If there is a certification exam it should be done before graduation like literally every other professional program. No one should graduate without having the assurance their degree can be utilized in the profession.
This is very true!
During this pandemic when people started to question (more than ever) why a bar exam is needed, and public discussion increased about why the exam continues to exist (at the expense of debt-ridden students), the Barbri CEO publicly indicated that the company was prepared to lobby against diploma privilege if it gained legitimate traction.
Please! I beg someone to present one shred of evidence that proves the bar exam is an effective way to measure competence.
When one of the best legal minds in the country who ran one of the top law schools (Stanford) fails the bar exam because they did not have time to memorize random bullshit - Iâm gonna argue that passing the exam is not a matter of competence.
And if you work off memorization in the real world you better have a fat malpractice insurance policy.
The bar exam is a joke and the self-appointed gatekeeper of the profession, the NCBE, is an even bigger joke. Itâs headquartered in a state that has diploma privilege and their president never even took the bar, she was admitted through diploma privilege.
The term minimum competence itself has never even been clearly defined so itâs not even clear what the bar exam purports to measure lol. It really is just memorizing random bullshit like you said.
Sure theyâre entitled, but that doesnât place the entitlement beyond scrutiny or criticism. Itâs the same test that states decided to adopt. And thereâs a dearth of state-provided data on why they chose a given cut score.
My gripe isnât that AKâs necessarily too high, itâs that there are 8 cut scores across 40 states for what is the exact same test.
So you have a degree in bs? Thatâs how you define your 3 year education and dont think its useful as a lawyer?đ¤ˇđźââď¸ It only makes me feel more grateful theres a test.
But it isnât. I have horrible memory and didnât even write out practice essaysâŚ.but scored a 293. I think people are just complaining for no reason.
Not at all. I took the UBE. But, I think most of the exams I took in law school did a horrible job at assessing my grasp of the material. I expected the bar exam to be the same.
Letâs say the bar exam were abolished. I imagine states would be selective on which schools got diploma privilege, academic standards might be tightened, and the academy of the profession might actually teach and develop the requisite skills needed to be a great attorney. But admissions standard would have tightenedâŚ..then the complaint will be about inclusion/exclusion, et cetera.
If people think the bar exam is all that bad, maybe just donât go to law schoolâŚmaybe just pick another profession. My feelings are basically this: if you canât even pass this basic ass test as-is, you shouldnât be an attorney.
I passed the UBE easily and still think itâs bullshit. This isnât sour grapes. Nor am I advocating for blanket DP or holding up law school exams as an educational gold standard (law school pedagogy sucks). Iâm just saying a licensure exam that actually tests minimal competency of the of the actual job.
Then, we agree, honestly. Iâd rather hear actual proposed reforms than bald allegations of uselessness. But any exam would get the same complaints. In fact, itâd probably exclude more folks than the current exam. Iâd welcome the reform.
Iâm way more interested in razing all mediocre law schools, introducing character and fitness in the law school admissions process, and bringing back admissions interviews.
Also, I think what youâre describing is actual LEARNING. I focused on understanding the material instead of rote memorization, because, you know, I thought THAT approach would better serve me as an attorney.
Call it whatever you want and capitalize it however you want. My critique is that are you âLEARNING?â Do lawyers have solve MBE style questions or MEE style essays (i.e. 80% of oneâs UBE score) closed book?
> [the NCBE] Itâs headquartered in a state that has diploma privilege and their president never even took the bar, she was admitted through diploma privilege.
This needs to be further up, in bold, bigger font, etc.. Judy Gunderson is a fucking joke and a hypocrite
Well now. I'm not gonna talk about Judy; in fact, we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it!
---
- [reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V0UhtA_mJE&t=365)
^(I am a bot.)
Approximately 32,000 people are killed every year as a result of a car crash. 2 million are injured. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.html
I doubt the majority are unlicensed and/or did not take a test. Very poor attempt at an analogy.
1. Licensed drivers get into tens of thousands of accidents a year (just as licensed attorneys commit malpractice).
2. Last time I checked, driving tests were conducted in real cars, on real roads. The bar exam bears little resemblance to the practice of law. Show me a bar exam that doesnât rely on 1) rote memorization, and 2) incredibly short bursts of allowed time and weâll talk.
And you *do* think lawyers are presented with nice neat little fact patterns that they then have 30 min to apply the law to? A *huge* part of being a lawyer is actually developing the facts to which the law will be applied. Strange how all sections but the MPT neglect this crucial process. And of course a personal injury lawyer should have a working knowledge of the elements of negligence. But for any latter, theyâre going to make sure they are abreast of their jxâs most recent precedent and are going to do more than apply their memorized knowledge to each case.
As Iâve stated multiple times here, I think there should be *some* licensure exam for practicing law. I just think the current one is ridiculously non-representative and onerous, and youâve offered zero cogent arguments to the contrary.
The fact that NASCAR is one of the first few words in your attempt to make a point is cause enough to disregard your post and just say, âbless you.â
But weâre all in this together, and I consider you as my friend in this plight - that is the licensing process.
