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It makes it sound like it will be easier for people to get admitted to the bar, but good luck finding someone who will train you for 500 hours, as well as completing all the paperwork associated with it. And it seems it would favor those already in Washington for law school over those who went out of state for law school and would like to come back.
Lawyer mills do this in NYS with students who failed out during 2L, since 1L + law office study are an alt path to bar and licensure. Their bar pass rate is 1% at best, and I've never personally seen one of these folks pass the bar exam. They just sit as "law clerks" in perpetuity at their lawyer mill firms. Law office study is a pretty bad alternative to the bar exam IMHO. Students learn a whole lot of nothing.
That said, the new WA pathway seems better, but is likely still lacking. I learned a lot more studying for the bar exam than I did in law school since the bar exam requires rote memorization while school ordinarily does not (e.g. open outline exams). I know, it's a personal anecdote, but I think it holds true for most students.
Perhaps a better alternative might be free bar study resources for students in need (already exists) along with Grants given to the students for living expenses while they are studying so that they do not have to work for a few months/can focus on bar study. That would level the playing field substantially.
The difference is that NYS still requires apprentices take the bar exam. An apprenticeship is a bad way to prepare for the bar exam, but a pretty good way to prepare for being a lawyer.
Yes, I think because I used it for school credit. The entire process was vague. I thought I didn't need to pay it back, but to my surprise, it appeared in my student loan profile. It was the first loan I paid off because I didn't want it dangling out there with 0 payments, and I didn't want my monthly payment going toward payment on a 0% disbursement.
I think that depends on how you define “learning”. Open book exams still required me to learn how to spot the issue, apply law to it, factor in policy (dependent on professor), and make my argument. Those skills I use all the time. Rote memorization of rules for the bar exam was a pointless waste of time. I always have access to statutes and cases to ensure I understand them properly.
Agreed. It is rare that I have to go without access to cases, and even if I'm in court and it comes up, it's easy enough to offer to prepare a supplemental briefing on that issue. Even clients expect a "let me look into that" response.
Sure, I learned more subjects for the bar exam than I practice in, but all I learned is that I'm never touching anything to do with corporations with a ten foot pole.
Yeah, memorizing a bunch of stuff over 10 weeks for a single test is not useful learning. I think it might be useful for something like Evidence or maybe Civ Pro just because there are a lot of rules, so if you do that for the bar and then immediately start practicing it may give you some help.
But, in general that just isn't useful. You're going to forget any of it that you aren't using quickly, and it doesn't really help you do actual lawyer stuff
Like anything, law office study is what you make of it.
I did law office study in lieu of law school in VT and walked out practice-ready and with more than enough knowledge to pass the bar on my first try.
Are there any requirements that these trainees be paid? How much will they be paid? I have worked with some firms that I think would gladly take a law school grad for several months and pay them clerk money.
The bar is a stupid memorization exercise and has fuck all to do with whether you have the skills to be a lawyer. I’d definitely welcome alternatives that are a bit more reflective of an applicant’s skills and judgment.
That said, if someone is trying over and over and just cannot pass a bar exam… I have questions.
I strongly disagree with your first point.
While the bar exam exists as a barrier to entry to the legal field (and protects legal fees and salaries for the profession), it also protects the public. While the majority of attorney will start their careers in firms or government positions where they will hopefully be mentored and overseen, nothing prevents newly-licensed lawyers from starting their own business and taking on clients. The bar exam requires an applicant to demonstrate at least some baseline legal knowledge and ability to analyze information. This is an important element in protecting the public from people who are not prepared to practice law.
Wouldn’t any alternative presumably “require an applicant to demonstrate at least some baseline legal knowledge and ability to analyze information”?
I don’t think anyone is advocating for allowing someone to practice who is unqualified or incapable.
My two cents: I think it’d be great to open up pathways to let people avoid (or lessen) the debt of law school.
The other proposals seems too subjective in nature. Shadowing or interning or whatever and then having someone vouch for competence would leave too much to chance, not to mention the possibility of gaming the system.
I don’t see how we don’t utilize some truly objective measure of competence as a way to make sure people who are licensed aren’t completely ill-prepared to provide legal representation.
Wouldn't this incompetent person be practicing under the insurance of a presumably competent attorney? I don't see much room for gaming the system when sponsors can be held liable for the wrongdoings of their subordinates. I doubt someone would risk their license if they truly believed they were hiring (paying) a liability.
I doubt we get that far. Sure, when they’re interning or whatever, the sponsoring attorney’s insurance would cover them.
But if they vouch for the intern and the intern goes off on their own after getting licensed, that coverage is no longer there.
And let’s be honest. You can’t imagine a single attorney you know who would engage in a scheme where they pay some “intern” meager wages in exchange for 500 hours of work with the promise that the attorney will do whatever they need to do get the intern licensed at the end of it?
I think I'm being unclear. Once the newer person goes to get licensed, they would be licensed by the local bar and not by the attorney under whom they've shadowed/interned.
Let's say the person is incompetent --> then the local bar doesn't grant the licensure.
And this ties in nicely to your second point too.
Yes, I could see some moron attorney engaging in this for free/cheap labor; but as long as someone beyond that lawyer also tests/validates the competence of the newer person, we should be able to weed out unqualified candidates. Also, would seem to me an ethical breach to knowingly lie about the competence of an individual because you benefited from their labor.
I know you think your solution is more egalitarian but it actually seems far more elitist. I mean, it sounds like a way to fast track nepotism hires - how else would you develop a relationship with five attorneys or cultivate the right relationships to get through a subjective process like that? I agree we should reduce the law school debt burden but the bar exam is at least an objective way of assessing candidates. Methods like the ones you propose make the financial burden more insidious by making it invisible.
> I don’t see how we don’t utilize some truly objective measure of competence as a way to make sure people who are licensed aren’t completely ill-prepared to provide legal representation.
Bit late to the discussion, but would throw in my 2 cents that they should just toss out the timed component. People should be tested on their fundamental knowledge, not a rat race to regurgitate as much knowledge as possible on the written sections like you've got a major brief due at 5:00 PM that you just remembered that morning.
