<p>If a person goes to law school in Maryland what would it take for them to practice in some other state? The bar exams are different and specific to each state right? I dont really understand how someone could graduate then find a job somewhere across the nation and go straight to work, all help is definetly appreciated</p>
<p>You’re confusing a lot of different things, so let’s straighten them out.</p>
<p>First of all, yes, there is a geographic element to going to law school. If you go to, say, U of Maryland, most of the firms that recruit (or will consider hiring you) will be in Maryland, DC, Delaware, and Jersey. That’s not to say that you cannot get a job in, say, Oregon; it’s just a bit (or a lot, depending on the quality and reputation of your school) to get that job.</p>
<p>So you have your job offer in hand. You’ll need to be licensed to practice law in that state. You will have to take some sort of bar preparation course, which is specific to the state you’re moving to. Even if you go to law school, in, say, Oregon, you would need to take a bar review course for Oregon. You may have a leg up on those people who went to other states for law school, but bar review should teach you any intricacies of that state’s law. </p>
<p>Yes, there are some states with major quirks - California, Louisiana, and Virginia come to mind. Law schools in those states sometimes offer special courses, specific to the law of that state. You may, as a side note in some of your classes, learn the laws of the state that you’re in. So there is a slight advantage to going to law school in the same state in which you want to practice. A Virginia civil procedure course may be very helpful for the VA bar and only available in VA law schools. If/when you take Family Law, you’ll work with statutes in the state your law school is in to get a feel for the law. If you don’t go to law school there, you just have to learn the stuff in bar review.</p>
<p>Taking classes for the bar is, supposedly, very overrated. Mostly, you’re learning common law. The textbooks are pretty much the same around the country - there’s only a handful of them for each course (and, for some courses, only one text exists!). Federal law, when you learn it, is obviously applicable in whatever state you are in. Think income tax, bankruptcy, civil procedure, administrative law, patent law, trademarks, copyrights, constitutional law - it’s the same no matter what state you are in.</p>
<p>End result is that, once you have a job offer, you go to that state, take the state-specific bar review course. Once you pass, you’re in.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Is there no reciprocity between states for law practice? </p>
<p>How can employers in various states hire a lawyer if that lawyer is not licensed to practice and ready to go? Is this problematic in job hunting? It would seem that under this system it would be difficult to avail oneself of a wide variety of job opportunities. Do employers actually do hiring and wait months for the new employee to pass the state’s bar exam?</p>
<p>As a lawyer, it is not always such an easy thing to move from one state to another if you want to continue to practice law. </p>
<p>Some students will take two bar exams the very first time they try. For example, many students will take NY and NJ, or NY and Mass. or NY and CT. I’m sure that it happens elsewhere as well. There are also two parts to the bar exam – the multistate portion (which is taken by students in almost every state in the county) and the state specific portion (which has state-specific topics and is administered separately by each state). </p>
<p>Once a lawyer is admitted to practice in a state, there are generally three options if that lawyer wants to practice in a different state. First, a state may offer reciprocity. DC offers reciprocity based solely on a lawyer’s multistate bar exam score. Most states that offer reciprocity will give a lawyer reciprocity only after that lawyer has practiced (it is not enough to have simply been admitted to the bar, you have to actually have practiced law for five years) and been in good standing for at least five years in a reciprocal jurisdiction. The rub is that not every state offers reciprocity to every other. For example, neither Connecticut nor New Jersey offers reciprocity to lawyers admitted in New York. Florida does not offer reciprocity to anyone at any time. New York offers reciprocity to lawyers from 28 states. Why not the others? I just don’t know. The reciprocity process typically requires an applicant to fill out extensive forms, to allow background and credit checks and to provide references, certificates of good standing, proof of CLE (continuing legal education), official driving histories and transcripts. Again, this all happens typically no sooner than five years from the date a lawyer was admitted in the original state. </p>