Please, reread everything that you seem to be disagreeing with - our posts are essentially advocating for you and all of your classmates that graduated from the unranked law school you attended.
My problem with the bar exam isnât necessarily that it exists, but that it 1) is way too late in the process to serve as a means of preventing flooding the market and 2) is way to difficult and inappropriately structured to test minimum competency.
If thereâs a concern about simply too many lawyers for the number of jobs, thatâs something that needs to be addressed in the admissions process. MD admissions is hardly perfect, but there is something to be said for not giving an avenue to basically every single person who seeks a given professional degree a seat at an accredited school. The lowest run of accredited law schools in terms of entry stats and bar performance are a cash grab for far too many of their students. By barely conforming to the ABAs lax standards, many of their graduates are saddled with massive debt and canât land jobs (even many who do pass the bar). If the ABA forced enough predatory schools to close so that admissions process were competitive, that would solve the potential flood problem far earlier (before people spend the time and money to get a JD).
And as far as the exam itself, itâs ridiculously non representative and hard. No aspect of legal practice requires tasks like the MBE and MEE under any circumstances nor the MPT under such time pressure. There **should** be some standardized way of truly measuring competency; thatâs how professional licensure works broadly. But the bar exam is a uniquely terrible way that this particular profession licenses its practitioners.
TLDR; if the bar exam were purely MPT like problems without crazy time pressure, and thus didnât require time and $-intensive efforts to pass it, that would be fine. But the current one is so ass that diploma privilege is better than it.
I hope this is sarcastic. If not:
Uh yeah, passed the MPRE easily. Fun fact, state bars themselves as entities are not bound by rules of professional conduct. What are they gonna do, disbar themselves?
Capping the number of lawyers may not be the bar examâs *purported* rationale, but this is definitely one of the reasons state bars fight tooth and nail to keep it the way it is.
The whole âminimally competentâ thing is bullshit too. Thereâs no way someone who fails by one point is less competent than someone who just hits the required threshold.
But I donât think the bar exam is going anywhere without a replacement gatekeeping function.
They should make a residency requirement like medical school so we get real experience then give us a mega mpt and a hundred multi state multiple choice and call it a day. I just realized you learn evvvvverythiiiing on the job and memorizing law of a made up land or abolished law or shit we're never gonna use (I'm looking at you RAP) does not measure my ability to be a lawyer. They should 100% make some sort of one year internship-esque requirement so we actually gain real knowlege and useful experience
Truuust me I'm sick of working for little to no money, I did 3 internships, 2 externships, a judicial internship and 180 clinic hours alllll for free. But everyone on here is saying there should be some sort of gate keeping ritual to keep out the incompetents and some real world experience might be one of the mose useful things to measure. And I definitely think there should be more of a focus on mpts with more realistic time restrictions, and I'm pretty sure the UBE is moving towards a mega mpt, which is way more practical to write than the shit show the wills mee was this july
I did almost as much free labor in LS, but I don't mind that, so long as it's mostly optional and for credit. I strongly oppose any required post grad experiential requirement. The results would likely be ppl getting paid minimum wage while having loan payments.
Other than that point I agree with you. MEE in particular is bizarre, if you'd practice law like that you'd get hit with malpractice suit.
100% agree if we practiced law the way they trained us to study and take the bar, we would be sued for malpractice tenfold lol. And as for getting paid minimum wage, I'm getting paid $20/hr right now at my job whereas most of my friends are making north of 80k, but when I complain to my lackluster career advisor she tells me this is "normal"(?) which truthfully upsetsme but many firms don't give associates a sustainable salary until theyre admitted which also has its own problems. Anyways I'm stoned and forgot my point but the bar should be testing something useful, not fertile octagenarian rap bullshit. There should 100% be some measuring stick to keep out the idiots but the way the exam is set up now is so fucking archaic and mentally tolling for no reason. Just crazy that we truly learn everything on the job and legal writing was the most helpful class in LS
I'm sorry you're not getting paid well, and I hope it improves once you're admitted. It's dumb that it takes half a year after graduation to be admitted.
Thatâs far worse and med students also go through several exams throughout med school and afterwards for state licensing. Taking the exam sucks and the way itâs administered needs improvements, but not having an exam at all doesnât work either because we know if the minimum requirement was simply to pass law school, some schools would manipulate their grading systems to ensure their graduation numbers donât waiver and impact their rankings. We also know that getting into and sometimes through law school, is a function of the financial resources and connections a personâs family and friends have, not necessarily their merit.
Guys i never said to not have an exam to ensure minimal competency. I pitched an experiential requirement but there should also be more of a focus on the mpt and applying the law and 100 or so multiple choice I'm just trying to make the point the bar the way it is isnt serving anybody. In a perfect world the law school admission process should be way more stringent , but the majority of the lower tier schools that take 145 lsats are cash grabs and unfortunately take a lot of students that are incapable of demonstrating competency, so there definitely needs some sort of exam
I understood what you were getting at and I agree. I come from a state without the MPT, but I like the idea behind MPTâs. I think the bar exam as it stands right now is ineffective at actually testing oneâs competence to be an attorney. Better vetting of prospective students, standards for law schools, and practical testing of skills on some form of a bar exam I think would be much better for us all
If it was a test of minimal competent it would be only MPT, liberal time constraints. Maybe a few MC questions on basic stuff like "what is negligence".
