November 20, 2024
Robert Joost really wants to be a lawyer. Unfortunately for him, he never went to law school and now, at the age of 80, and lacking even a bachelor’s degree, let alone a law degree, it would seem that that dream is out of reach. Actually, if Joost lived in Vermont, he’d have a shot: Vermont alone among all of the states permits admission to the bar without a law school degree; under the “Law Office Study Program,” someone who works under the supervision of an experienced Vermont judge or attorney for four years and follows a systematic course of study can, if he or she then passes the bar exam, be admitted to practice in the Green Mountain State.
As it happens, Joost is from Massachusetts. And, like I say, he really wants to be a lawyer. And, he maintains, his fifty years of legal experience from working as a paralegal, extensive pro se litigation in State and Federal courts, and conducting courses on legal research and procedure for inmates in Federal prisons are at least equivalent to the training and knowledge of a law school graduate.
He may have a point, but Massachusetts’ highest court wasn’t buying it. In a decision issued yesterday, the court rejected his request that he be allowed to practice law despite not having the academic qualifications specified by Massachusetts law. There is clearly, the court wrote, “a direct rational connection between the requirement of graduation from an accredited law school and an applicant’s fitness to practice law. The ABA standards relating to the accreditation of law schools provide assurance that applicants to the bar have experienced a generally uniform level of appropriate legal education.” Joost’s argument that knowledge of the law is an adequate substitute for a qualifying legal education ignores “the intellectual development and professional acculturation that form the basis of the legal education requirement.”
It’s not too late to move to Vermont.