The federal constitution defines the broadest formal structure to which all the rest must conform: it defines what powers and limitations apply to the national government (consisting of three co-equal branches) and leaves scope for state and local governments to function within their own realms of sovereignty and to define the rules by which they do so. In theory, federal sovereignty is strictly limited and any powers not expressly given to the federal authority by the constitution are reserved to the states. Within the scope of its express powers, the federal authority can but need not preempt all state and local law. States in turn have their own constitutions and these provide that state law can but need not preempt local laws. Where laws are not preempted, they can peacefully co-exist in a way that, in the aggregate, defines the broad scope of the American law as a whole.

Within this broad framework, you have the legislative, the judiciary, and the executive functions (again, existing in separate forms at the federal, state, and local levels). The legislature enacts statutes that set forth formal rules governing this or that in society, taken as a class. Courts decide particular cases and controversies and publish decisions that in turn can become binding law as precedents commensurate with the scope of authority vested in the court deciding the case (with decisions of the highest courts, e.g., the U.S. Supreme Court, having potential binding effect on the entire nation and with decisions of other appellate courts, both federal and state, having important but more restricted binding effect) and also interpret the meaning of legislative enactments as disputes arise as to their particular meaning in a given case or controversy. Legislative enactments can also set up administrative agencies that have full authority to administer a particular statutory scheme (e.g., the Federal Communications Act sets up the F.C.C., which has plenary authority to determine how the statutory scheme is implemented as defined by what Congress intended in enacting the statute).

To be a good U.S. lawyer, you need to be well educated and trained to function within this system. This means having a good logical mind that is able to understand and sort through the various formal systems and layers of law, to understand what they each mean, to understand how they relate to each other, and (most important) to discern how all of these apply to and affect any particular case (either in structuring a transaction or fighting a dispute). This, by the way, is why it is so difficult and even potentially treacherous for those who have not been so trained to read a few "rules" and just assume they know what they are doing in concluding that, because of this or that rule, this or that must follow. That approach can work well for many situations but can get you into big trouble if you are missing key pieces that might also apply to the particular situation and that you simply do not see (or do not appreciate the effect of). This is also why law has been so stubbornly resistant to the idea of being reduced to algorithmic solutions along engineering lines. Law certainly does have its patterns and can be reduced to algorithmic solutions in discrete areas but trying to do so across the spectrum of the different layers of sovereignty, the spectrum of legislative enactments and judicial decisions, and byzantine areas of administrative law (e.g., U.S. Tax Code regulations) is a difficult task of a very tall order.

In my day at law school (late 1970s - and I believe it is broadly similar today), American law schools primarily used the "case system" as the preferred approach to teaching students to learn to "think like a lawyer." In other words, you learned very little about the actual day-to-day practice of law but you studied intensely to learn all the formal structures and to read through, analyze, and master appellate level case law interpreting and applying that law in the form of particular cases and controversies. As a given important case would be decided, you would learn the legal principles it expounded, whether it was about tort law, contract law, real property law, criminal law, or whatever.

Back in that day, law schools would also offer limited offerings focusing on a few important legislative schemes and also giving very limited opportunities to do short internships giving some practical experience.

In general, what all this meant was that good law school graduates would master the formal aspects of the law and would be let loose into the real world knowing very little about how any of it actually worked.

Once you passed the bar exam and began actual real-world practice, it would typically take a full year or two before you could anything that resembled efficient practice, another couple of years before you learned to handle relatively simple things both competently and efficiently, and another several years before you could learn to do all of the above and, in addition, learn to think strategically. When you can finally do all of this, you are functioning at partner level.

In essence, then, all that I have described in the immediately preceding paragraph, is effectively a true apprenticeship. And this is a huge part of becoming a good lawyer.

