Reading law was the primary method used in common law countries, particularly the United States, for people to prepare for and enter the legal profession before the advent of law schools. In Commonwealth countries, becoming an articled clerk was a similar practice.
It consisted of an extended internship or apprenticeship under the Tutor or Mentorship of an experienced lawyer. The practice largely died out in the early 20th century. A few U.S. states, namely California, Maine, New York, Vermont, Virginia and Washington, still permit people to become lawyers by reading law instead of attending some or all of law school, although the practice is uncommon.
In this sense, "reading law" specifically refers to a means of entering the profession, although in England it is still customary to say that a university undergraduate is "reading" a course, which may be law or any other.
United States
History
In colonial America, as in Britain in that day, law schools did not exist at all until Litchfield Law School was founded in 1773. Within a few years following the American Revolution, some universities such as the College of William and Mary and the University of Pennsylvania established a "Chair in Law".
However, the holder of this position would be the sole purveyor of legal education for the institution, and would give lectures designed to supplement, rather than replace, an apprenticeship.
[.] Even as a handful of law schools were established, they remained uncommon in the United States until the late nineteenth century. Most people who entered the legal profession did so through an
apprenticeship which incorporated a period of study under the supervision of an experienced attorney. This usually encompassed the reading of the works considered at the time to be the most authoritative on the law, such as
Edward Coke's
Institutes of the Lawes of England, William Blackstone's
Commentaries on the Laws of England, and similar texts.
[.]
The scholastic independence of the law student is evident from the following advice of Abraham Lincoln to a young man in 1855:
Historically, or county-seat lawyers were more likely to have read law. Reading law to become an attorney would be the norm, until the 1890s, when the American Bar Association, formed in 1878, began pressing states to limit admission to the Bar to those persons who had satisfactorily completed several years of post-graduate institutional instruction.[.]
On July 8, 1941, James F. Byrnes became the last Justice appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States who had never attended college or law school, and he was the penultimate appointee who had been admitted to practice by reading law. Byrnes was followed by Robert H. Jackson, who was commissioned just three days later, on July 11, 1941, and had also been admitted to the practice of law by reading, although he had attended Albany Law School for less than one year, taking a two-year program in a single year to save money.
Modern practice
In 2013, 60 people qualified to sit for the bar exam by reading law as opposed to 83,926 via law schools, and of those 60, 17 passed on their first attempt.
As of 2024, four US states still permit reading law as the sole means of legal education. In California,
Two other states allow reading law in combination with some law school. New York allows applicants to read law provided they have already completed at least one year of law school study.
| +
!State
!Required law school
!Required time reading law
!Total time
!Bar passage rate |
| California | none | 4 years | 4 years | 41.7% (2023) |
| Maine | 2 years | 1 year | 3 years | |
| New York | 1 year | 3 years | 4 years | 17% (2024) |
| Vermont | none | 4 years | 4 years | |
| Virginia | none | 3 years | 3 years | 20.21% (2001–2022) |
| Washington | none | 4 years | 4 years | 20% (2024) |
Notable Americans currently reading law
From 2018 to 2025,
Kim Kardashian read law in California through a San Francisco law firm.
In November 2025, she announced she failed her first attempt at the bar exam.
Notable Americans who became lawyers by reading law
U.S. presidents
U.S vice presidents
-
Alben W. Barkley
[Libbey in "The Making of the 'Paducah Politician'", p. 255.]
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Charles Curtis
U.S. legislators
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Daniel Webster, Senator from Massachusetts
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George Gray,
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George S. Houston,
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John H. Mitchell, U.S. Senator from Oregon in the 1870s
U.S. Supreme Court chief justices
Seven of the first eight U.S. Supreme Court chief justices engaged in their legal education primarily by reading law. Except for the second chief justice
John Rutledge, who had formal legal education at the
Middle Temple in London, no chief justice had any university-based legal training until
Melville Fuller in 1888, who attended Harvard Law School for six months. All chief justices since the appointment of Edward Douglass White in 1910 have held law degrees.
U.S. Supreme Court justices after 1900
Few early Supreme Court justices attended law school although the practice of attending law school became more common after around 1900. Supreme Court justices who read law after 1900 include:
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James F. Byrnes
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Pierce Butler
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John Hessin Clarke
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Gabriel Duvall
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Joseph Rucker Lamar
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Robert H. Jackson
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William Henry Moody, left Harvard Law School to read law
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Mahlon Pitney
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George Sutherland, left University of Michigan Law School to read law
State Governors
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Strom Thurmond, Governor of South Carolina & US Senator
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Patrick Henry, 1st Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia
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Thomas R. Marshall,
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Thomas Clarke Rye, Governor of Tennessee
Other politicians
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Marilla Ricker,
-
Frank B. Kellogg, United States Secretary of State
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Granville Pearl Aikman, Judge and suffragist
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Edmund Pendleton, 1st Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Virginia
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William Simon U'Ren, Father of the Oregon System
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Rush Limbaugh Sr., Missouri judge
Non-governmental
See also
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Articled clerk, a similar practice to reading law used in Commonwealth countries.
External links