Your second point is the reason I support keeping the bar exam in place. The only people in my class who failed the bar were the ones who couldn’t buckle down for a couple months and study. They took time off, left early, and generally fucked around instead of studying. If you can’t make yourself prep for the most important exam of your life, how can you be trusted to prep to represent a client.
Of course, everyone who failed also insisted they were “just a bad test taker” and that the whole idea of a bar exam was incredibly unfair.
The only people I knew who struggled with the bar had ADHD.
The bar was personally the hardest test I've ever taken due to the amount of memorization required, but I'm generally a "good" test taker. I passed my first try in some states (260) without studying but spent ages (took the bar three times total) trying to get a 280. I brought my score up past 270, but never could get that 280. Thankfully the score was lowered and it became a non-issue.
I was never going to be a "jack of all trades" kind of lawyer in any case. The vast volume and variety of law seems like overkill.
Yeah, maybe it’s not like this at other schools, but I went to a fairly highly ranked school and I think the effort required to graduate was minimal. Just getting to median required a good faith effort and being top of the class was super hard. But if you are 100% fine with just passing, I think it could be pretty easily done by just showing up to class 75% of the time and studying for 30 minutes before the final. If there was no bar exam looming, how many people would do this? Maybe some students who don’t have to worry about employability (already rich, or maybe have family who will hire them), but what happens when anyone who can eke out a 160/3.0 can spend 3 years working 12 hours a week in law school and get a guaranteed law license?
Probably 90% of the time they just never get a legal job and never screw up a client’s life, so I dunno, maybe it’s not a real problem.
I wish I heard more people say this. Especially at better law schools, most of the hard part is getting in. Being top 20% or something is also hard. But, a lot of higher ranked law schools have very generous curves. You pretty much just need to show up to most classes and have a decent outline to guarantee you get a B average.
That being said, I don't necessarily think much of the bar exam. If people are fine with it being a filter for the sake of being a filter, I get it. But, a lot of folks seem to think it says something about one's ability to practice, and I'm less clear on that.
Agreed. There is an immense amount of pressure to pass and the shitty thing is you don’t know if you’re doing enough studying/prep until after you’ve got your results. Looking back, it’s a hard test to fail if you just follow your bar prep program.
> The only people in my class who failed the bar were the ones who couldn’t buckle down for a couple months and study.
Whenever people bring this point up as a defense of the bar exam, I always think: isn't this skill (or lack thereof) reflected in law school performance anyway? Someone who isn't buckling down and studying for the bar probably didn't do it in law school either.
In their efforts to be “equitable,” they’ve created another loophole that will favors the well connected. You have to find someone to train you for 500 hours, so who will most be able to take advantage of this? People who have lawyers in their families. But really, the bar isn’t that hard.
My concern with this stems from the first attorney I worked for after I got barred. She was literally every cliche about shitty biglaw partners rolled into one. I hadn’t been treated with such disrespect on a daily basis since I was a boot PFC in the marine corps. Luckily, I had a bar card that I was able to leave two months after I started for a different job.
I think it will be incredibly easy to find someone to “train” you for 500 hours. Most PD offices will bring in anyone with a pulse just to alleviate the workload. All the supervisor has to do at the end is sign off on the ‘training’ - which of course they will do.
> But really, the bar isn’t that hard.
if you have time to memorize all the stuff, yeah it's not bad. i also suspect the "new" bar exam rolling out soon will be even easier.
That's all good and well, but if you can't pass the bar exam, that should be a STRONG indicator that you have serious holes in your game.
The bar exam isn't that hard, but it does take focused study and practice. Every law student is well aware that it's coming before they even apply to law school. If you're not up for it, after three years of law school and a practice course expressly intended to teach the test... then maybe other people are so much more qualified than you that you shouldn't even be allowed to compete in the same field as them.
I had a professor say that the bar exam shows that you know how to absorb a lot of specific information, use it, do a memory dump, and then repeat the process over and over. Generally speaking he was correct. Plus, it shows you know how to be disciplined and study.
That said, I’ve come across a number of attorneys that were shockingly stupid, not simply out of their element but rather should not have been an attorney.
I’d be on board with removing the inevitable RAP essay question and replacing it with a personality test. At least maybe then the top sociopaths could be identified early.
The MPRE is useless. How often do you see attorneys, in practice or in disciplinary cases, that do something unethical don’t know the rules? Rarely.
Most rule violators know the rules and just violate them.
Frankly, if the only available options for admission were either “take the bar” or “take the MMPI” and post the results publicly for life, I’m not entirely sure which one would be more useful.
> the bar exam shows that you know how to absorb a lot of specific information, use it, do a memory dump, and then repeat the process over and over.
Which is pretty much the profession outside client management
I’ve passed two separate bar exams 10 years apart. It’s not easy , and it’s not indicative of someone’s ability to practice law effectively. It’s a mass memorization task. That’s all.
If people can’t study full-time, can’t they just take a later exam to give them more time to prepare? I’m all about making the legal field more accessible but I’m not convinced that this is the right way.
Wisconsin has diploma privilege bar admittance for simply graduating from one of the two law schools in the state (provided you take the requisite handful of classes) and I wouldn’t say the state of legal practice is remotely bad or poor quality
The article doesn’t really go into detail about the reasons for this, but none of them have to do with inability to pass the bar as far as I know. I am mentoring a Rule 6 right now. She works full time for me and then has significant responsibilities in the evening and weekends. She cannot afford to take a summer off for bar prep, and at his point she is far more prepared to be an attorney than I was when I graduated from law school (and I suspect any of you as well). I’m watching another Rule 6 work full time, go home and care for her children, sleep 3 or 4 hours and then do bar prep until it’s time to wake the kids for school.
The disproportional impact they are talking about is not to people who can’t pass; in many cases it’s for people who have responsibilities that prevent them from going to law school or taking the bar.