Can you skip the formal education and still become a good or even a great lawyer? Absolutely. Is it easy to do? No, it is very difficult and that is the advantage of the formal education via law school. In essence, what you are buying through a good law education is (one hopes) expert guidance through a complicated thicket. It helps you focus and also learn through lectures what academics can teach about the fascination of legal logic. This does not always work well but, in really good law school, it does and it helps a lot. Is it indispensable? Not at all. There are many gifted people who have the right aptitude and can bypass the formal education without any detriment whatever. If they are properly apprenticed, they can learn all that is necessary in a real-world environment and supplement this with independent study. Strong auto-didactic skills are very much needed here. But with that, and a good mentor, you can master the practice of law without problem. After all, the vast bulk of what most formally educated lawyers learn is also through the apprenticeship part of their training. So, in important ways, the different paths do overlap.

Is it easy to market what you do having gone the pure apprenticeship route? I would say that, here as well, there are significant difficulties. It can be done but likely only if you are good enough to make a mark with clients while serving as an apprentice and thereby building a reputation such that clients will overlook the lack of a formal law school education. This works better in specialty fields than in others.

Am I saying the law school approach is better? It probably is and it certainly is a lot easier. But I am all for the apprenticeship approach for those who have the skill and the aptitude. There is enough of the guild system built into American legal systems and anything that gives people more choices is to be welcomed.

This obviously has an important bearing on whether someone is competent to practice law and that is why such exams are universally used as a minimal condition for entering the profession.

That said, the tests are in some respects arbitrary in that they fail to test for a wide variety of other traits that qualify one for practicing law, they fail miserably to screen many who do prove to be utterly incompetent practitioners, they bar others from practicing who in fact would be very able practitioners but who cannot pass the formal testing mechanism, and they limit the supply of legal services available to those who are least able to afford them, thus serving as an integral part of a guild system that may be seriously outdated in a modern world in which technology might be better able to be used to help people in legal matters if such barriers did not exist.

In other words, bar exams are all good in theory but in many ways serve to do more harm than good in limiting the potential for how legal services might ideally be provided now that the technical means are there for better standardizing them and for more efficiently delivering them. I don't believe this will change any time soon but who knows? Frustrations with the legal profession abound and maybe someday some of these guild-related elements will be re-examined. But I am not holding my breath.

My big problem with law school isn't that I think extensive study is unnecessary for law, nor do I think that formal exams and licensing are unnecessary. What I don't like is that law schools have managed to position themselves as gatekeepers that can extract $150K+ from everyone who wishes to enter this profession (to be clear, nothing about this objection is inconsistent with what you've written above).

This is why I'm interested in the actuarial exams. As with law, I'd be highly impressed if someone could learn the necessary math and statistics to pass the exams for this field without formal coursework. Most people probably can't, but some can. However, it's also important to note the you can major in physics, math, engineering, stats, economics from a quantitatively rigorous department, and so forth. You could also, at this point, probably put together a series of on-line courses (such as coursera) to cover this. In short, you need to be rigorously educated to enter and succeed in this field, but there is no institution that has succeeded in installing itself at the gate to collect a huge toll from everyone who wants to enter.

This doesn't really exist for law, but that may be at least in part because it would be illegal anyway. If you simply aren't allowed to take the bar after majoring in law, or getting a masters degree, then why would these programs even exist? But perhaps (and I only mean perhaps, I'm not playing devil's advocate here, I do hold this position, but with a lot of uncertainty), if the bar were replaced with a series of exams, alternative paths to study that are in fact highly rigorous and absolutely valid would emerge, with no risk to people who rely on rigorously educated lawyers (for all I know this filter might be more effective, at a lower cost, expanding the options for affordable legal aid).

This does already exist to some extent - my understanding is that California does allow an on-line law program, with a "baby bar" requirement at the end of the first year. Pass rates are low, but I'm not sure I see that as a problem if the program isn't very expensive. Most people who sign up for a coursera don't finish, but that's not a really big deal if the cost is zero. In fact, the low baby bar and overall bar passage rates may instead show that these programs don't pose a risk to the public, as (again, perhaps) this shows the "bar" is working, ensuring that only those grads who have truly learned the material get through (some who aren't qualified will slip through, and some who are won't, but this is true for regular law school as well).

