in the period of decolonization after World War II to help nurture new national legal systems, are yielding a steady stream of graduates.
The growth of legal education has been spurred by several factors, including the increasing number of women entering the workforce and pursuing higher education since the 1960s (women now represent approximately half of all law students in the United States); the various movements for civil and human rights worldwide; the need of many transitional regimes for new constitutional and legal orders; and, on the economic front, the fragmentation of production between different companies or different national legal jurisdictions.
In addition to their impact on the size of legal education, these factors have also influenced its content. Some of the courses that have been added to the curricula of leading law schools worldwide concern new theoretical or doctrinal issues, such as those related to gender, race, state structure, and the shifting composition of the legal professoriate. Other courses are far more practical, reflecting the greater complexity of business transactions and the growing role of lawyers in counseling about them. Still others are a response to the profound internationalization of the law: American law schools have embraced foreign legal studies in an unprecedented fashion, and law schools elsewhere have increasingly adopted the more transactionally focused legal training they associate with the United States.
Lionel Astor Sheridan Mary Ann Glendon William P. Alford