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 morally fit to practice, 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 pratice 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 began practicing law.
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 federal district courts or bankruptcy courts in the state; the attorney must separately apply to each district or bankruptcy court. As with state appellate courts, this process usually consists merely of paying a nominal fee and taking an oath of admission. Federal appellate courts—which (with the exception of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit) have jurisdiction in matters arising in more than one state—also require a separate application fee, but do not normally require a ceremonial oath. Finally, 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 an attorney already admitted to the Supreme Court bar.
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.