I read a good article about on line law schools from US News and world report a while back, and one of the people profiled was a structural engineer who specialized in seismic issues. He slowly realized that he was offering not just engineering advice, but legal advice as well. He ultimately decided to go to law school, but his travel schedule prevented him from attending a brick and mortar school. So he enrolled in an on-line program.

It sounds rigorous, if untraditional, and he will be allowed to take the bar exam in California. But the story really pinpointed the problem to me.

Personally, I see a lot of good in allowing this structural engineer to become a member of the bar. Seeing that he still has to take a full on-line law school load (4 years), and that he still has to pass the bar, it seems to me the risk is minimal, and the benefits are considerable - it allows someone who truly understands something from life experience and work experience to function as a lawyer. As far as a glut of lawyers goes, there is no displacement here, a 25 year old history major who went to law school is not losing out on a job that goes to a structural engineer who specializes in seismic issues who is now allowed to offer legal services.

This is probably one of the least objectionable proposals, but even this, the bar seems to be fighting tooth and nail. Very few states allow this. Why? It's hard not to grow cynical, to conclude that the law schools don't want to lose their gatekeeper status that allows them to extract massive amounts of money from people who wish to enter the profession.

Anyway, that's my long post. The tl;dr is that I agree that law education must be rigorous, but that I feel that the cartel-like behavior of the bar is preventing reasonable alternative paths from emerging.

I really do think that software developers may be unusually well prepared to study law this way, because developers really are accustomed to massive amounts of self-directed learning.

While I've occasional seen developers express frustration that this or that employer strongly prefers graduates of a particular school -- by and large if you have a string of accomplishments all doors are open to you. The legal field is the exact opposite. There are entire career paths that are simply only available to those that attended one of a handful of law schools (the legal academy being perhaps the worst).

Some regional firms recruit from lower-ranked schools that are located nearby, but in some ways, the competition for those few spots is even worse.

Needless to say, I'm glad that I changed my mind about going to law school.

There are legal jobs that have good work-life balance, involve interesting work, pay decently (if not great), don't require you to hustle for clients, and are fairly well thought of by society at large: federal court judge and tenured law professor. For both it would behoove you to go to Yale or failing that Harvard.

(Keep in mind when looking at these links, Yale's class size is about 1/3 Harvard's.)

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2004/04/where_federal_... http://lsolum.blogspot.com/archives/2004_07_01_lsolum_archiv...

The exams are pure application of rules. You argue for and against liability/guilt/etc.

Plus the whole field sucks.

But there are law firms who pretty much only hire top 5 graduates. This is different from even Google, where a Stanford degree might help but there are still plenty of self-taught or non-Ivy developers.

Maybe people care more about outcomes when they're spending their own time instead of someone else's money?

So do most practitioners in careers that are typically associated with or require a university degree: actuaries, accountants, engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc. all have to stay current with their respective fields and do so primarily through self-study.

Of course there exist people in all of those careers who don't. But the same is true in software.

The idea that people in tech are "unusually well prepared to study law" through apprenticeship as framed by the GP is strikes me as arrogant and nescient to what other professionals do. Actually… it reminds me of an Xkcd: https://xkcd.com/793/

As a result, I wonder if maybe software developers are a little more inclined, as a "profession", toward paths that are less formalized.

Yes (edit: accidentally said the opposite of what I meant!). What you need to be able to do is pass the exams. BUT -- plenty of people with math degrees fail these exams. It's a hell of a lot harder than learning how to hack together a RoR site.

See e.g., various discussions on http://www.actuarialoutpost.com

You can also e.g., fill a number of supporting roles around actuaries without a college degree and then demonstrate competence by taking exams.

> I wonder if maybe software developers are a little more inclined, as a "profession", toward paths that are less formalized.

I think the fact that everyone in software has the same job title makes a huge difference wrt medicine and engineering.