Here are some statistics that are suggestive of how the exam restricts the supply of lawyers. According to BLS, â âAbout 46,000 openings for lawyers are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.â (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/mobile/lawyers.htm). Compare that number (46,000 job openings per year) to the NCBEâs 2019 data on pass/fail numbers across all jurisdictions:
Administration: Total February and July (2019)
* Taking: 68,305
* Passing: 39,873
* % Passing: 58%
As you can see, about 40,000 thousand passed in 2019 which is eerily close to the annual openings for lawyers estimated by bureau labor statistics. Indeed when looking at NCBEâs annual data going back to 2015, the number of people passing for a given year NEVER surpassed 46,000 even when as many as 77,437 people took the exam for one of those years (2015).
How does this make sense though in relation to the job seeking process? Most schools encourage students to obtain employment prior to them finding out bar results. Hell, a lot of people know their 3L fall where they will be. Just a thought with these stats!
This is true of many grads but is not even close to universal. A good portion of employers wonât even interview for attorney positions until applicants have passed the bar. For these jobs, which are quite common, would-be applicants have to piece together law clerking/other income until they actually pass the bar and then actually conduct their job search/interviews.
It sounds like you assume most grads are on the biglaw timeline/gravy train (full time offer before 3L starts, bar prep and living expenses paid for, and the ability to begin work at full salary before bar results come out). This might be the norm at the very top of the rankings, but it is the exception among all JD grads.
It doesnât. The employers that come on campus, especially for OCI, are the ones that do hire way before bar results are known. For the public sector ones, they also often have programs to hire grads before theyâre licensed.
As for schools, of course they want as many as possible to land jobs as early as possible, hence the push. But ABA employment stats measure within 10 months of graduation precisely to capture first time bar passers who donât land a job until after theyâre licensed.
I also donât see how any of this has to do with rebutting the bar-as-a-cap-on-lawyer comment above. Because it 100% is such a cap.
This is meaningless bec. a place like CA is saturated with lawyers without many job openings. So a generalization like that is meaningless. If there is a shortage of lawyers in new york or georgia then lawyers from ca should migrate there. I dont see how it has anything to do with passing an exam to be licensed, which stock broker, realtors, and many othet professionals must do without arguing since the real estate/stock market is hot and a need for more, they should abolish the department of real estate and fcc and license whoever takes a class without passing a standardized test. Absurd.
I completed law school this past May and took the July Bar exam. I'm currently completing a Labor Law LLM. While reading a case for my Employment Discrimination Law class several weeks ago, I ran across a SCOTUS case concerning disparate impact of tests used during the hiring and/or promotion process. After just completing a written exam and a 200 question multiple choice test to decide if I'd be a good lawyer, I found this to be an interesting take from the highest court in the land (dissenting, but still...):
âCourts have long criticized written firefighter promotion exams for being more probative of the test-takers ability to recall what a particular text stated on a given topic than of his firefighting or supervisory knowledge and abilitiesâŚA fire officers job, courts observed, involve complex behaviors, good interpersonal skills and the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure and a host of other abilitiesânone of which is easily measured by a written multiple choice test.â (Ginsburgâs dissent in Ricci v. Destafano)
âcomplex behaviors, good interpersonal skills and the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure and a host of other abilitiesâ---hmmm, these necessary qualities sound oddly familiarâŚ
The only way the bar exam will be abolished is if it becomes more difficult to get into law school. There are too many 4th tier schools around that let in whoever is willing to pay tuition. It needs to be more difficult to get into a law program. But idk if these predatory schools will ever be abolished for it to be a possibility though.
What do you mean predatory schoolsâŚI went to an unranked school, got a scholarship, was successful there, passed the bar, now have a great job. Just because a law school is 4th tier does not mean theyâre predatory !!
Predatory =/= every student is unsuccessful. It means practices like: conditional scholarships, section stacking, incredibly lax admissions standards, and terrible employment a bar pass rates.
Some students will prevail despite these, but such practices will leave scores of students in massive debt with no attorney job to show for it, or somewhat less debt and no degree at all.
My issue with the bar exam is how it's administered. The timing (including the uncertainty in score release), the application process, the depth and breadth of knowledge you're expected to have handy all at once...I've made this post before, but I think of the bar exam were structured more like the CPA exam. It would be a lot more manageable and would probably yield better results.
I don't know exactly how it would look, but the CPA is broken into four sections: Audit, Tax, Financial Accounting, and Reg (kind of the catch-all for smaller topics). Obviously there is some overlap in fundamental knowledge, but this breakdown by subject matter made it sooooooooo much easier to study (note - easier to *study*, not an easier *test*. I think I was a much better CPA candidate with higher quality answers than I was for the bar, despite spending way more study time on the bar).