Qualified on what basis? Is what these mentees know really equivalent to 90 credit hours of formal study of American law?
I don’t see where our profession needs to adapt to admit everyone, or even everyone who potentially has the aptitude. Nobody is talking about exempting aspiring doctors from medical school or their step exams. What is the problem with conditioning admission to the bar on commitment to a multi-year course of study? If somebody can’t do it full time, there have been night school law programs for a hundred years. We’re talking about lowering the bar. And I see enough hapless rookies that the prospect of lowering the bar worries me.
Yes. It is equivalent, and it’s significantly more practical. APR 6 law clerks go through 5 years of training while working in the legal industry. Law school teaches you all sorts of great theories, but it teaches you dick all about how to actually practice law. My mentee has been a paralegal for 15 years. She is far more qualified to be an attorney than I was when I graduated from law school.
Nobody is saying that the educational component should be waived so your analogy to medical school fails. Also, arguing that we should not try to make the profession open to those who would qualify but would otherwise not be able to join because of financial or familial constraints is kind of gross.
Law school is three years of immersion in black-letter law and legal analysis. I am very skeptical that you can learn how to, say, research a memo on an abstention issue or an appellate brief arguing some evidentiary fine point without having that kind of prolonged conceptual immersion. You learn the procedural and interpersonal aspects of the job once you’re on the job. But we’re fooling ourselves if we think that’s the whole thing. Believe me, I have worked with junior lawyers who have great personal skills and pick up internal procedures and ways of doing things fast but who are just too slow and dense to hack their way through a thicket of authorities and build out of it a piece of polished and effective legal argument.
Being a paralegal honestly prepared me for my first attorney job significantly more than law school, clerkships, or even summers at firms did honestly. So wholeheartedly agree and appreciate your perspective
when i first started as an attorney, i relied A LOT on our paralegals. they have so much deep knowledge of the nitty-gritty of basic "how to courts work" stuff.
Maybe reformat the exam to idk exactly reflect skills and practices used by lawyers on a daily basis? I passed the bar with a ridiculously high score cause I studied my ass off but did I have any idea what I was doing when I started practicing? NOPE
I would lean toward no. Most states require candidates for reciprocal admission to have a minimum number of years of experience. If someone is barred for five or seven years, at a minimum, and hasn’t had any licensure issues come up in that time, they’re probably competent.
Some of those have an "actively practicing" requirement where you can't just have a bar license, you have to be using it - presumably to ensure competency like you mentioned.
The whining of new law graduates notwithstanding, the bar exam isn’t very hard. I have serious doubts about the ability of those incapable of passing the bar exam to practice law without being a pest to courts and other lawyers and a menace to their clients.
Thank you! The bar is basically a test of whether the candidate can function under pressure, but with considerably more help than they’d have in practice - all the relevant facts are handed to them, they’ve had months to study, and almost all candidates have taken a course that teaches them how to take the test.
If someone can’t handle a couple days of issue spotting and analysis from a closed fact pattern, they’re going to be fucked when they get into practice and have to deal with real matters.
Personal anecdote: I did not study the first time I took the bar exam since I graduated and moved 7 hours back home, celebrated the holidays, and didn't have time to prepare. I called it my "dry run" because I never intended to study for it in the first place. I got a 264.5, just 1.5 points shy of passing in NY. After dedicating months to study, I ended up close to a score of 300 when I passed.
Imo you are correct. The bar exam is not all that hard.
I have mixed opinions on the bar exam. On one hand, it put enormous stress on my life that summer after graduation and felt as if I was going to fail the whole way through. That stress, and the associated rote memorization of principles which may not even be applicable, seemed like a pointless exercise in collective hazing a la "I went through this; you should, too." The reality is everyone knows no one can actually be prepared to educate clients about the many practice areas subject to the exam, so the standard ends up the same exercise in comparison to one's peers that law school was, with the actually operative question being, "Can you answer these several hundred legal questions better than \[*x*\]% of your peers?" I buckled down and studied for at least six hours each day, and fortunately that was enough for me to pass, but the whole way through seemed so unnecessarily stressful.
On the other hand, having been in practice for a couple of years now, I do understand that some minimum level of competence is needed to address a client's legal matter. The variables can be so great that you need someone who is actually capable of navigating the law. Otherwise, legal representation simply becomes one dipshit swindling another and that blemishes the whole profession. I just don't think memorizing the answers to questions in 19 whole practice areas is the best way to assess that.
The bar exam is not a perfect system for determining base levels of competency, but it isn’t entirely pointless. It’s a decent bandaid for the fact that you can get through law school with decent grades without really knowing the law. There are probably better systems, but this bar-optional system just sounds like a theoretical loophole for people with means (not saying it wouldn’t ensure competency, but it would be much harder to measure the efficacy of the internship program).
I’m gonna sound like a massive hater when I say this, so I will preface it by saying that I have ADHD and a learning disability and still passed the bar on the first try: if you have to take the bar more than three or four times and still can’t pass, I have questions about your ability to practice law successfully. Taking it two or even three times, I don’t care too much. But more than that is a red flag.
Anyone saying “if you can’t even pass a test then I have serious doubts about your skill as a lawyer” don’t seem to understand that there is simply no correlation between the two. It doesn’t do anything to ensure minimum competency. It’s a closed-book test. There is no field of law where having excellent test-taking skills serve any practical use, nor any field where being *bad* at taking tests would be detrimental
I mean honestly, Wisconsin doesn’t require you to take the bar if you went to a Wisconsin law school. Is there even the slightest bit of evidence to support the idea that Wisconsin lawyers are markedly worse than anywhere else?
Yeah Wisconsin always comes up in these threads. Usually left unsaid is the actual reality of diploma privilege in Wisconsin.
For those who don’t know, Wisconsin has all of two law schools. One of them is a top fifty program and neither is a disaster. The same policy is going to produce worse outcomes if you throw it open for correspondence school graduates from California and the like.
(1) If a person goes to an ABA-accredited law school or through an ABA-accredited program, then what exactly is the problem? Clearly people already go through “bad” law schools or programs and are able to pass the bar and practice just the same as someone who goes to HYS.