The guy hacking together cookie-cutter single server websites calls himself a software developer/engineer just the same as the Ph.D. hacking on compilers or ML algorithms. Everyone inside the field knows there's a huge difference between these two jobs, and that becoming the latter is basically requires a degree (perhaps even an advanced one) or really extraordinary dedication while the former probably doesn't even need a degree at all.

So when someone says "do I need a degree to become a software developer? / Is a degree the fastest path to becoming a software developer?", it's an ill-defined question. What do you mean by software developer? Do you want a good salary doing whatever in boom times or do you want to do really technically interesting work with job security even in bust times?

Conversely, most other fields tend to differentiate between job titles that require lots of skill and jobs that don't.

For example, the difference between various levels of non-doctor healthcare workers (the whole range of nurses, and then everything up/down from there) is very institutionalized. Something similar happens in engineering -- plenty of non-engineers do engineer-y things in engineering firms, but some things you'd be insane to delegate to someone who doesn't have formal engineering education.

From what I can tell, none of the lead creators of PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby or JavaScript actually have PhDs. The original author of Turbo Pascal and chief architect of Delphi and now of C#, Anders Hejlsberg, didn't even finish his undergraduate degree.

It's not just a matter of similar titles, the paths are really less formalized.

For instance, the sentence right after the one you quote ends with: "...or really extraordinary dedication". The handful of people you mention in your post, I think, count as extraordinary.

To reiterate my point:

The IT guy who helps hack out some spreadsheets isn't an actuary. The nurse who changes sheets isn't a doctor. But in software, there's no distinction -- in terms of externally recognized job titles -- between the guy hacking on wordpress templates or apps that burn my phone's battery and steal my data for no reason, and someone working on a piece of critical infrastructure.

I can't really respond to your anecdata without starting a flame war, but suffice it to say that perhaps some people would consider PHP or Perl or JavaScript cogent counter-examples to the point you're trying to make.

Finally, lots of actuaries without degrees rise to the top of their organizations and get to work on really cutting-edge stuff. Those people are extreme outliers. The same exact thing is true in software. Literally the only difference is that actuaries don't have the same sort of blindness to statistics that software people do, and I think the reason is that there's a clearer distinction between "grunt work related to actuarial work" and "professional-grade actuarial work".

If we made that distinction in software, then I think the perception that you can do real software engineering without a degree would shift far closer to "Exceptional" than it is now.

You say they count as extraordinary, but by what measure? Reading the origins of those languages, they don't strike me as such. Unless you consider them extraordinary because they wrote languages and compilers without having advanced formal education, but then your claim seems rather circular.

I can't really respond to your anecdata without starting a flame war, but suffice it to say that perhaps some people would consider PHP or Perl or JavaScript cogent counter-examples to the point you're trying to make.

Well, no, because the point I'm making is that one can be employed to hack on some of the most used languages and compilers without having a PhD, and these examples strengthen it.

Now, it might be that these languages are poorly built and which is why many non-PhDs can get jobs building them, but that is an explanation, not a rebuttal.

And I'd point out that one doesn't have to be blind to fail to see statistics that aren't there. Would you care to provide them?

Of course. You can most anything without a degree, with very few exceptions (see: the article).

But the degreed : undegreed and phd : nonphd ratios in language design/compiler implementation are much higher than in software development more generally. The same is true of other technically challenging things. If you agree with that observation, then I think we're violently agreeing or you're reacting to the tone rather than the substance of my post.

> Would you care to provide them?

Anecdata, and bearing in mind that "originator of a language" is a very, very small subset of all people working on compilers / language design (and that even there, I think my observation holds -- especially for degreed : undegreed, and probably even for phd : nonphd). And that compiler/language design is only one very small segment of what a reasonable person would consider to be core infrastructure.

I don't have the time or the interest to run this study. Feel free to do so.

I spent a little bit of time (less than a year) in upper management even, and hated it. I wouldn't be happy optimizing algorithms to serve ads better, or track financial systems. There's a place for that, sure... but it just isn't interesting to me.