<p>Second, a lawyer may sit for the bar exam again. This option is not the most desirable one, by far (I’ve had to do this once recently in my career). Studying for and taking another full blown bar exam once you are working full time (and often working 60+ hours per week) is no joy ride. I basically borrowed a junior attorney’s BarBri books from her exam last year and studied from them without bothering to take the actual BarBri class again. I actually studied for probably a total of two weeks – certainly far from enough to guarantee a passing score. California is the one state of which I am aware that actually allows attorney applicants to their bar to take only the California portion of the bar exam (without taking the multistate portion of the bar exam over again). To be eligible to take the attorney’s exam in California, a lawyer must have been licensed to practice and actually practicing in another state for at least four years.</p>
<p>Third, if a lawyer is planning to practice law in house (working for a company with only that company as a client), many states provide either limited licenses to in house counsel or have examptions in their statutes that allow in house counsel to practice without a license in that state so long as the attorney has only that company as his or her client. </p>
<p>So, what is the result? Well, many lawyers will never leave the states where they were originally admitted to practice. Those who do leave, will either become in house counsel (typically no problems there), will take another bar exam or will go to a state with reciprocity and will work their way through the reciprocity process. Of course, as I mentioned before, reciprocity is typically available only to attorneys who have already been admitted and who have practices for several years. Often employers will simply state in their job postings or will have policies that they will hire only those attorneys who are already admitted in the state where the firm/employer is located. Sometimes, a law firm will hire a talented lawyer and have them work under supervision until that lawyer can sit for the very next bar exam (given twice a year in February and July). However, often that employee will be working full time while trying to study right up until the time of the bar exam – not an ideal situation. The pressure to pass would really be on in that situation! Moreover, while it is not impossible to move around as a lawyer who wants to continue to practice, it is something that has to be well thought through in advance.</p>
<p>Thank you sallyawp, for your very detailed and informative post!</p>
<p>Let’s try to split up the question and the answers between new law school graduates or current senior students on the one hand and attorneys who are already practicing on the other.</p>
<p>Graduating seniors: interviews for jobs occur starting the summer before the senior year begins and typically run through November or possibly December - in other words they are going on right now. Job offers are made contingent on the student’s passing the relevant bar examination, usually by the following winter. In other words the student/graduate is given two chances to pass the bar - summer after graduation and the following winter or mid-year exam. If he/she does not pass the bar by that time (results would be out for the mid-year exam by April or May), he/she is expected to look for another job immediately, and leave pretty soon - since he/she is not going to be able to practice law at that place.</p>
<p>But there is no requirement to take the bar exam in the state where you went to law school. If you can convince an out-of-state or out-of area employer (law firm or corporation) to hire you as a not-yet admitted attorney and you graduated from an ABA accredited law school, you can take the bar exam in any state or D.C. It’s not uncommon for larger law firms to hire some graduates from law schools not in their immediate area if the student has good qualifications and the firm has reason to believe the student wants to stay in that area at least for a while. </p>
<p>Next. Specificity of a bar exam to the laws of that state varies. In some states the bar exam is based primarily if not entirely on general legal principles while in others there are certain legal items specific to the state that are included. As an example of the first type, the only aspect of strictly California law on the California bar exam is the topic of community property. Some other states, however, may require a certain level of knowledge of that state’s procedural rules. One needs to check each state separately for that issue.</p>
<p>Practicing attorneys - can be admitted to the bar of another state based on that state’s specific rules. In most states, attorneys practicing less than 3 (or 5) years must take the complete bar exam while attorneys practicing longer can either take a shorter bar exam (the case in California) or be admitted without taking the bar exam, based on documents such as length of practice, sponsorship by a local attorney, recommendations, etc. - again, depending on the state.</p>
<p>Most states have such “reciprocity” with many other states - but not usually with all others. Why not - because these arrangements are ** reciprocal **. State A can set up an arrangement for its attorneys (or at least those with some experience) to be admitted in state B if state B will do simillarly for state A attorneys. But not typically unilaterally. Used to be the case (might still be) that New Jersey would not grant reciprocity to attorneys of any other state - a form of protection of local attorneys from competition by attorneys in New York City and Philadelphia, e.g. by big-city law firms that would want to open a local office but not necessrily hire local attorneys to staff it. Anyone who wanted to practice law in New Jersey had to take the full NJ bar exam. No doubt the same reason exists for Connecticut not giving reciprocity to NY lawyers.</p>