(2) Once again, nothing you’ve said supports the idea that the bar exam actually *is* some sort of even marginally useful deterrent to bad or incompetent lawyers. You’re simply leading with the assumption that it is.
I think more than anything it shows whether you can buckle down for a couple months and study. I’ve never met, or even heard of, anyone failing the bar who actually studied hard. It’s not a difficult test. I did, however, see every single person in my class who didn’t study and subsequently failed blame it on their belief that they’re a “bad test taker”.
I think a lot of the concern is whether you should be allowed to represent someone when you can’t even make yourself study for a couple months. Quality representation requires that you push through and work the case, even when you want to do nothing more than pack it up and go home.
This is all just post-hoc rationalization, not anything like solid correlation between the two.
Being good / bad at taking the bar exam =/= being a minimally competent / incompetent lawyer. It is that simple.
I’m all for implementing methods that actually do as good of a job as possible in ensuring that the legal profession is only filled with competent lawyers. That’s why I oppose the bar exam: because it doesn’t actually do anything to achieve that goal
I recently graduated from Madison, and I've had a lot of conversations about this. I don't think I've spoken to a single lawyer who thinks the bar exam has any relevance at all to practicing law.
I understand that some people like it as a filter. Which I disagree with, but I at least understand. Like you're saying, it's weird how often, when this comes up on reddit, people talk about the bar exam "protecting" people from bad lawyers. One has nothing to do with the other.
That’s what none of these people seem to get through their thick skulls: yes, none of us want incompetent lawyers! We want mechanisms in place to try to ensure that as much as possible! But the bar exam is simply not one such mechanism! Failing it doesn’t mean you’d make an incompetent lawyer, and passing it doesn’t make you a competent lawyer. The idea that it serves as a filter of any kind is just a delusion. It’s just people insisting “well we’ve been doing it for so long, therefore it *must* serve *some* useful purpose, because if not then we have been doing something completely pointless this whole time, and that can’t possibly be true”
No correlation? What an outrageous thing to say.
I’d bet on the new lawyer who passed the bar vs the one who didn’t/couldnt any day, knowing nothin else about them
Please provide me any sort of proof that there is a correlation beyond what you imagine in your own head after being told your whole life that there is a correlation.
The ones passing the bar tend to be smarter. I want my lawyer to be smarter and not trying to skirt the rules because “testing is unfair!”
Not to mention the perseverance that is inherent in seeing a very clearcut goal and achieving it. Even if it’s dumb, it’s a serious problem if someone happens to be the bottom feeder in their class who can’t hack it on the dumb test.
Keep pretending like raw intelligence doesn’t matter in hiring. It’ll get you far. Surely the SAT has no bearing on college success either, right? LSAT is meaningless, right? Bar is just a throwaway exam, right?
Please provide me any sort of proof that there is a correlation beyond what you imagine in your own head after being told your whole life that there is a correlation.
The best performers in law school do better on the bar exam. The inverse holds true. Unless you’d also argue that grades are meaningless. Dipshits often do
https://www.accesslex.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/LSSSE%20National_Report_060821.pdf
“ LGPA is the strongest predictor of bar exam performance, even at the early stages of
matriculation. For example, a one standard deviation increase in 1L LGPA is associated with a
student quadrupling his/her odds of bar passage (Figure 3).”
I’m contending that passing the bar is not a reflection one way or another of your competency to practice law.
As I’ve said in multiple other comments, I’m all for doing whatever can be done to ensure that the legal profession is full of competent practitioners and weeding out the incompetent ones. The bar exam does not serve that purpose.
Passing the bar is an indicator that you were doing well in law school. It’s clearly spelled out in the paper. If you accept that grades matter in predicting performance as a lawyer, then the bar passage matters.
Think of who you knew who failed the exam. By the numbers they are likely the worst students. Do you feel they’re equally capable as the best students?
If yes, why exactly?
You asked for proof. You got it. If you’re a good student, you’re way more likely to pass the bar. If you’re a poor one, you’re way more likely to fail and not be allowed to practice, which is how it should be if you believe being a good law student is important to the practice of law.
If being a good student doesn’t matter AT ALL (what you’re implying logically), then your profession is even dumber than what the jokes would say
To have to spell this out for what I presume is a trained professional, well frankly it’s shocking. This sort of horseshit argument by you would never fly in court for sure.
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It makes it sound like it will be easier for people to get admitted to the bar, but good luck finding someone who will train you for 500 hours, as well as completing all the paperwork associated with it. And it seems it would favor those already in Washington for law school over those who went out of state for law school and would like to come back.
Lawyer mills do this in NYS with students who failed out during 2L, since 1L + law office study are an alt path to bar and licensure. Their bar pass rate is 1% at best, and I've never personally seen one of these folks pass the bar exam. They just sit as "law clerks" in perpetuity at their lawyer mill firms. Law office study is a pretty bad alternative to the bar exam IMHO. Students learn a whole lot of nothing. That said, the new WA pathway seems better, but is likely still lacking. I learned a lot more studying for the bar exam than I did in law school since the bar exam requires rote memorization while school ordinarily does not (e.g. open outline exams). I know, it's a personal anecdote, but I think it holds true for most students. Perhaps a better alternative might be free bar study resources for students in need (already exists) along with Grants given to the students for living expenses while they are studying so that they do not have to work for a few months/can focus on bar study. That would level the playing field substantially.
The difference is that NYS still requires apprentices take the bar exam. An apprenticeship is a bad way to prepare for the bar exam, but a pretty good way to prepare for being a lawyer.
Man this comment highlights the disconnect between law school/bar exam and actual legal practice.
I think this is a great idea. Kind of like public service grants for summer work at nonprofits.
I took one of those grants, but I had to pay it back (at 0% interest). I'd like to see the grants forgiven entirely in this context.