There's fun in trying to keep current with new things... Hell, I've been sticking with node.js since inception, and that's been a very wild ride. I like web based applications, despite other people hating them. In the end, I like delivering usability and solutions to the end user. I started out as a designer/artist in a former life (been in software for nearly two decades now).

The conventional path was never the right thing for me. That doesn't mean I'm not able to do type of work being done at Google, Netflix and the like... And I've even considered it. Just because I don't have a degree does not mean that I haven't studied, and am not able to do "really technically interesting work."

I've spent the better part of twenty years studying, designing and developing software systems, with far more real experience than someone stepping out of college. To think that someone who's spent that much time is always inferior to someone with a formal education is simply ignorant.

As to engineering, take a look at where Radar came frome sometime. It wasn't formal educational engineers, it was guys with on the ground experience. There are a lot of truly great acheivments in humanity that didn't come out of a formal education.

Okay, going to stop now, I just found the parent post very arrogant and frustrating. Arrogance irritates me more than any other behavioral trait.

Yes, anyone can take the exams, there are a handful. And if you pass them all nobody really cares about your degree. But from what I gather you'd better be pretty sharp to pull it off.

The engineers in my family think I'm a failure because I don't seem to have enough value for my employer that it tries to train me. ( also the "it's just computer programming" that does not help )

And there's no "Supreme Court of Coding" either.

But there absolutely should be both.

Programming is littered with people "just trying things" and "hacking" and other crudities like "experimentation" and "exploration."

We need regulation, regimentation and a predictable level of service.

You should also be required to obtain a license (after a 90 day waiting period) for each computer you own, even if it's not going to be used for programming.

It's the only way we can reduce the number of data breaches and crashes.

The programming equivalent would be like forcing coders to demonstrate competency in everything from embedded systems programming to OS development to packaged application to web back-end, to web front-end, mobile apps, algorithms, networking, language design, compiler optimization, etc.

The way it works now, coders can specialize and that makes it easier to self-study. Learning all about web front-end dev is a lot easier then learning about every type of programming there is.

If you want credentialling, it would have to be more like medicine, where people have to pass the boards in their specialty only.

My hope was that the line "It's the only way we can reduce the number of data breaches and crashes" would seem immediately ridiculous to everyone.

Given the history of surprising security bugs in mature code being discovered by a decentralized collection of users and hackers over long periods of time -- a phenomenon we've all witnessed over the years -- I figured the notion that a slow-moving, bureaucratic supreme panel of code judges effectively and decisively removing security problems basically didn't make sense.

I don't know now. Maybe it makes more sense than I thought.

But if you look back at the history of highly-regulated technology industries, every single one started out lightly regulated and free wheeling. Early railroad, automobile, oil drilling, aviation, and telecommunication companies (to name a few) were all full of self-taught innovators who wanted to move fast and disrupt things.

As software eats the world, the world will become less and less tolerant of shitty software. I will not be surprised at all to see demand for credentialling and oversight grow even in the next 10 years.

Most of these systems weren't developed by guys hacking away at PHP and Wordpress... Also, Nobody is going to die because your home computer was botted.

While I agree there should be more to professional software development than what we have today, I'd suggest that a guild system by reputation would be more appropriate... You only gain reputation by being backed by others who are considered trusted in turn. If you are shamed/shunned/fired for incompetance, then those who backed you also lose reputation.

In the end, nobody is going to support such a system. We're just about the last of the higher payed professional white/blue collar fields left. Why, because we negotiate pay. Going to a federated system would only serve to drive down pay, and introduce fees to an abstract organization that does very little good. I would also postulate that hiring a great programmer isn't any harder than finding/hiring a great lawyer.

In the end, it comes down to need, understanding, honesty and communication. I appreciate that we're in a field where someone without a degree (myself) has done some serious professional work in government, aerospace, education, security and financial industries.