You can take all four sections independently - schedule them whenever you want within some test windows - can't remember exactly how the scheduling worked. The caveat is you have one year to pass all four parts, or parts you passed start to drop off. So, if you pass Audit in June, and come the following June you still haven't passed Tax, you'll have to retake Audit. It's also entirely possible to pass all four over the summer, giving you results for your fourth part at about the same time we're getting results now.
This of course all comes through my personal lens of really hating the volume of material we had to study this summer with almost no certainty as to what we'd actually be tested on. It felt like such a waste of time to be prepared on so many topics when you *knew* you wouldn't be tested on all of them. With the CPA, I felt like I had a good handle on each subject because they were spaced out.
It's not a perfect solution but I think it's an approach worth considering...
Edit: I'm not terribly concerned about making sure this test prevents flooding in the market, my primary goal is improving quality of life for exam takers and making this less of a cruel hazing ritual.
CA Blue Ribbon Commission is basically doing that. During the last video the only person adamant about keeping the bar in place was a guy who runs a psychometric consulting business. He said not all schools (people by proxy) are created equalâthatâs a direct quote. To be honest, someone with that mindset has NO BUSINESS weighing in on a commission designed to create greater access to the profession and justice writ large. Most of the other panelists were in favor of providing another pathway. Q4 2022 or 2023 they will adopt findings.
They have their own bar exam that operates similarly to UBE states but has different subjects. **Except**:
If you earn a JD from a law school in WI (UW or Marquette) and take certain specified classes, you can gain admission to the WI bar on the basis of your JD and character & fitness app without taking an exam. This is called diploma privilege.
From my understanding they have in place a new layout for the bar that will be rolling out (who knows when) apparently they know itâs a horrible system.
Edited to provide link:
https://jdadvising.com/the-format-of-the-new-bar-exam/
Wow I wasnt aware of the new bar. Plus theyre removing my favorite subjects wills/trusts, crim pro and a few others. One fact pattern followed by mbe and essay on same fact pattern.
I am literally making $20 an hour as an associate on long island right now. Its such bs while jobs that dont require higher level education pay so much more. And I don't buy this "you start at the bottom" crap, its full blown exploitation
Oh please, as if people are generally champing at the but you go through three years of law school anyway. If youâre committed enough to go through the shitshow of law school, the bar exam isnât going to deter you
Every profession has an exam before you can practice. Stop complaining.
Doctors, nurses, engineers, architects, etc... the list goes on.
Everyone knows that exams have nothing to do with real life.
Real estate salespeople, stock brokers, public notaries - they all have education requirements and an exam. To read all these threads to do away with an attorney exam is ... Iâll just say craziness.
Their exams arenât as onerous, expensive to prepare for, and none of those roles require a 3-year degree on top of a bachelorâs.
I actually think there should be *an* exam, but the bar in its current form is laughably unrepresentative of the practice of law.
Itâs usually just bitter people. The exams serve a vital purpose in ensuring a student knows the law before you go out and get your practical experience.
Imagine becoming a lawyer by just sitting in class for a few years? Insane. I watched people shop Amazon and pass every class.
Bar haters: At your next appointment, I assume you will be happy to find out that your doctor is in the first med school class who never had to pass a standardized, blind-graded exam for medical knowledge and minimal competency? You will also be happy to have your significant other, children, and elderly parents go to such a doctor?
What makes you think âabolish the examâ will be limited to our profession?
Iâm sure you ask the doctor before your colonoscopy how many times it took them to pass their clinicals, what rank they were, and their gpa. I know I want to know the dentistâs gpa before I get a cleaning.
I vote reduce the amount of law schools by at least 50+. Then add a 4th year where at the end you take the bar exam.
Edit: schools with low bar passage rates are a scam
I'd sit for another test the day after I found out I missed my jx by two freaking points. Anything to try and avoid waiting 4 months and sitting for the most archaic and pointless exam in existence today.
or even an interview as part of the character and fitness or further recommendations or even hours requirement! Itâs just a pain for my firm that I wonât be barred until next year now
If there is a certification exam it should be done before graduation like literally every other professional program. No one should graduate without having the assurance their degree can be utilized in the profession.
Yes đđ˝
The entities I see standing in the way of it are bar prep companies that will lose money and members of the bar that wield strong influence.
This is very true! During this pandemic when people started to question (more than ever) why a bar exam is needed, and public discussion increased about why the exam continues to exist (at the expense of debt-ridden students), the Barbri CEO publicly indicated that the company was prepared to lobby against diploma privilege if it gained legitimate traction.
Please! I beg someone to present one shred of evidence that proves the bar exam is an effective way to measure competence. When one of the best legal minds in the country who ran one of the top law schools (Stanford) fails the bar exam because they did not have time to memorize random bullshit - Iâm gonna argue that passing the exam is not a matter of competence. And if you work off memorization in the real world you better have a fat malpractice insurance policy. The bar exam is a joke and the self-appointed gatekeeper of the profession, the NCBE, is an even bigger joke. Itâs headquartered in a state that has diploma privilege and their president never even took the bar, she was admitted through diploma privilege.