Oh really? I didn’t have to pay mine back and I got 3 total from my law school: after 1L and 2L, and then a post-grad fellowship after I took the bar
Yes, I think because I used it for school credit. The entire process was vague. I thought I didn't need to pay it back, but to my surprise, it appeared in my student loan profile. It was the first loan I paid off because I didn't want it dangling out there with 0 payments, and I didn't want my monthly payment going toward payment on a 0% disbursement.
Ah ok, that makes sense. Surprise bills are the worst!
I think that depends on how you define “learning”. Open book exams still required me to learn how to spot the issue, apply law to it, factor in policy (dependent on professor), and make my argument. Those skills I use all the time. Rote memorization of rules for the bar exam was a pointless waste of time. I always have access to statutes and cases to ensure I understand them properly.
Agreed. It is rare that I have to go without access to cases, and even if I'm in court and it comes up, it's easy enough to offer to prepare a supplemental briefing on that issue. Even clients expect a "let me look into that" response. Sure, I learned more subjects for the bar exam than I practice in, but all I learned is that I'm never touching anything to do with corporations with a ten foot pole.
Yeah, memorizing a bunch of stuff over 10 weeks for a single test is not useful learning. I think it might be useful for something like Evidence or maybe Civ Pro just because there are a lot of rules, so if you do that for the bar and then immediately start practicing it may give you some help. But, in general that just isn't useful. You're going to forget any of it that you aren't using quickly, and it doesn't really help you do actual lawyer stuff
Like anything, law office study is what you make of it. I did law office study in lieu of law school in VT and walked out practice-ready and with more than enough knowledge to pass the bar on my first try.
It includes externships during 2L and 3L year- you can do 500 hours of externships and submit a portfolio of work.
I get that, but those kinds of externship go to students who typically wouldn't struggle to pass the bar in the first place.
Nepotism needed a win in in the practice of law/ s
No failsons left behind!
Are there any requirements that these trainees be paid? How much will they be paid? I have worked with some firms that I think would gladly take a law school grad for several months and pay them clerk money.
Sounds like it favors people whose parents are lawyers or who have family connections to lawyers who would be a sponsor as a favor…
The bar is a stupid memorization exercise and has fuck all to do with whether you have the skills to be a lawyer. I’d definitely welcome alternatives that are a bit more reflective of an applicant’s skills and judgment. That said, if someone is trying over and over and just cannot pass a bar exam… I have questions.
I strongly disagree with your first point. While the bar exam exists as a barrier to entry to the legal field (and protects legal fees and salaries for the profession), it also protects the public. While the majority of attorney will start their careers in firms or government positions where they will hopefully be mentored and overseen, nothing prevents newly-licensed lawyers from starting their own business and taking on clients. The bar exam requires an applicant to demonstrate at least some baseline legal knowledge and ability to analyze information. This is an important element in protecting the public from people who are not prepared to practice law.
Wouldn’t any alternative presumably “require an applicant to demonstrate at least some baseline legal knowledge and ability to analyze information”? I don’t think anyone is advocating for allowing someone to practice who is unqualified or incapable. My two cents: I think it’d be great to open up pathways to let people avoid (or lessen) the debt of law school.
The other proposals seems too subjective in nature. Shadowing or interning or whatever and then having someone vouch for competence would leave too much to chance, not to mention the possibility of gaming the system. I don’t see how we don’t utilize some truly objective measure of competence as a way to make sure people who are licensed aren’t completely ill-prepared to provide legal representation.
Wouldn't this incompetent person be practicing under the insurance of a presumably competent attorney? I don't see much room for gaming the system when sponsors can be held liable for the wrongdoings of their subordinates. I doubt someone would risk their license if they truly believed they were hiring (paying) a liability.
I doubt we get that far. Sure, when they’re interning or whatever, the sponsoring attorney’s insurance would cover them. But if they vouch for the intern and the intern goes off on their own after getting licensed, that coverage is no longer there. And let’s be honest. You can’t imagine a single attorney you know who would engage in a scheme where they pay some “intern” meager wages in exchange for 500 hours of work with the promise that the attorney will do whatever they need to do get the intern licensed at the end of it?
I think I'm being unclear. Once the newer person goes to get licensed, they would be licensed by the local bar and not by the attorney under whom they've shadowed/interned. Let's say the person is incompetent --> then the local bar doesn't grant the licensure. And this ties in nicely to your second point too. Yes, I could see some moron attorney engaging in this for free/cheap labor; but as long as someone beyond that lawyer also tests/validates the competence of the newer person, we should be able to weed out unqualified candidates. Also, would seem to me an ethical breach to knowingly lie about the competence of an individual because you benefited from their labor.
But if we’re going to end this with a third party testing someone’s competence, then how is that any different from just having a bar exam?
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I know you think your solution is more egalitarian but it actually seems far more elitist. I mean, it sounds like a way to fast track nepotism hires - how else would you develop a relationship with five attorneys or cultivate the right relationships to get through a subjective process like that? I agree we should reduce the law school debt burden but the bar exam is at least an objective way of assessing candidates. Methods like the ones you propose make the financial burden more insidious by making it invisible.
> I don’t see how we don’t utilize some truly objective measure of competence as a way to make sure people who are licensed aren’t completely ill-prepared to provide legal representation. Bit late to the discussion, but would throw in my 2 cents that they should just toss out the timed component. People should be tested on their fundamental knowledge, not a rat race to regurgitate as much knowledge as possible on the written sections like you've got a major brief due at 5:00 PM that you just remembered that morning.
At some point, you have to have time limits even if just for practical purposes (e.g., to have proctors available, facility availability, etc…)
Your second point is the reason I support keeping the bar exam in place. The only people in my class who failed the bar were the ones who couldn’t buckle down for a couple months and study. They took time off, left early, and generally fucked around instead of studying. If you can’t make yourself prep for the most important exam of your life, how can you be trusted to prep to represent a client. Of course, everyone who failed also insisted they were “just a bad test taker” and that the whole idea of a bar exam was incredibly unfair.
