Student defense in Pennsylvania differs from other types of defense practice in many respects. A student may be dealing with a violation of school rules or an honor code, or with a potential violation of state or federal criminal law. In fact, one incident may involve alleged violations of all of these, and different penalties and procedures apply to each type of violation.
So if you or someone in your family is a student in need of a defense attorney, it is wise to work with an experienced Pennsylvania student defense lawyer who understands the right strategy to use in different settings. Reach out to a dedicated criminal attorney today and get started on your defense.
Whether a student incident results in a school disciplinary hearing, a criminal charge or both, it may involve any number of types of alleged misconduct. Incidents that frequently invoke the need for a student defense lawyer in Pennsylvania include:
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Regardless of the allegations, all student deserve the chance to explain their side of the story. A skilled Pennsylvania student defense attorney serves as a legal advocate to make sure the student’s viewpoint is heard and understood. The attorney also serves as legal counselor to provide advice on how to handle questions and avoid taking actions that could make the situation more difficult.
When someone is facing a criminal charge in court, experienced defense attorneys know a variety of factual and procedural strategies for getting charges reduced or dismissed. But these strategies may provide little or no help in an academic setting.
Quite often, the protections and procedures found in criminal courts are not applicable in school disciplinary hearings. However, there are unique strategies that often work well in academic settings.
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In many situations, it can be argued that the student charged was accused wrongfully, just as it might be argued in a criminal case. However, the avenues for presenting evidence might be might more limited in a school setting, so an experience Pennsylvania student defense lawyer will know how to work around these constraints.
Sometimes, in a school disciplinary hearing, the best approach is to admit liability and demonstrate true remorse along with a willingness to make amends. When a students shows readiness to accept responsibility for actions taken, this often persuades those sitting in judgment that the student is using the experience as a vehicle for personal growth and maturity.
Not only can accepting responsibility potentially reduce punishments, it also helps everyone understand what went wrong and how to proceed in the future.
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In the event that other strategies have not succeeded and it seems likely that a student will be expelled, a lawyer could attempt to negotiate a non-judgmental withdrawal from the school. This would enable the student to move on without a negative disciplinary action on the record.
In some instances, it may be difficult to determine whether you need the services of a legal professional. But it is better to be prepared than to leave an avenue of defense unexplored, so when in doubt, it is a good idea to reach out to a Pennsylvania student defense lawyer for a free case evaluation. To learn how a lawyer’s experience could help protect your student’s future, contact the office now.“I have some clients who look up on my wall and say, ‘Where did you go to law school?’ and aren’t too happy with the answer.”
This weekend, thousands of young prospective lawyers across the nation will receive the results of the July 2015 bar exam. Those who pass will be one step closer to practicing law in their state; those who fail must retreat from society once again, hit the books, and wallow in the depths of misery until the next exam in February.
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Nearly all those who await results have followed the traditional route to lawyerdom: They’ve toiled through three years of rigorous study at an American Bar Association-approved law school. They’ve taken $5, 000+ bar exam prep courses. They’ve spent summers fetching coffee for district attorneys and corporate lawyers.
A select few, however, have completely bypassed these steps. Several U.S. states offer a little-known alternative path to the bar exam room: “reading the law”— or serving as an apprentice in the office of a practicing attorney or judge.
Last year, out of 83, 963 bar exam takers, only 60 were apprentices. A mere 17 succeeded in passing the bar exam and becoming eligible to practice law. It is a long, difficult road, requiring four years of mentorship and thousands of hours of self-led work, but when completed, it can save a prospective lawyer hundreds of thousands of dollars in law school debt.
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Today, going to law school and securing a JD degree is legally required to practice law in most states. But in the expanse of American history, this requirement is relatively new.
In the colonial United States, nearly all legal professionals were “imported” from England, where they were trained not through formal education, but an apprenticeship system called the Inns of Court . In this system, those who wished to practice the law had to make a connection with a lawyer (“barrister”), who would provide them with training.
By the 1730s, a similar apprentice system had sprouted up in New York: in addition to passing a state-administered bar examination , all American lawyers had to serve a seven-year clerkship before being eligible to practice. As recounted in the Washburn Law Journal , this was a brutal, scrupulous undertaking:
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“The clerkship program required much individual study. The mentoring lawyer was expected to carefully select materials for study and to guide the clerk in his study of the law to ensure that the material was being absorbed. The student was supposed to compile his notes of his reading of the law into a ‘commonplace book’, which he would endeavor to memorize. Although those were the ideals, in reality the clerks were often overworked and rarely were able to study the law individually as expected. They were often employed to tedious tasks, such as making handwritten copies of documents. Finding sufficient legal texts was also a seriously debilitating issue, and there was no standardization in the books assigned to the clerk trainees because they were assigned by their mentor, whose opinion of the law may be different greatly from his peers.”
In the early 1800s , colleges began offering law degrees as an alternative to the apprenticeship program. But with courses focusing on a wide range of subject matter—Biblical studies, Aristotle, Adam Smith, Montesquieu—the schools, in actuality, didn’t do much to prepare students for the bar exam. A number of highly influential historical figures chose to stick to the apprenticeships, most famously Abraham Lincoln:
“If you are absolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself the thing is more than half done already, ” Lincoln famously wrote in 1855. “It is a small matter whether you read with any one or not; I did not read with anyone…always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
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Until the 1870s, a combination of independent study and apprenticeship was the prototypical path of a lawyer. Then, the American Bar Association (ABA) changed everything.
Formed in 1878 by a group of 100 lawyers from 21 states, the ABA frowned upon self-led study of the law, calling for a “national, uniform code of ethics.” Throughout the ensuing decades, it lobbied tirelessly, convincing almost every state to only allow law school students to take the bar exam (and ultimately, become lawyers).
Today, only four states— California, Virginia, Vermont, and Washington — allow aspiring lawyers to take the bar exam without going to law school. Instead, they are given the option to apprentice with a practicing attorney or judge. (New York, Maine and Wyoming offer an apprenticeship alternative as well, but also require some law school.)
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In California, this option is called the “Law Office Study Program” (rule 4.29 under the state bar’s legal code). All lawyers seeking to forego law school must meet the following stipulations:
– Sit in a practicing attorney’s office for 18 hours per week for a period of four continuous years – Passage of the First-Year Law Students’ Examination – A positive moral character determination – Passage of the Multi-state Professional Responsibility Examination – Passage of the California Bar Examination
The first major challenge faced by a law apprentice is finding an attorney willing to take on the task. None of the states that offer the apprenticeship alternative offer any assistance in finding a supervising lawyer: “Finding one willing to take on the responsibility of educating a new lawyer, ” writesThe New York Times , “can be difficult.”
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Even assuming an apprentice settles this dilemma, fulfills four years of independent study, and passes all precursory exams, the bar exam is not in his or her favor. A crawl through historical exam data (1996 to 2014) via the National Conference of Bar Examiners reveals a wide variance in pass rates from state to state:
But these numbers represent the results for all test-takers, most of whom are law school graduates. The numbers for those who take the apprenticeship route are much more
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