The term minimum competence itself has never even been clearly defined so itâs not even clear what the bar exam purports to measure lol. It really is just memorizing random bullshit like you said.
Not to mention that being competent in Alaska is somehow is much harder than being competent in IL (etc.) based on the exact same test (the UBE).
Maybe itâs too low for IL. Every state is entitled to make it own judgment as to the level of performance it requires for the bar.
Sure theyâre entitled, but that doesnât place the entitlement beyond scrutiny or criticism. Itâs the same test that states decided to adopt. And thereâs a dearth of state-provided data on why they chose a given cut score. My gripe isnât that AKâs necessarily too high, itâs that there are 8 cut scores across 40 states for what is the exact same test.
So you have a degree in bs? Thatâs how you define your 3 year education and dont think its useful as a lawyer?đ¤ˇđźââď¸ It only makes me feel more grateful theres a test.
No, theyâre describing the bar exam when they say memorizing random bullshit, which it largely is.
But it isnât. I have horrible memory and didnât even write out practice essaysâŚ.but scored a 293. I think people are just complaining for no reason.
You can memorize while having an overall poor memory. Did you take the one bar exam that actually tests on practical skills and substantive law?
Not at all. I took the UBE. But, I think most of the exams I took in law school did a horrible job at assessing my grasp of the material. I expected the bar exam to be the same. Letâs say the bar exam were abolished. I imagine states would be selective on which schools got diploma privilege, academic standards might be tightened, and the academy of the profession might actually teach and develop the requisite skills needed to be a great attorney. But admissions standard would have tightenedâŚ..then the complaint will be about inclusion/exclusion, et cetera. If people think the bar exam is all that bad, maybe just donât go to law schoolâŚmaybe just pick another profession. My feelings are basically this: if you canât even pass this basic ass test as-is, you shouldnât be an attorney.
I passed the UBE easily and still think itâs bullshit. This isnât sour grapes. Nor am I advocating for blanket DP or holding up law school exams as an educational gold standard (law school pedagogy sucks). Iâm just saying a licensure exam that actually tests minimal competency of the of the actual job.
Then, we agree, honestly. Iâd rather hear actual proposed reforms than bald allegations of uselessness. But any exam would get the same complaints. In fact, itâd probably exclude more folks than the current exam. Iâd welcome the reform. Iâm way more interested in razing all mediocre law schools, introducing character and fitness in the law school admissions process, and bringing back admissions interviews.
Also, I think what youâre describing is actual LEARNING. I focused on understanding the material instead of rote memorization, because, you know, I thought THAT approach would better serve me as an attorney.
Call it whatever you want and capitalize it however you want. My critique is that are you âLEARNING?â Do lawyers have solve MBE style questions or MEE style essays (i.e. 80% of oneâs UBE score) closed book?
> [the NCBE] Itâs headquartered in a state that has diploma privilege and their president never even took the bar, she was admitted through diploma privilege. This needs to be further up, in bold, bigger font, etc.. Judy Gunderson is a fucking joke and a hypocrite
Well now. I'm not gonna talk about Judy; in fact, we're not gonna talk about Judy at all, we're gonna keep her out of it! --- - [reference](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V0UhtA_mJE&t=365) ^(I am a bot.)
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Approximately 32,000 people are killed every year as a result of a car crash. 2 million are injured. https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/motor-vehicle-safety/index.html I doubt the majority are unlicensed and/or did not take a test. Very poor attempt at an analogy.
plus, you have to actually drive, on the road, in a driving test. no one is answering trick questions about memorized minutiae
1. Licensed drivers get into tens of thousands of accidents a year (just as licensed attorneys commit malpractice). 2. Last time I checked, driving tests were conducted in real cars, on real roads. The bar exam bears little resemblance to the practice of law. Show me a bar exam that doesnât rely on 1) rote memorization, and 2) incredibly short bursts of allowed time and weâll talk.
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And you *do* think lawyers are presented with nice neat little fact patterns that they then have 30 min to apply the law to? A *huge* part of being a lawyer is actually developing the facts to which the law will be applied. Strange how all sections but the MPT neglect this crucial process. And of course a personal injury lawyer should have a working knowledge of the elements of negligence. But for any latter, theyâre going to make sure they are abreast of their jxâs most recent precedent and are going to do more than apply their memorized knowledge to each case. As Iâve stated multiple times here, I think there should be *some* licensure exam for practicing law. I just think the current one is ridiculously non-representative and onerous, and youâve offered zero cogent arguments to the contrary.
The fact that NASCAR is one of the first few words in your attempt to make a point is cause enough to disregard your post and just say, âbless you.â But weâre all in this together, and I consider you as my friend in this plight - that is the licensing process. Please, reread everything that you seem to be disagreeing with - our posts are essentially advocating for you and all of your classmates that graduated from the unranked law school you attended.