<p>i moved a couple of years after starting practice and had to take the state portion of the exam for the new state – my multistate score from when i took the test in the first state was high enough that it counted in the new state. not my idea of great fun – but had to be done – i did warn my husband though that we were never moving to another state thoug! :)</p>
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<p>if that is supposedly true today, all i can say is it means things have changed a lot - - because i could not have imagined taking either bar exam i took without having taken the bar review course. </p>
<p>quite honestly - i went to a top law school and i found that very little of what i learned in law school was relevant for the bar exam. the review courses were invaluable. and even when i took the test in the second state – i couldn 't have imagined not taking the review course for that state – not only do different states test on different subjects (there was a lot of overlap, but the number of subjects varied), but how they addressed things varied. the review course focused first on what was needed for the multistate test and then on what specific things you needed to know for the jurisdiction. even with subjects that were on both tests, the course offered very helpful information on the what you really needed to know for that state’s test.</p>
<p>this was quite a few years ago, but i would find it hard to imagine that bar review courses have become obsolete.</p>
<p>See this website for a link to a Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admnission Standards by State:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ncbex.org/[/url]”>http://www.ncbex.org/</a></p>
<p>I actually just sat for an entire bar exam again this past year. Many states don’t allow you to use a multistate score from a different test administration, and no state (other than DC) allows you to use multistate scores that are more than a few years old. I didn’t qualify to use my old score. I didn’t take BarBri – I really had absolutely no time for that. I had taken BarBri years before when I took my first bar exam right out of law school, though (but it was enough years ago that I didn’t remember much of anything). I can’t imagine how someone who is working full time could manage to sit through BarBri classes and keep up with the reading, studying and practice schedule that BarBri suggests, which is more than a little bit intense. I mainly studied on weekends. I did take about a week off from work immediately prior to the exam and then, obviously, the two days of the exam, plus the day after to recover! The good news is that I passed! No, I can’t believe it either.</p>
<p>Note - I would absolutely not recommend the course of study that I described above to anyone who wants to have a reasonable chance of passing the bar exam. The multistate portion of the exam does its best to test very subtle differences (and often the exceptions to the exceptions) on the areas of law that it tests upon. Oh, and no, you don’t need to take courses in every area tested by the bar exam in order to pass (though many of the multistate topics are covered in first year of law school). The test is grueling. I think that I passed only because my actual experience and knowledge built on that experience got me through the essays, even when I had no idea what the right answer was supposed to be. My multistate score this time around was a full 22 points lower than it was years ago on my first bar exam. Ouch! And that even after the bar examining committee made an effort four or five years ago to make the multistate more straightforward by shortening the question stems. Boy, did I get lucky!</p>
<p>Unbeliev - I meant taking law school classes, for the sole purpose of being familiar with bar subjects, not BarBri. :p</p>
<p>aries – that makes much more sense!!! :)</p>
<p>though as for taking law school classes to pass the bar – i think that may depend on where you go to law school. at least when i was going, there seemed to be an inverse correlation between the quality of the school and the degree to which your law school courses prepared you for the bar.</p>
<p>also with respect to the original question – realize that a new associate will generally start work well before learning if they pass the bar exam, let alone complete all the additional paper work for formally being admitted to the bar. if you are working at a large firm, much of what a young associate does not even require being admitted to the bar – researching, writing memos that a more senior attorney reviews before anything is done with it – i knew people who didn’t pass the bar exam the first time around and were still able to continue working at their firm while they studied to retake it – depends a lot on the firm as to whether they allow that or not.</p>
<p>and when i moved jurisdictions, i began work for a new firm before i even took the bar exam (was able to negotiate a schedule that permitted time for bar study as part of the agreement to go to that firm 
). i just didn’t do anything that required being admitted until i was admitted.</p>