[4] The United States legal system does not draw a distinction between lawyers who plead in court and those who do not, unlike some other common law jurisdictions.
An additional factor that differentiates the American legal system from other countries is that there is no delegation of routine work to notaries public.
[5] Often distinctions are drawn between different types of attorneys, but, with the exception of patent law practice, these are neither fixed nor formal lines.
The State Bar of Texas, for example, formally grants certification of specialization in 21 select areas of law.
Regulation of the practice of law is left to the individual states, and their definitions vary.
In the canonical case, lawyers seeking admission must earn a Juris Doctor degree from a law school approved by the jurisdiction, and then pass a bar exam administered by it.
Some jurisdictions choose to use the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), drafted by the NCBE since 1988, for this purpose.
[13] The MBE contains 200 questions which test six subjects based upon principles of common law and Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code.
[14] A college graduate of good moral character may be accepted into the four-year Rule Six Law Clerk Program, obtain employment in a law firm or with a judge for at least 30 hours a week and study a prescribed Course of Study under a tutor.
Some courts allow law students to act as "certified student attorneys" after the satisfactory completion of their first year of law school and the completion of particular second- and third-year courses with subjects such as evidence.
[citation needed] Many states allow students to argue in front of a court as a certified legal intern (CLI), provided they meet certain prerequisites, such as having completed at least half of their law education, having taken or be taking the law school's ethics class and being under the supervision of a qualified and licensed attorney.
In this case, state courts and bar associations are not allowed to restrict the practice of that field of law.