Law license, with no degree
Virginia one of four states where you can take the bar exam without attending law school
As she sat in court on countless occasions, first as a police officer, and later as an advocate for crime victims, Tammy McClenney would watch the prosecutors and defense attorneys argue their cases and question witnesses.
“I thought, ‘I can do that,’ ” McClenney said. “And sometimes I thought, ‘I can do that better than they can.’ ”
But the married mother of two young girls wasn’t willing to take on the expense of law school. She already had worked her way through college, delivering Chinese food and cleaning houses, and was trying to save for her daughters’ college educations.
So she decided to take another route: Virginia’s Law Reader Program.
The program, run by the Virginia Board of Examiners, allows participants to take the bar exam without ever taking a law school class. Only three other states offer the opportunity to obtain a law license that way: California, Vermont and Washington.
This method is how all lawyers got their start before the first law school opened in 1779. Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson were among some of the early “law readers.”
Likely the most famous
current legal apprentice is reality television star Kim Kardashian, who announced last year that she’s participating in a four-year program in California and hopes to take the bar exam by 2022.
In the Virginia program, participants study on their own for three years, under the guidance of a supervising attorney. The only costs are a $2,500 application fee and purchasing the needed textbooks.
There are rules on what the participants study, the number of hours they must devote to their studies each week and how and where they spend those hours. They also must pass exams at the end of each course of study, as well as an oral one administered by the board each year.
If they manage to do all that, and pass the state’s bar exam, they can become a licensed attorney in Virginia — all while saving tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees. Current estimates place the cost of three years of law school at $85,000 to $148,000.
McClenney, was 39 when she entered the program in 2012. She had spent 13 years as a Virginia Beach police officer and sergeant, but retired after an injury to her hand prevented her from firing a gun. She had heard about the law reader program as a police officer and was working as a victim-witness advocate for the commonwealth’s attorney’s office when she decided to apply.
McClenney estimates the total cost of getting her law license was about $10,000. She got help from family and friends along the way, with lots of Barnes & Noble gift cards provided during those three years that largely paid for her textbooks. She now works as an attorney specializing in family and criminal law, with an office in Virginia Beach.
Many law readers have gone on to be quite successful in their fields. Virginia Beach has several prominent law readers, including retired Circuit Judge Thomas Padrick, Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Judge Deborah Bryan, Commonwealth’s Attorney Colin Stolle, and Stolle’s brother, Sheriff Ken Stolle.
So, why don’t more attorneys in Virginia get their law license that way? Just ask those who’ve done it.
“It’s tough,” said Colin Stolle, who participated in the program in the early 1990s and passed the bar in 1996. “It’s really just you, sitting down with all the textbooks, and trying to figure it all out.”
Stolle had recently graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and was considering a career in the Navy when he was persuaded to apply by his older brothers Ken and Ed, who became attorneys through the program. Their father, whose first career was in the Navy, also earned a law license that way — at the age of 70 — and practiced until he was 80.
While most law readers study on their own, Colin Stolle said he was fortunate to know two others who were in the program at the same time and was able to work alongside them. One, Susan Hooks, is now his chief deputy. The other, Deborah Bryan, is now a judge.
Stolle said he often thought of quitting in the beginning. There were many dry subjects, such as contracts and wills, that he had no interest in and struggled to get through.
But then he got a chance to work part-time in the city’s commonwealth’s attorney’s office, watching prosecutors prepare and argue their cases, and his outlook changed.
“I was there maybe two weeks when I realized there was nothing else I wanted to do,” he said. “That’s when I decided I just had to suffer through all the parts I didn’t like.”
Padrick, who retired from the Circuit Court earlier this year after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 73, called his time in the law reader program “probably the worst three years of my life.”
“I literally did not have a day off for three years,” he said.
Padrick was a homicide detective for the Virginia Beach Police Department when he entered the program in the late 1970s. He continued working nights as a detective while studying during the day, and quickly found himself overwhelmed by the workload and complex subjects.
Padrick went to William & Mary’s law school in Williamsburg, then the closest one to Virginia Beach, and begged some of the professors to let him sit in on classes. They allowed it, he said, as long as he sat quietly in the back. He did that for 2 ½ years.
He passed the bar exam on his first try and opened his own law practice in 1980. He was appointed by the General Assembly to the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court in 1992, and was elevated to the Circuit Court in 1997.
To get into Virginia’s program, applicants must first earn a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university. They also must submit character reference letters that speak to their honesty and reputation. Most importantly, they have to find a qualified supervising attorney who is willing to work with them during their three years of study and can provide space for them to work.
A supervising attorney can charge their apprentice a fee, but McClenney said her supervisor, Virginia Beach lawyer Richard Doummar, didn’t. Currently, there are just nine people participating in Virginia’s program, said Brooke O’Kelly, an investigator for the board of examiners.
While the acceptance rate is high — about 80 to 90% of applicants get in — the law readers’ success rate on the state’s bar exam is low, according to a study done by the board last year.
Only 19% of the law readers who took the state’s bar exam between 2001-19 passed, the study showed.
The overall pass rate was 68% during that time.
Nationally, only 28% of law readers passed the bar in 2013, compared with 73% who went to law school.
McClenney said when she took the exam in February 2015, there were eight law readers taking it. She was the only one who passed.
The Virginia study also showed that law readers make up a tiny fraction of the licensed attorneys in the state. Only 32 of the 22,817 people who passed the bar between 2001-19 were law readers.
And that’s just the ones who stayed in the program long enough to take the exam, according to Virginia’s board. Many drop out once they realize the scope of what they must accomplish on their own, especially since many of them work at least part-time while participating in the program.
“You do have to be very disciplined,” said Hooks, the chief deputy for Virginia Beach’s commonwealth’s attorney’s office. She became a law reader after graduating from Old Dominion University, and maintained a job while studying the law.
Padrick said that while he’s grateful to have been able to get his law license through the program, he usually discourages people from entering it. Stolle, Hooks, and McClenney, however, said they always recommend it to people — as long as they understand what they’re getting into.