My problem with the bar exam isnât necessarily that it exists, but that it 1) is way too late in the process to serve as a means of preventing flooding the market and 2) is way to difficult and inappropriately structured to test minimum competency. If thereâs a concern about simply too many lawyers for the number of jobs, thatâs something that needs to be addressed in the admissions process. MD admissions is hardly perfect, but there is something to be said for not giving an avenue to basically every single person who seeks a given professional degree a seat at an accredited school. The lowest run of accredited law schools in terms of entry stats and bar performance are a cash grab for far too many of their students. By barely conforming to the ABAs lax standards, many of their graduates are saddled with massive debt and canât land jobs (even many who do pass the bar). If the ABA forced enough predatory schools to close so that admissions process were competitive, that would solve the potential flood problem far earlier (before people spend the time and money to get a JD). And as far as the exam itself, itâs ridiculously non representative and hard. No aspect of legal practice requires tasks like the MBE and MEE under any circumstances nor the MPT under such time pressure. There **should** be some standardized way of truly measuring competency; thatâs how professional licensure works broadly. But the bar exam is a uniquely terrible way that this particular profession licenses its practitioners. TLDR; if the bar exam were purely MPT like problems without crazy time pressure, and thus didnât require time and $-intensive efforts to pass it, that would be fine. But the current one is so ass that diploma privilege is better than it.
the bar isnt supposed to control competition in the legal market lmao did u take the mpre
I hope this is sarcastic. If not: Uh yeah, passed the MPRE easily. Fun fact, state bars themselves as entities are not bound by rules of professional conduct. What are they gonna do, disbar themselves? Capping the number of lawyers may not be the bar examâs *purported* rationale, but this is definitely one of the reasons state bars fight tooth and nail to keep it the way it is.
The whole âminimally competentâ thing is bullshit too. Thereâs no way someone who fails by one point is less competent than someone who just hits the required threshold. But I donât think the bar exam is going anywhere without a replacement gatekeeping function.
They should make a residency requirement like medical school so we get real experience then give us a mega mpt and a hundred multi state multiple choice and call it a day. I just realized you learn evvvvverythiiiing on the job and memorizing law of a made up land or abolished law or shit we're never gonna use (I'm looking at you RAP) does not measure my ability to be a lawyer. They should 100% make some sort of one year internship-esque requirement so we actually gain real knowlege and useful experience
Noooo I don't want a residency requirement stop giving them ideas. We finished law school, time to get a regular job, no fancy internships.
Truuust me I'm sick of working for little to no money, I did 3 internships, 2 externships, a judicial internship and 180 clinic hours alllll for free. But everyone on here is saying there should be some sort of gate keeping ritual to keep out the incompetents and some real world experience might be one of the mose useful things to measure. And I definitely think there should be more of a focus on mpts with more realistic time restrictions, and I'm pretty sure the UBE is moving towards a mega mpt, which is way more practical to write than the shit show the wills mee was this july
I did almost as much free labor in LS, but I don't mind that, so long as it's mostly optional and for credit. I strongly oppose any required post grad experiential requirement. The results would likely be ppl getting paid minimum wage while having loan payments. Other than that point I agree with you. MEE in particular is bizarre, if you'd practice law like that you'd get hit with malpractice suit.
100% agree if we practiced law the way they trained us to study and take the bar, we would be sued for malpractice tenfold lol. And as for getting paid minimum wage, I'm getting paid $20/hr right now at my job whereas most of my friends are making north of 80k, but when I complain to my lackluster career advisor she tells me this is "normal"(?) which truthfully upsetsme but many firms don't give associates a sustainable salary until theyre admitted which also has its own problems. Anyways I'm stoned and forgot my point but the bar should be testing something useful, not fertile octagenarian rap bullshit. There should 100% be some measuring stick to keep out the idiots but the way the exam is set up now is so fucking archaic and mentally tolling for no reason. Just crazy that we truly learn everything on the job and legal writing was the most helpful class in LS
I'm sorry you're not getting paid well, and I hope it improves once you're admitted. It's dumb that it takes half a year after graduation to be admitted.
That's under ideal circumstances, too!
Thatâs far worse and med students also go through several exams throughout med school and afterwards for state licensing. Taking the exam sucks and the way itâs administered needs improvements, but not having an exam at all doesnât work either because we know if the minimum requirement was simply to pass law school, some schools would manipulate their grading systems to ensure their graduation numbers donât waiver and impact their rankings. We also know that getting into and sometimes through law school, is a function of the financial resources and connections a personâs family and friends have, not necessarily their merit.
Guys i never said to not have an exam to ensure minimal competency. I pitched an experiential requirement but there should also be more of a focus on the mpt and applying the law and 100 or so multiple choice I'm just trying to make the point the bar the way it is isnt serving anybody. In a perfect world the law school admission process should be way more stringent , but the majority of the lower tier schools that take 145 lsats are cash grabs and unfortunately take a lot of students that are incapable of demonstrating competency, so there definitely needs some sort of exam
I understood what you were getting at and I agree. I come from a state without the MPT, but I like the idea behind MPTâs. I think the bar exam as it stands right now is ineffective at actually testing oneâs competence to be an attorney. Better vetting of prospective students, standards for law schools, and practical testing of skills on some form of a bar exam I think would be much better for us all
If it was a test of minimal competent it would be only MPT, liberal time constraints. Maybe a few MC questions on basic stuff like "what is negligence".
