- Learned professions are occupations that require extensive education, typically a post-graduate degree. A few centuries ago, most occupations were based on experience or apprenticeship, but colleges of law, medicine and theology were among the earliest schools established. Learned professions occasionally make exceptions to educational requirements based upon exceptional practical experience or demonstration of knowledge. For example, several states allow prospective lawyers to take the bar exam even if they have not attended law school.
- Though jokes about swindling ministers, greedy doctors and lying lawyers are common in modern times, these three learned professions were traditionally thought to be disciplines that required exceptional moral character. The licensing and certification boards for each of these fields require that applicants demonstrate good character, integrity and honesty. Convicted felons, for example, frequently experience difficulties in becoming licensed by professional licensing boards.
- To be considered a profession, a field must be governed by a licensing and standards board that determines who is fit to become or remain a member of the profession. Medicine and law were the first professions to have these boards. Practitioners of theology are typically governed by their particular religion's board of directors. Licensing boards are frequently monitored by state secretaries of state, which grants these boards a quasi-judicial status.
- Members of learned professions have traditionally practiced with a great deal of freedom to exercise their own judgment. Though in modern times, lawyers might be employed by firms and doctors might work in hospitals, the three learned professions are still given a significant degree of autonomy and rarely have decisions they make questioned by a boss.
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