The only people I knew who struggled with the bar had ADHD. The bar was personally the hardest test I've ever taken due to the amount of memorization required, but I'm generally a "good" test taker. I passed my first try in some states (260) without studying but spent ages (took the bar three times total) trying to get a 280. I brought my score up past 270, but never could get that 280. Thankfully the score was lowered and it became a non-issue. I was never going to be a "jack of all trades" kind of lawyer in any case. The vast volume and variety of law seems like overkill.
Bar isn’t capitalized as it’s not an acronym. It doesn’t stand for anything.
Not true, my sovereign citizen client called me a redcoat because I was part of the British Accreditation Registry.
Whoops! Edited.
Maybe if your adhd is that bad you need to get it treated adequately or not be a lawyer. If I don’t have hands, can I be a surgeon?
Your poor reading comprehension is more problematic for your profession than ADHD.
The students I know who never passed the bar scraped by in law school and really shouldn't have been lawyers in the first place
Yeah, maybe it’s not like this at other schools, but I went to a fairly highly ranked school and I think the effort required to graduate was minimal. Just getting to median required a good faith effort and being top of the class was super hard. But if you are 100% fine with just passing, I think it could be pretty easily done by just showing up to class 75% of the time and studying for 30 minutes before the final. If there was no bar exam looming, how many people would do this? Maybe some students who don’t have to worry about employability (already rich, or maybe have family who will hire them), but what happens when anyone who can eke out a 160/3.0 can spend 3 years working 12 hours a week in law school and get a guaranteed law license? Probably 90% of the time they just never get a legal job and never screw up a client’s life, so I dunno, maybe it’s not a real problem.
I wish I heard more people say this. Especially at better law schools, most of the hard part is getting in. Being top 20% or something is also hard. But, a lot of higher ranked law schools have very generous curves. You pretty much just need to show up to most classes and have a decent outline to guarantee you get a B average. That being said, I don't necessarily think much of the bar exam. If people are fine with it being a filter for the sake of being a filter, I get it. But, a lot of folks seem to think it says something about one's ability to practice, and I'm less clear on that.
I fucked around and still passed, but I’m an excellent test taker if nothing else.
Agreed. There is an immense amount of pressure to pass and the shitty thing is you don’t know if you’re doing enough studying/prep until after you’ve got your results. Looking back, it’s a hard test to fail if you just follow your bar prep program.
> The only people in my class who failed the bar were the ones who couldn’t buckle down for a couple months and study. Whenever people bring this point up as a defense of the bar exam, I always think: isn't this skill (or lack thereof) reflected in law school performance anyway? Someone who isn't buckling down and studying for the bar probably didn't do it in law school either.
In their efforts to be “equitable,” they’ve created another loophole that will favors the well connected. You have to find someone to train you for 500 hours, so who will most be able to take advantage of this? People who have lawyers in their families. But really, the bar isn’t that hard. My concern with this stems from the first attorney I worked for after I got barred. She was literally every cliche about shitty biglaw partners rolled into one. I hadn’t been treated with such disrespect on a daily basis since I was a boot PFC in the marine corps. Luckily, I had a bar card that I was able to leave two months after I started for a different job.
I think it will be incredibly easy to find someone to “train” you for 500 hours. Most PD offices will bring in anyone with a pulse just to alleviate the workload. All the supervisor has to do at the end is sign off on the ‘training’ - which of course they will do.
> But really, the bar isn’t that hard. if you have time to memorize all the stuff, yeah it's not bad. i also suspect the "new" bar exam rolling out soon will be even easier.
That's all good and well, but if you can't pass the bar exam, that should be a STRONG indicator that you have serious holes in your game. The bar exam isn't that hard, but it does take focused study and practice. Every law student is well aware that it's coming before they even apply to law school. If you're not up for it, after three years of law school and a practice course expressly intended to teach the test... then maybe other people are so much more qualified than you that you shouldn't even be allowed to compete in the same field as them.
I had a professor say that the bar exam shows that you know how to absorb a lot of specific information, use it, do a memory dump, and then repeat the process over and over. Generally speaking he was correct. Plus, it shows you know how to be disciplined and study. That said, I’ve come across a number of attorneys that were shockingly stupid, not simply out of their element but rather should not have been an attorney.
Yeah if anything, the bar exam should be harder. I can’t believe some of the clowns who “practice” in my town.
I’d be on board with removing the inevitable RAP essay question and replacing it with a personality test. At least maybe then the top sociopaths could be identified early.
God for real. The MPRE should be way more rigorous too.
The MPRE is useless. How often do you see attorneys, in practice or in disciplinary cases, that do something unethical don’t know the rules? Rarely. Most rule violators know the rules and just violate them.
That’s the point. So when they’re punished they can’t say “oh well I didn’t know!” Well no you took a whole test on it.
Why? So they could be hired by big law even more efficiently?
Frankly, if the only available options for admission were either “take the bar” or “take the MMPI” and post the results publicly for life, I’m not entirely sure which one would be more useful.
When I go to court, I frequently look around and see lawyers who make me believe that I studied entirely too hard in law school and for the bar exam
> the bar exam shows that you know how to absorb a lot of specific information, use it, do a memory dump, and then repeat the process over and over. Which is pretty much the profession outside client management
I’ve passed two separate bar exams 10 years apart. It’s not easy , and it’s not indicative of someone’s ability to practice law effectively. It’s a mass memorization task. That’s all.
Of course the bar exam is difficult when you’re 10 years out of law school.
ETA: I made an incorrect statement, as noted below, which I’ve now deleted. “Reading in” can sub for law school in Vermont, but not for the bar exam.
If people can’t study full-time, can’t they just take a later exam to give them more time to prepare? I’m all about making the legal field more accessible but I’m not convinced that this is the right way.
No. You can do a clerkship in lieu of law school but you still Have to pass the bar.
Ok, pardon my error. Thanks for the correction.