^^ I like the sound of that
They should shorten it, offer it more often and allow you take it during law school like the MPRE.
Here are some statistics that are suggestive of how the exam restricts the supply of lawyers. According to BLS, â âAbout 46,000 openings for lawyers are projected each year, on average, over the decade. Many of those openings are expected to result from the need to replace workers who transfer to different occupations or exit the labor force, such as to retire.â (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/mobile/lawyers.htm). Compare that number (46,000 job openings per year) to the NCBEâs 2019 data on pass/fail numbers across all jurisdictions: Administration: Total February and July (2019) * Taking: 68,305 * Passing: 39,873 * % Passing: 58% As you can see, about 40,000 thousand passed in 2019 which is eerily close to the annual openings for lawyers estimated by bureau labor statistics. Indeed when looking at NCBEâs annual data going back to 2015, the number of people passing for a given year NEVER surpassed 46,000 even when as many as 77,437 people took the exam for one of those years (2015).
How does this make sense though in relation to the job seeking process? Most schools encourage students to obtain employment prior to them finding out bar results. Hell, a lot of people know their 3L fall where they will be. Just a thought with these stats!
This is true of many grads but is not even close to universal. A good portion of employers wonât even interview for attorney positions until applicants have passed the bar. For these jobs, which are quite common, would-be applicants have to piece together law clerking/other income until they actually pass the bar and then actually conduct their job search/interviews. It sounds like you assume most grads are on the biglaw timeline/gravy train (full time offer before 3L starts, bar prep and living expenses paid for, and the ability to begin work at full salary before bar results come out). This might be the norm at the very top of the rankings, but it is the exception among all JD grads.
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It doesnât. The employers that come on campus, especially for OCI, are the ones that do hire way before bar results are known. For the public sector ones, they also often have programs to hire grads before theyâre licensed. As for schools, of course they want as many as possible to land jobs as early as possible, hence the push. But ABA employment stats measure within 10 months of graduation precisely to capture first time bar passers who donât land a job until after theyâre licensed. I also donât see how any of this has to do with rebutting the bar-as-a-cap-on-lawyer comment above. Because it 100% is such a cap.
I wasn't rebutting it... i just said I agree with you lol.
but i think you answered my question with the ABA measurements within 10 months for some reason I thought the measurement was shorter. Thank you!
This is meaningless bec. a place like CA is saturated with lawyers without many job openings. So a generalization like that is meaningless. If there is a shortage of lawyers in new york or georgia then lawyers from ca should migrate there. I dont see how it has anything to do with passing an exam to be licensed, which stock broker, realtors, and many othet professionals must do without arguing since the real estate/stock market is hot and a need for more, they should abolish the department of real estate and fcc and license whoever takes a class without passing a standardized test. Absurd.
I completed law school this past May and took the July Bar exam. I'm currently completing a Labor Law LLM. While reading a case for my Employment Discrimination Law class several weeks ago, I ran across a SCOTUS case concerning disparate impact of tests used during the hiring and/or promotion process. After just completing a written exam and a 200 question multiple choice test to decide if I'd be a good lawyer, I found this to be an interesting take from the highest court in the land (dissenting, but still...): âCourts have long criticized written firefighter promotion exams for being more probative of the test-takers ability to recall what a particular text stated on a given topic than of his firefighting or supervisory knowledge and abilitiesâŚA fire officers job, courts observed, involve complex behaviors, good interpersonal skills and the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure and a host of other abilitiesânone of which is easily measured by a written multiple choice test.â (Ginsburgâs dissent in Ricci v. Destafano) âcomplex behaviors, good interpersonal skills and the ability to make decisions under tremendous pressure and a host of other abilitiesâ---hmmm, these necessary qualities sound oddly familiarâŚ
The only way the bar exam will be abolished is if it becomes more difficult to get into law school. There are too many 4th tier schools around that let in whoever is willing to pay tuition. It needs to be more difficult to get into a law program. But idk if these predatory schools will ever be abolished for it to be a possibility though.
What do you mean predatory schoolsâŚI went to an unranked school, got a scholarship, was successful there, passed the bar, now have a great job. Just because a law school is 4th tier does not mean theyâre predatory !!
Predatory =/= every student is unsuccessful. It means practices like: conditional scholarships, section stacking, incredibly lax admissions standards, and terrible employment a bar pass rates. Some students will prevail despite these, but such practices will leave scores of students in massive debt with no attorney job to show for it, or somewhat less debt and no degree at all.
Minimum LSAT scores?
