The Prices And Prizes Of Becoming Dual Qualified

What is better than being a lawyer? Being twice the lawyer that you once were — or more accurately, becoming a dual-qualified lawyer.

Consider the benefits: seamless advice across jurisdictions; multiple legal options to serve clients; and more clients to serve. Consider the disadvantages: pressing pause on your current professional life; significant costs; and the worst of the lot — exams.

Admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales in 1995, I have bags of experience as a media lawyer. But keen to serve an international clientele, I have also bagged myself admittance as a New York attorney.

How difficult is it to convert — and is the journey worth the destination?

A foreign lawyer may only practise in the US if she is admitted as an attorney in America — or to a limited extent as a legal consultant practising her own domestic law or on a successful application to work on a particular case pro hac vice alongside a US-admitted attorney.

Protectionist, certainly, and uncharacteristic for the Americans, as they shield their domestic market of 1.35 million attorneys. But defensive practices can ultimately diminish the pool of experience and expertise, so foreign lawyers are allowed to cross the threshold.

One of the first lessons for a foreign student is that the 50 states have wildly differing laws and qualification processes.

The Comprehensive Guide to the Bar Admission Requirements 2019, published by the National Conference of Bar Examiners and the American Bar Association (ABA), runs to 50-plus pages setting out the requirements across the different states.

Those without law degrees may be hard-pressed to follow its complicated matrices, but its overarching message is that without that degree, there is no cigar. Negotiation is an art practised by all good lawyers, but as the guidance clearly sets out: "Neither private study, correspondence study, law office training, age, nor experience should be substituted for law school education." That is non-negotiable.

English law degrees are usually successfully transferred to the US system, allowing those lawyers to go directly to the Bar exam. But armed with a degree in modern languages, a conversion course at the then-College of Law, two decades of experience, teacher, writer, commentator on media law . . . in the game of legal monopoly I was handed the chance card: my lack of law degree was a "deficiency" to be "cured".

In New York state, the rules of the Court of Appeals govern admissions and...