The Old School : Would-Be Attorneys Learn the Law Lincoln’s Way, by Apprenticing

Gary Blasi is a lawyer and a law professor at UCLA--yet he never went to law school.

Blasi is one of a small number of attorneys in California who entered the profession via the old-fashioned method of apprenticeship.

Although only a tiny fraction of lawyers train this way today--less than 1% nationally--apprenticeship was once the only way to learn the practice of law.

Weary of years of graduate school, Blasi began his apprenticeship in 1971, working in a public interest law firm for four years before taking--and passing--the California Bar exam in 1976.

“I wouldn’t have gone to law school, and I love being a lawyer, so it was the right thing to do,” he said.

Blasi and other graduates of the program are among its strongest advocates, saying it gave them excellent training and practical experience without the expense of law school. But others say an apprenticeship is not as comprehensive as law school and works only for those with a high level of self-discipline and motivation.

The apprenticeship method boasts many successful alumni--including William P. Clark Jr., the former California Supreme Court associate justice who served as national security adviser to President Reagan.

But Bar exam pass rates are low for apprentices--only about 20%, compared to about 50% for law school graduates. Bar officials warn, however, that the number of apprentices taking the exam is so small that it is difficult to draw statistical conclusions.

California is one of just seven states nationwide that permit candidates to qualify for the Bar as people did before the ascendency of academic law schools in the late 1800s. (It is also the only state that allows correspondence schools as a way to qualify for the Bar exam.)

Most states, responding to pressure from the American Bar Assn., have eliminated apprenticeship programs.

In California, only about 25 of about 11,000 candidates who take the Bar exam each year studied as apprentices instead of in a law school.

Although old-fashioned, apprenticeship has changed considerably since Abraham Lincoln’s day. It is more formalized and regulated and is no less rigorous than law school.

The apprenticeship program even has a formal name now; it is called Study in a Law Office or Judge’s Chambers, but is better known as the Law Office Study program. It is administered by the California State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners.

Aspiring attorneys must register for the program and work four years in the office of a lawyer or judge for 18 hours a week, 48 weeks a year. Meanwhile, they must study the law school curriculum on their own. They are required to pass the First Year Law Students’ Examination--or “Baby Bar”--at the end of their first year.

The first-year exam eliminates many people who start the program, said Jerome Braun, California State Bar senior executive for admissions.

“Those who complete it are not only super-motivated, but they’ve gone through a screening process,” Braun said.

The program currently has 66 participants in California, but has had as many as 125.

Despite the generally low pass rates, Law Office Study supporters think that the program offers an ideal alternative for those who do not have the money or time to go to school. And they say it gives apprentices much more practical experience than law school.

Billie Beach of Santa Monica is so enthusiastic about her experience with the program that she has spoken to college students, urging them to consider apprenticeships and criticizing the legal profession for creating entry barriers.

“The reason I didn’t want to go to law school was I liked to be out there working, I was older and I had limited financial resources,” said Beach, a divorced mother in her 40s who completed the program in 1990 and is awaiting the results of the Bar exam she took in July. Aside from saving thousands of dollars in law school tuition, the Law Office Study Program allows apprentices to get practical experience.

“The law is not very academic,” Beach said. “It’s like learning the rules to drive. You learn those rules in court, in judge’s chambers. So at the end of four years, you don’t have to go into a law firm and learn what you’ve just learned.”

The program also allows apprentices to avoid the disillusionment of some law school graduates who discover after three years of study that the field is not for them, Blasi said.

“There’s a whole industry of lawyers changing careers,” he said.

State Bar and law school officials acknowledge that apprentices get more practical experience. But they argue that apprentices miss the intellectual stimulation and breadth and depth of an academic training.

“In a law school, you have a whole range of people to call upon,” said Scott Bice, dean of the USC law school.

Bice also pointed out that over the last 10to 15 years, law schools have been expanding their clinical offerings so their students get more practical training.

Bar officials said that although no studies have been done, the most successful apprentices seem to be those who are related to their mentors. Spouses, children or siblings of the attorneys or judges with whom they work seem to be the most likely to pass the Bar exam, Braun said.

The reason for that is the heavy time demands on attorneys and judges, Braun said. They must spend five hours a week supervising the apprentices and file reports every six months with the Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners.

Blasi--who later became Beach’s mentor--was one of six people who studied law together while working in the Community Law Office in Echo Park, a public-interest law firm.

The group put together a curriculum, studied together and helped each other, said Blasi, 47, who had completed all but a dissertation for a doctorate in political science from Harvard University before his apprenticeship.

“This was an exceptional group of people,” said Sandor Fuchs, 48, of Hancock Park, who studied with Blasi and who practices civil rights and personal injury law in Echo Park. “Having a group you were responsible for was a great help. We pushed each other.”

Fuchs, like Blasi, had tired of academia when he started his apprenticeship. He too was just a dissertation away from a doctorate in economics from UC Berkeley.

“Not having to sit in a classroom was a great gift from heaven,” he said.

Fuchs and Blasi had the support of other apprentices, but Beach studied alone. Under the guidance of Blasi--who spent 13 years at the Legal Aid Foundation before taking the UCLA teaching post in 1991--Beach was assigned to the Homeless Litigation Team, which routinely challenged Los Angeles City Hall on its policies and practices on the homeless.

“At first, I felt overwhelmed,” Beach said. But she said Blasi gave excellent guidance, pointing out how she could design her own curriculum, pick out books, and buy course outlines and other commercially available materials.

Beach had only a two-year college degree before entering the Law Office Study program in 1985. (Her daughter, Jennifer Peters, is an attorney who picked the more traditional route of law school. But she too was untraditional in that she passed the Bar exam at 21.)

Beach and others lament the death of the apprenticeship programs in most states. But, she acknowledges, it is not for everyone.

“Many attorneys I’ve talked to would like to have done this,” she said. “Others said they wouldn’t have had the discipline.”