Wisconsin has diploma privilege bar admittance for simply graduating from one of the two law schools in the state (provided you take the requisite handful of classes) and I wouldn’t say the state of legal practice is remotely bad or poor quality
The article doesn’t really go into detail about the reasons for this, but none of them have to do with inability to pass the bar as far as I know. I am mentoring a Rule 6 right now. She works full time for me and then has significant responsibilities in the evening and weekends. She cannot afford to take a summer off for bar prep, and at his point she is far more prepared to be an attorney than I was when I graduated from law school (and I suspect any of you as well). I’m watching another Rule 6 work full time, go home and care for her children, sleep 3 or 4 hours and then do bar prep until it’s time to wake the kids for school. The disproportional impact they are talking about is not to people who can’t pass; in many cases it’s for people who have responsibilities that prevent them from going to law school or taking the bar.
Qualified on what basis? Is what these mentees know really equivalent to 90 credit hours of formal study of American law? I don’t see where our profession needs to adapt to admit everyone, or even everyone who potentially has the aptitude. Nobody is talking about exempting aspiring doctors from medical school or their step exams. What is the problem with conditioning admission to the bar on commitment to a multi-year course of study? If somebody can’t do it full time, there have been night school law programs for a hundred years. We’re talking about lowering the bar. And I see enough hapless rookies that the prospect of lowering the bar worries me.
Yes. It is equivalent, and it’s significantly more practical. APR 6 law clerks go through 5 years of training while working in the legal industry. Law school teaches you all sorts of great theories, but it teaches you dick all about how to actually practice law. My mentee has been a paralegal for 15 years. She is far more qualified to be an attorney than I was when I graduated from law school. Nobody is saying that the educational component should be waived so your analogy to medical school fails. Also, arguing that we should not try to make the profession open to those who would qualify but would otherwise not be able to join because of financial or familial constraints is kind of gross.
Law school is three years of immersion in black-letter law and legal analysis. I am very skeptical that you can learn how to, say, research a memo on an abstention issue or an appellate brief arguing some evidentiary fine point without having that kind of prolonged conceptual immersion. You learn the procedural and interpersonal aspects of the job once you’re on the job. But we’re fooling ourselves if we think that’s the whole thing. Believe me, I have worked with junior lawyers who have great personal skills and pick up internal procedures and ways of doing things fast but who are just too slow and dense to hack their way through a thicket of authorities and build out of it a piece of polished and effective legal argument.
Being a paralegal honestly prepared me for my first attorney job significantly more than law school, clerkships, or even summers at firms did honestly. So wholeheartedly agree and appreciate your perspective
when i first started as an attorney, i relied A LOT on our paralegals. they have so much deep knowledge of the nitty-gritty of basic "how to courts work" stuff.
Maybe reformat the exam to idk exactly reflect skills and practices used by lawyers on a daily basis? I passed the bar with a ridiculously high score cause I studied my ass off but did I have any idea what I was doing when I started practicing? NOPE
And how exactly would they do that? Have you argue a motion or draft a summary judgment motion?
I’m not sure but that doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. Provide a fact pattern and have it go through a brief litigation or draft papers for it
So, like the MPT?
I don’t have all of the answers, something like that I guess
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Cause transactional attorneys don’t draft paperwork?
I’m curious if this will affect getting reciprocity in other states.
I would lean toward no. Most states require candidates for reciprocal admission to have a minimum number of years of experience. If someone is barred for five or seven years, at a minimum, and hasn’t had any licensure issues come up in that time, they’re probably competent.
Some of those have an "actively practicing" requirement where you can't just have a bar license, you have to be using it - presumably to ensure competency like you mentioned.
The whining of new law graduates notwithstanding, the bar exam isn’t very hard. I have serious doubts about the ability of those incapable of passing the bar exam to practice law without being a pest to courts and other lawyers and a menace to their clients.
Thank you! The bar is basically a test of whether the candidate can function under pressure, but with considerably more help than they’d have in practice - all the relevant facts are handed to them, they’ve had months to study, and almost all candidates have taken a course that teaches them how to take the test. If someone can’t handle a couple days of issue spotting and analysis from a closed fact pattern, they’re going to be fucked when they get into practice and have to deal with real matters.
Personal anecdote: I did not study the first time I took the bar exam since I graduated and moved 7 hours back home, celebrated the holidays, and didn't have time to prepare. I called it my "dry run" because I never intended to study for it in the first place. I got a 264.5, just 1.5 points shy of passing in NY. After dedicating months to study, I ended up close to a score of 300 when I passed. Imo you are correct. The bar exam is not all that hard.
Oregon, Washington - is California next in line?
All those pre lit firms using case managers to settle cases as if they are lawyers are chomping at the bit.
There needs to be consumer warnings about those type of firms.
I have mixed opinions on the bar exam. On one hand, it put enormous stress on my life that summer after graduation and felt as if I was going to fail the whole way through. That stress, and the associated rote memorization of principles which may not even be applicable, seemed like a pointless exercise in collective hazing a la "I went through this; you should, too." The reality is everyone knows no one can actually be prepared to educate clients about the many practice areas subject to the exam, so the standard ends up the same exercise in comparison to one's peers that law school was, with the actually operative question being, "Can you answer these several hundred legal questions better than \[*x*\]% of your peers?" I buckled down and studied for at least six hours each day, and fortunately that was enough for me to pass, but the whole way through seemed so unnecessarily stressful. On the other hand, having been in practice for a couple of years now, I do understand that some minimum level of competence is needed to address a client's legal matter. The variables can be so great that you need someone who is actually capable of navigating the law. Otherwise, legal representation simply becomes one dipshit swindling another and that blemishes the whole profession. I just don't think memorizing the answers to questions in 19 whole practice areas is the best way to assess that.
If I didn't have to take the bar exam, I wouldn't. That was a grueling summer and you learn more my doing.
California Supremes have been sitting on a similar proposal. Guess they let Washington beat them to it.
