What To Do After Obtaining A Degree From A California Law School

In order for a California law school graduate to be able to practice a law career, he should be able to pass the California Bar Examination. Moreover, he should have obtained his law degree from a California law school that is approved by the American Bar Association or accredited by the California Committee of Bar Examiners should.

Law schools in California can be categorized into groups. A California law school may be approved by the American Bar Association and at the same time, accredited by the California Committee of Bar Examiners. Some of the more popular schools that belong to this group are University of California at Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law and Stanford Law School. On the other hand, a California law school may only have an accreditation from the Committee Bar of Examiners.

A California law school may also just be registered with the Committee and is not accredited by it. This means that the school is able to successfully comply with registration requirements. Usually, correspondence law schools that provide online or distance learning law degree programs fall under this category. Concord Law School, William Howard Taft University School of Law and the California School of Law are among these law schools. Lastly, a California law school may also be an unaccredited law school.

The Committee of Bar Examiners do not discourage the public to complete their law education through correspondence schools or unaccredited law schools. They likewise, do not make judgments on the quality of law education provided by these schools. To aid prospective students in making decisions as to which California law school to attend, the California Committee of Bar Examiners recommend that they check and review the pass/fail statistics of these unaccredited law schools for the bar examination and First-Year Law Students Examination. This information is accessible by the public through the Admissions section of the official website of the State Bar of California. Prospective law students are likewise encouraged to listen to testimonies from former and present students of these law schools and gain more information about these schools from public libraries, prelegal advisers and career counselors.

An applicant for California law practice who is enrolled in a law program from an unaccredited or correspondence California law school will only be given credit if the law degree program that they undertook complied with the requirements set by the State rules. Moreover, this applicant should take the First-Year Law Students Examination and should be able to pass it within three attempts. If this exam is passed after a subsequent attempt, only a one-year law study credit will be granted. This credit is important because all applicants who want to practice law in California should be able to comply with the legal education requirements. These will determine if they are eligible to take the California Bar Examination.

There are two groups of applicants for admission to practice law in California. An applicant may either be a general applicant or an attorney applicant. The difference between the two is that the latter is allowed to practice law in the United States or in a foreign territory while the former is not.

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