Things that are involved with creating an open source library that I can think of off the top of my head:

  - Set up a build system
  - Use a test suite
  - Choose and follow a coding standard
  - Issue tracking
  - Bug report system
  - Source control (good branching practices/ whatever best practices 
    your favorite source control promotes)
  - Create a specification / roadmap (months of coding can save hours of planning)
  - Documentation
     a) Determining convention
     b) Actually creating clear documentation
     c) Updating documentation through changes
  - Writing code that just works

  - Communicate architecture to random strangers using
    specifications that they understand
  - Collaborate to develop roadmap /architecture with input
    from other developers
  - Communicate in a way as to not piss off strange
    developers who decide to help you for free

TL;DR

Contribute to open source, start your own open source project because the skills required cover 90% of what programmers need to know. The CS theory stuff is the smallest and easiest part to train up. Show that you know how to execute well on the 90%, and companies will fall over themselves to train you on their own dime for the tiny subset of CS theory that they use.

Here's the thing - if formally enrolling in law school can't be characterized as "not self study", what can be? We'd be striking the phrase from the language at that point. So while I agree that all learning is self-directed to an extent, I do think it's reasonable to say that programmers do tend to be more "self-taught" than lawyers.

In context of the original article, being mentored by a practicing lawyer is likely to be similar to law school in the amount of self-study, so the idea that programmers would prefer one mechanism over another due solely to self-study is not a premise that I agree with.

Which is what compilers, interpreters, and "Show HN" do.

Except the learning you do has massive amounts of feedback. You try stuff, it works, you try other stuff, it doesn't. You won't get that in a law office study program.

As Justice Holmes famously said, the practice of law is ultimately about predicting what a judge is likely to do. [1] That requires understanding judges' motivations, which include, for example, (A) doing what seems to be the "right" thing; (B) not suffering the professional embarrassment of being reversed on appeal; and, (C) not doing long-term damage to society with a bad decision, a canonical example of which is the Dred Scott Case [2].

Finally, really good lawyers not only try to predict what judges will do, they also grasp the motivations of their clients and of their clients' colleagues, collaborators, and adversaries.

I've long thought that the practice of law is like being a weather forecaster: You have to understand how the different atmospheric phenomena are likely to interact, and to make your best guess as to what's going to happen when a high-pressure system collides with an upper-atmosphere disturbance, etc. (I have no idea whether what I just said makes sense meteorologically).

[1] http://www.constitution.org/lrev/owh/path_law.htm

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

It's a self-fulfilling system, too, thanks to the learning of case law. Law propagates more law. This is why we have legalese. This is why we can't have nice things!

In every formal legal dispute I've been in, the lawyers on both sides seemed essentially to function like professional negotiators. The fine points of the law itself had little to do with the actual work being done in resolving the dispute.

Law is a kind of emergent system. As Justice Holmes famously said, "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience." [1]

>>> That is why we have legalese.

The term legalese covers a lot of ground. We need to distinguish between the different genera (TIL that's the plural of genus).

Some legalese is simply a compact system of shorthand. Such systems evolve in every field; for example, the shorthand terms edge case and corner case in software. Busy professionals expect their colleagues to know the shorthand.

Some legalese, especially the archaic kind, can be used in an attempt to mystify and awe nonlawyers, especially less-educated ones. Good lawyers try to avoid doing that.

(Footnote: In bar-association circles there's been a persistent move toward plain language; try a Google search for "plain language vs. legalese.")

>>> This is why we can't have nice things!

Law evolved as an alternative to the rule of the strongest. On the whole, law is sustainable and scalable, more or less. We imperfect humans actually follow it, mostly, notwithstanding our tendency to pursue our individual desires.

If you think you know of a better system, please feel free to run for office and try to persuade the rest of us to implement it. And remember the brute fact that we humans are loss-averse [2]; that's one big reason why persuading people to go along with political reform can be so difficult.

(You could always try the Daesh approach [3], but that's likely to get you locked up or killed, and it'd be like trying to rewrite your code from scratch [4] --- you'd lose so much codified knowledge of workable ways of handling edge cases and corner cases.)