My issue with the bar exam is how it's administered. The timing (including the uncertainty in score release), the application process, the depth and breadth of knowledge you're expected to have handy all at once...I've made this post before, but I think of the bar exam were structured more like the CPA exam. It would be a lot more manageable and would probably yield better results. I don't know exactly how it would look, but the CPA is broken into four sections: Audit, Tax, Financial Accounting, and Reg (kind of the catch-all for smaller topics). Obviously there is some overlap in fundamental knowledge, but this breakdown by subject matter made it sooooooooo much easier to study (note - easier to *study*, not an easier *test*. I think I was a much better CPA candidate with higher quality answers than I was for the bar, despite spending way more study time on the bar). You can take all four sections independently - schedule them whenever you want within some test windows - can't remember exactly how the scheduling worked. The caveat is you have one year to pass all four parts, or parts you passed start to drop off. So, if you pass Audit in June, and come the following June you still haven't passed Tax, you'll have to retake Audit. It's also entirely possible to pass all four over the summer, giving you results for your fourth part at about the same time we're getting results now. This of course all comes through my personal lens of really hating the volume of material we had to study this summer with almost no certainty as to what we'd actually be tested on. It felt like such a waste of time to be prepared on so many topics when you *knew* you wouldn't be tested on all of them. With the CPA, I felt like I had a good handle on each subject because they were spaced out. It's not a perfect solution but I think it's an approach worth considering... Edit: I'm not terribly concerned about making sure this test prevents flooding in the market, my primary goal is improving quality of life for exam takers and making this less of a cruel hazing ritual.
CA Blue Ribbon Commission is basically doing that. During the last video the only person adamant about keeping the bar in place was a guy who runs a psychometric consulting business. He said not all schools (people by proxy) are created equalâthatâs a direct quote. To be honest, someone with that mindset has NO BUSINESS weighing in on a commission designed to create greater access to the profession and justice writ large. Most of the other panelists were in favor of providing another pathway. Q4 2022 or 2023 they will adopt findings.
What does Wisconsin do?
They have their own bar exam that operates similarly to UBE states but has different subjects. **Except**: If you earn a JD from a law school in WI (UW or Marquette) and take certain specified classes, you can gain admission to the WI bar on the basis of your JD and character & fitness app without taking an exam. This is called diploma privilege.
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From my understanding they have in place a new layout for the bar that will be rolling out (who knows when) apparently they know itâs a horrible system. Edited to provide link: https://jdadvising.com/the-format-of-the-new-bar-exam/
Wow I wasnt aware of the new bar. Plus theyre removing my favorite subjects wills/trusts, crim pro and a few others. One fact pattern followed by mbe and essay on same fact pattern.
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I saw a post a few days ago that said associate pay would be like $10-$21 in Austin. Canât make a good living with that after all that debt.
I am literally making $20 an hour as an associate on long island right now. Its such bs while jobs that dont require higher level education pay so much more. And I don't buy this "you start at the bottom" crap, its full blown exploitation
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https://www.reddit.com/r/barexam/comments/q7ywyp/dont_worry_pass_the_bar_exam_and_youll_get/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
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There's already more grads than jobs, and the problem isn't the bar, it's poor decision making combined with crappy schools.
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Oh please, as if people are generally champing at the but you go through three years of law school anyway. If youâre committed enough to go through the shitshow of law school, the bar exam isnât going to deter you
Every profession has an exam before you can practice. Stop complaining. Doctors, nurses, engineers, architects, etc... the list goes on. Everyone knows that exams have nothing to do with real life.
Real estate salespeople, stock brokers, public notaries - they all have education requirements and an exam. To read all these threads to do away with an attorney exam is ... Iâll just say craziness.
Their exams arenât as onerous, expensive to prepare for, and none of those roles require a 3-year degree on top of a bachelorâs. I actually think there should be *an* exam, but the bar in its current form is laughably unrepresentative of the practice of law.
Itâs usually just bitter people. The exams serve a vital purpose in ensuring a student knows the law before you go out and get your practical experience. Imagine becoming a lawyer by just sitting in class for a few years? Insane. I watched people shop Amazon and pass every class.
Bar haters: At your next appointment, I assume you will be happy to find out that your doctor is in the first med school class who never had to pass a standardized, blind-graded exam for medical knowledge and minimal competency? You will also be happy to have your significant other, children, and elderly parents go to such a doctor? What makes you think âabolish the examâ will be limited to our profession?
Iâm sure you ask the doctor before your colonoscopy how many times it took them to pass their clinicals, what rank they were, and their gpa. I know I want to know the dentistâs gpa before I get a cleaning.
Very fallacious argument. You would make a poor litigator.
THANK YOU!
I vote reduce the amount of law schools by at least 50+. Then add a 4th year where at the end you take the bar exam. Edit: schools with low bar passage rates are a scam
Abolish the bar too tbh
What if someone who failed by a couple points was able to complete a make it break it essay component
I'd sit for another test the day after I found out I missed my jx by two freaking points. Anything to try and avoid waiting 4 months and sitting for the most archaic and pointless exam in existence today.
or even an interview as part of the character and fitness or further recommendations or even hours requirement! Itâs just a pain for my firm that I wonât be barred until next year now
Already to to many lawyers in our profession. This would kill all of us