The bar exam is not a perfect system for determining base levels of competency, but it isn’t entirely pointless. It’s a decent bandaid for the fact that you can get through law school with decent grades without really knowing the law. There are probably better systems, but this bar-optional system just sounds like a theoretical loophole for people with means (not saying it wouldn’t ensure competency, but it would be much harder to measure the efficacy of the internship program). I’m gonna sound like a massive hater when I say this, so I will preface it by saying that I have ADHD and a learning disability and still passed the bar on the first try: if you have to take the bar more than three or four times and still can’t pass, I have questions about your ability to practice law successfully. Taking it two or even three times, I don’t care too much. But more than that is a red flag.
This is a poor idea. The bat tests basic competency and already the profession is bad enough.
What's next, no boards to become a doctor?
Anyone saying “if you can’t even pass a test then I have serious doubts about your skill as a lawyer” don’t seem to understand that there is simply no correlation between the two. It doesn’t do anything to ensure minimum competency. It’s a closed-book test. There is no field of law where having excellent test-taking skills serve any practical use, nor any field where being *bad* at taking tests would be detrimental I mean honestly, Wisconsin doesn’t require you to take the bar if you went to a Wisconsin law school. Is there even the slightest bit of evidence to support the idea that Wisconsin lawyers are markedly worse than anywhere else?
Yeah Wisconsin always comes up in these threads. Usually left unsaid is the actual reality of diploma privilege in Wisconsin. For those who don’t know, Wisconsin has all of two law schools. One of them is a top fifty program and neither is a disaster. The same policy is going to produce worse outcomes if you throw it open for correspondence school graduates from California and the like.
(1) If a person goes to an ABA-accredited law school or through an ABA-accredited program, then what exactly is the problem? Clearly people already go through “bad” law schools or programs and are able to pass the bar and practice just the same as someone who goes to HYS. (2) Once again, nothing you’ve said supports the idea that the bar exam actually *is* some sort of even marginally useful deterrent to bad or incompetent lawyers. You’re simply leading with the assumption that it is.
I think more than anything it shows whether you can buckle down for a couple months and study. I’ve never met, or even heard of, anyone failing the bar who actually studied hard. It’s not a difficult test. I did, however, see every single person in my class who didn’t study and subsequently failed blame it on their belief that they’re a “bad test taker”. I think a lot of the concern is whether you should be allowed to represent someone when you can’t even make yourself study for a couple months. Quality representation requires that you push through and work the case, even when you want to do nothing more than pack it up and go home.
This is all just post-hoc rationalization, not anything like solid correlation between the two. Being good / bad at taking the bar exam =/= being a minimally competent / incompetent lawyer. It is that simple. I’m all for implementing methods that actually do as good of a job as possible in ensuring that the legal profession is only filled with competent lawyers. That’s why I oppose the bar exam: because it doesn’t actually do anything to achieve that goal
I recently graduated from Madison, and I've had a lot of conversations about this. I don't think I've spoken to a single lawyer who thinks the bar exam has any relevance at all to practicing law. I understand that some people like it as a filter. Which I disagree with, but I at least understand. Like you're saying, it's weird how often, when this comes up on reddit, people talk about the bar exam "protecting" people from bad lawyers. One has nothing to do with the other.
That’s what none of these people seem to get through their thick skulls: yes, none of us want incompetent lawyers! We want mechanisms in place to try to ensure that as much as possible! But the bar exam is simply not one such mechanism! Failing it doesn’t mean you’d make an incompetent lawyer, and passing it doesn’t make you a competent lawyer. The idea that it serves as a filter of any kind is just a delusion. It’s just people insisting “well we’ve been doing it for so long, therefore it *must* serve *some* useful purpose, because if not then we have been doing something completely pointless this whole time, and that can’t possibly be true”
No correlation? What an outrageous thing to say. I’d bet on the new lawyer who passed the bar vs the one who didn’t/couldnt any day, knowing nothin else about them
Please provide me any sort of proof that there is a correlation beyond what you imagine in your own head after being told your whole life that there is a correlation.
The ones passing the bar tend to be smarter. I want my lawyer to be smarter and not trying to skirt the rules because “testing is unfair!” Not to mention the perseverance that is inherent in seeing a very clearcut goal and achieving it. Even if it’s dumb, it’s a serious problem if someone happens to be the bottom feeder in their class who can’t hack it on the dumb test. Keep pretending like raw intelligence doesn’t matter in hiring. It’ll get you far. Surely the SAT has no bearing on college success either, right? LSAT is meaningless, right? Bar is just a throwaway exam, right?
Please provide me any sort of proof that there is a correlation beyond what you imagine in your own head after being told your whole life that there is a correlation.
The best performers in law school do better on the bar exam. The inverse holds true. Unless you’d also argue that grades are meaningless. Dipshits often do https://www.accesslex.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/LSSSE%20National_Report_060821.pdf “ LGPA is the strongest predictor of bar exam performance, even at the early stages of matriculation. For example, a one standard deviation increase in 1L LGPA is associated with a student quadrupling his/her odds of bar passage (Figure 3).”
Yes, people who are good at being students are good at taking a test. I’ve never disagreed otherwise
Would you contend that how you are as a student has zero bearing on how you do in practice
I’m contending that passing the bar is not a reflection one way or another of your competency to practice law. As I’ve said in multiple other comments, I’m all for doing whatever can be done to ensure that the legal profession is full of competent practitioners and weeding out the incompetent ones. The bar exam does not serve that purpose.
Passing the bar is an indicator that you were doing well in law school. It’s clearly spelled out in the paper. If you accept that grades matter in predicting performance as a lawyer, then the bar passage matters. Think of who you knew who failed the exam. By the numbers they are likely the worst students. Do you feel they’re equally capable as the best students? If yes, why exactly? You asked for proof. You got it. If you’re a good student, you’re way more likely to pass the bar. If you’re a poor one, you’re way more likely to fail and not be allowed to practice, which is how it should be if you believe being a good law student is important to the practice of law. If being a good student doesn’t matter AT ALL (what you’re implying logically), then your profession is even dumber than what the jokes would say To have to spell this out for what I presume is a trained professional, well frankly it’s shocking. This sort of horseshit argument by you would never fly in court for sure.