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oliver_Wendell_Holmes,_Jr.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

[3] http://www.vox.com/2015/11/14/9734894/daesh-isis-isil

[4] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

It's going to be long time before a computer can write as well as an average lawyer. And, when that day comes, you'll find that just as many programming jobs have been automated away as law jobs.

He also decided to laser focus on a couple of common aspects of law and absolutely nail them.

Often, when I'm going to use a professional of some sort, I will ask them about their journey to practice whatever it is they do. Many have a quick statement you can tell they have prepped to dispense with it all efficiently.

No worries, I value my time too.

Of course, many ask because they feel they should. But, some ask out of a more genuine interest, and that is me.

This guy told me all about his journey, and I could feel it. He is doing something he feels something for and he wants to do it well. Love it. I know exactly who I am dealing with and what to expect. I can trust the intent too, which is important. Money is nice, but you can't buy well directed passion.

In my experience, professionals who can pick up on that interest and have a real dialog are some of the best to work with. Not that the others aren't. It is just easier to figure someone out and work well, trust and value them when they can or will share on a more real, basic level.

To me, it seems there should be a path for people like this. They often know what they want and they feel what they need to in order to honor whatever it is.

Filtering that out is what organizations like the ABA, AMA, etc... do. And we need them to do that for us too. No argument.

But, doing that does conflict with maximizing self directed people, and I get it. They paid, and shouldn't everyone who is serious?

No, frankly. And there is the rub.

Software is one area where these people often and frequently do shine bright. Arguably, we are better for that.

Not everyone can or will pay. To me, having some intrinsic drive is worth a lot.

So where is the support network for people trying to learn our field in depth through self study? As nice as HN/Reddit/etc all are, they're not really a replacement for a study in the rigorous theory foundations that let you break away from having your career defined by one transient technology after another.

Law has the usual power curve for income and prestige - a relatively small number of partners, mostly from privileged and connected backgrounds, make most of the money and get most of the opportunities. A few potential stars get useful mentoring. But there's a huge army of law workers who only really only do crappy clerical work (boilerplate wills, property sales, debt chasing, and such) and handle petty criminal cases.

IME a lot of these lawyers aren't that good. They get results because the public are intimidated by lawyers, not because they're brilliant at their jobs. It's not hard to self-study procedure and case law if you're going up against them, and give yourself a better than average chance of winning.

I think dev culture is more open. If you want to talk to the creator of <some cool thing> you often can. If it's a FOSS project, you can get involved and add it to your resume. There are IRC channels and blogs and mailing lists and many other options.

This is not to be confused with startup culture, which is a different thing, and does seem to suffer from social exclusion.

But if you're more interested in cranking out code than feeding money to your pet unicorn, dev culture really does seem to be relatively open and meritocratic.

We are not the legal system, where our practice is locked away in professional journals or in professional libraries that cost more than a car. There are user groups, interest groups, free lectures, etc. There's even IRC, freenode in particular has a lot of really great people that will answer many questions.

Software development is a field with more liberal availability of knowledge than any other professional field in human history.

Transient technology and even hacking away at something allows for people to break into a field at the edge... doing what is interesting and learning from there. You are able to go as deep as you like, and expand as much as you want. Self-directed learners range from guys that can barely pull off a wordpress template, to the guy that came up with BabelJS. The sefl-directed software developer/learner has a focus that you don't have in an educational environment... that is generally a real world goal that you are trying to accomplish.

There's a much easier way to accomplish that shift. Start a business, perhaps SaaS or a software product.

Alternatively you could just stop hopping jobs every few years.

I've often thought that at least in CA, where the apprenticeship path could pay off would be competing for jobs against the lower ranked schools like Santa Clara, USF, Pacific, Davis, etc. It can be much harder (due to the glut of law school grads) for graduates of programs like those to find jobs, unless they graduated at the top of their class. The apprenticeship path might help your resume stick out compared to the mass of middle of the road grads from those schools.

I've considered doing the same... though also don't live in a state where it's an option. Though I happen to live in a state where self-driven voter referendum has a lot of legal power.

