I've just started reading Robert Caro's "Path to Power", and LBJ's father took exactly this route to become a teacher:
"He had to quit going to high school because of health problems, and his parents sent him to live on his uncle Lucius Bunton's ranch in Presidio County, Texas for several months.[3] When he returned home, Johnson had ambitions to become a teacher; however, the Texas hill country at that time had no state-accredited high schools and no colleges. He learned that he could get a state-issued teaching certificate without finishing high school by passing a state examination.[3] In 1896, with the thirteen textbooks he needed to study for the exam, he moved to his retired grandfather's nearby home to study in quiet.[4]"
Same as in land surveying or any other discipline that requires state licensure. Some surveyors do have civil engineering or geomatics/geodesy degrees, but you certainly don't have to obtain one to practice surveying (state law varies). What's important is that you have field experience under the direct supervision of a PLS and can pass a very rigorous licensure exam that includes demonstrating a deep knowledge of property/boundary law, trigonometry, and calculus. There's no question about your competence if you can pass a PLS exam.
Not saying I disagree, because I think the bar association is a cartel and everyone should be "allowed" to practice law. However, the reason the CA bar is "notoriously hard" is precisely because they allow anyone to sit for it. If lots of unqualified people take an exam and fail, it causes the passage rate to drop and makes the exam appear "harder."
Not totally true, it's legitimately harder. First time taker pass rate for even people going to tier 1 law schools is significantly lower than many other jurisdictions. The addition of allowing an expanded group to sit for it does bring down the overall passage rate though. Schools like Stanford aside, overall pass rate by school is in the mid-high 80s for any Tier 1 school for CA bar exam, whereas for a jurisdiction like NY, those same schools will pass 95%+.
It's well-known to be a harder bar exam (I have taken both it and NY, for an anecdotal data point).
Another reason the CA pass rate is lower than other states’ is that in CA you can take the bar exam as many times as you want. NY cuts you off st 3, as a comparison.
(Maybe require a few ethics's classes, after a passing grade?)