Admission to the bar
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In the United States, admission to the bar is permission granted to a lawyer to practice law. Since courts in the US make no distinction between barristers and solicitors, all lawyers are "admitted to the bar". Generally admission to the bar requires that the candidate graduate from an accredited law school, be certified as having the good moral character and fitness to practice law, and pass a state-administered bar examination which may consist of several parts. A person who has met these criteria applies to the authority responsible for licensing lawyers: typically the authority will hold a simple ceremony at which the admittee takes an oath to comply with the rules governing the practice of law in that state, and receives a certificate of admission. If an attorney says "I was admitted in year X" he or she is referring to the year in which he or she was actually sworn into the bar of the first state that he or she was admitted.
In many states of the U.S., admission to the bar of a state does not entitle the admitted attorney to appear and plead before the appellate courts of the state. However, admission to the bar of the appellate court is usually a fairly simple matter of paying a nominal application fee and taking an oath of admission.
Similarly, admission to a state bar does not entitle the admitted attorney to appear and plead before the United States district courts or United States Court of Appeals. As with State appellate courts, admission to the bar of a federal trial or appellate court is granted upon paymment of a fee and taking an oath of admission.
An attorney wishing to practice before the United States Supreme Court must apply to do so. The attorney must have been admitted to a state bar for at least three years, and the application must be sponsored by two attorneys already admitted to the Supreme Court bar. A fee and a written oath are also required. [1]
Various other specialized courts, e.g., the United States Tax Court, have separate admission requirements. Most notably, an attorney wishing to prosecute patents before the United States Patent and Trademark Office must pass a separate examination (the "patent bar exam"). To even qualify to sit for the patent bar, an individual must have earned a bachelor's degree in a "hard science" or engineering, or accrued a certain number of credits in undergraduate science courses (the number of credits depends on the specific discipline).
In England and Wales, and the Republic of Ireland, a barrister who is granted permission to plead and practice before the high courts is said to have been called to the bar. Lawyers in Canada and in other Commonwealth countries are also called to the bar.
