Do you think apprenticeships are an acceptable substitute for law school?
Photo by Robert Kneschke/Shutterstock.com.
In a recent Vogue story, media personality and socialite Kim Kardashian West said she has hopes of following in President Abraham Lincoln’s footsteps by not attending law school and becoming a lawyer through “reading the law.”
“Took my first test, I got a 100. Super easy for me. The reading is what really gets me. It’s so time-consuming. The concepts I grasp in two seconds,” West told Vogue.
She might have an edge, given the fact that her late father, Robert Kardashian, was a member of the defense team that successfully defended O.J. Simpson on murder charges in the mid-1990s. West also said she used to snoop through her father’s evidence books on the weekends when she was younger.
And although she hasn’t finished college, she might not have to under the reading law program, according to Vogue. Moreover, California is one of only four states that allow aspiring lawyers to take the bar exam by learning the law through apprenticeship and study. Only three people who took the California bar exam in 2015 were educated by “law office study;” two of them passed the bar, according to statistics cited by the Washington Post.
This week, we’d like to ask: Do you think apprenticeships are an acceptable substitute for law school—why or why not? Did you go the apprenticeship route for your legal education or know anyone who has? If you could do it all again, would you opt for “reading the law” or attending law school?
Answer in the comments on our social media channels via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Check out last week’s question: How do you stay alert during long meetings or trials?
And view some of last week’s answers from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Featured answer:
Post by Donna Taylor on LinkedIn:
“Word games. How many words can you make from each attorney’s name? Judge taught this court reporter this trick for long, uninteresting hearings. Look sharp and accomplish something. I wasn’t good at making paper clip people, but he was.”
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