I like the fact the board of governors can terminate a law clerk from the program for any other grounds deemed pertinent.

The tradition is still alive:http://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/may/12/barristers-dinner...

q: How to Be a Lawyer Without Going to Law School?

a: Read a few wikipedia articles about copyright law. Jump on hackernews to give some advice to a startup founder to cheap to talk to a real lawyer. Feel good about yourself for doing something for free that other charge $$$$. Then disappear before finding out what happens.

If you really want to 'engage' the article, I'd rip it to shreds for lack of depth. It makes no mention of cross-boarder accreditation, instead focusing only on bar pass rates as if that is some judge of quality education (law school /= bar prep). Take for example this:

"In many respects, the American Bar Association and other overseeing law bodies don’t take apprenticeships seriously, and do everything they can to corral students into three-year, accredited law schools."

Does the author know what the ABA is? It doesn't regulate lawyers in any way. It has no authority and many lawyers (most?) are not affiliated with it. Nor do you have to be a lawyer or law student to join the ABA. (PM me if you want info on that one. I have a few free trial memberships kicking around somewhere.) The advantage of an ABA-accredited law school is that it will be recognized in every US state. Apprenticeships are not. Going that route might bind you to practice in that particular state. A full and proper law degree will allow you to become a lawyer in any US state at any time ... for life.

Engage the content? It clickbate junk not worth anyone's time.

In the Australia, UK, and other common law jurisdictions, you generally do not need to have a law degree, but you do have to do a short course that gives you the academic basics behind law - this can be and usually is done part-time, as an evening course and usually results in the award of a diploma. (see e.g. http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/law-careers/becoming-a-solicito... or http://www.lpab.justice.nsw.gov.au/Pages/lpab/legalprofessio...) While a good law degree helps get jobs, some of the best lawyers I have met used this path to get admitted to practice.

Being able to think like a lawyer is important, but the life of the law is common sense, experience and good judgment. That cannot be taught. Newly-qualified lawyers invariably tend to be up to speed on the theoretical aspects of law but cannot run a lawsuit, manage a deal or draft a contract to save themselves. What law school teaches (the basics of the subjects and thinking like a lawyer) is only about 1/10 to 1/20 of the role.

The real meat of the role is thinking strategically and pragmatically: yes, I can oppose this request, but what is it going to prompt the other side to do, and how will judge X take it when the matter is brought in front of him. In other words, what will the client possibly gain or lose from taking that course? Is it worth it? And what other courses are open? And what are they likely to lead to? What do I need to get to win the case, and what is optional, unnecessary or a distraction? How does this fit with what the client wants and (often) what the client needs that they don't even realise they need or (commonly) that they actively don't want to do? Good lawyers are thinking multiple steps down the road, not just the immediate problems, and have a good idea where they want to end up.

You can only get this by experience, and ideally by watching and learning from people who are experienced at it while they do it. You could try to do it by self-study, but you would likely be sued into oblivion by your clients for all the mistakes you would make (which would usually be caught and avoided by the more experienced person you should be learning under, and if not absorbed by their insurance). Based on my experience, which includes international experience, I estimate that you need 10 years of doing it full-time to be at a point where you would be able to describe yourself as competent, and able to do it alone, provided you have been working and learning during that time.

You need to learn human nature, how people think and are motivated, how they react to incentives and disincentives, and how they react to normative or moral issues. You need to appreciate that you never find black or white but only shades of grey. You need to learn ruthless pragmatism. You need to learn persuasion. You need to learn to recognise the gulf between what a contract or statute might say in black and white, versus what a judge will do when confronted with the practical justice of the contest. That difference is magnified if a jury is involved (don't get me started on the stupidities of the US jury system or the use of juries for anything other than criminal cases).

Law is much more a social science than it is anything else, but there is a big place for logic and logical thinking. Since you also need interpersonal skills, it is a hard discipline because you need to bring both "left" and "right" brain skills to bear.