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All for it. Many of my peers had their post graduation job offers rescinded or placed on hold indefinitely, myself included. Many of us have crippling law school debt, and dutifully budgeted like every class before us to pay rent and feed ourselves with more loans through July. We studied for the July exam, even after getting offers rescinded or iced. We then were told to extend two months into September. Okay, inconvenient to restructure bar prep and a struggle to find another two months of extra funding, but sure. Wait! No! Actually now it’s October. And it’s a remote examination, no UBE transferability, using exam software that consistently fails unless it’s an exam that isn’t even the bar exam (Indiana had to ditch it altogether and do an essay online, open book, email us your answers exam instead). Even if the technology did work (it doesn’t), applicants must magically produce a quiet place for two days to take the exam (no noise permitted on threat of disqualification by pets, children, spouses, or shitty thin apartment wall neighbors), have stable and uninterrupted internet access, do MPT without any scratch paper, maintain eye contact with your screen and webcam the whole time, and, if you’re in the UK, piss in a bottle while maintaining eye contact with your personal remote proctor.
I understand the exam is supposed to be the last time honored hurdle of culling incompetency and proving you have what it takes to be a lawyer, but it does not do either of those things even in a good year. And requiring all of this during THIS year really puts an immeasurable burden on applicants other than those with wealthy families to support them, or even the few of us that still managed to get a position in this market.
Just let us practice. Put supervised practice requirements, additional CLE requirements, whatever, on us. But let us be admitted so we can get jobs and be useful and productive members of the legal community.
I’ve often struggled to see the utility of the current format of the bar exam. Seems a tough sell to claim it’s about “minimum competency.” Maybe decades ago when most attorneys worked in smaller settings and as generalists. But that’s now how law is practiced today. Why are we forcing transactional attorneys to memorize family law, property, and estate?? Why does a personal injury attorney need to memorize corporate formation. Someone is benefiting from this current system but it certainly isn’t the incoming crop of attorneys.
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WORLDSTARRRR
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It's a real opportunity to reevaluate whether we really need the bar exam in the form it currently exists. Very exciting to finally get traction on this.
I'm licensed in two states, never took a bar exam. I think the diploma privilege is perfectly acceptable.
All for it
I would only be okay with diploma privilege for some schools, like ABA accredited ones. There’s too many random law schools out there PUMPING people out as “lawyers.”
I also don’t think the bar exam evaluates your ability as a lawyer. But it does filter out some people that probably should not have gone to law school in the first place.
I didn’t learn a lot of the rules until I studied for the bar. Law school taught me how to think like a lawyer, studying for the bar taught me the basic legal structure. Should law school have done both? Sure, but it doesn’t and I went to a decent (Tier 1) law school.
Yeah...I went to a T14 and I learned a lot of actual law during the bar that I didn’t learn in law school. It’s one thing to argue that it’s current form is not useful, but I think it’s incorrect to argue that it has absolutely no utility or no place in the profession. Law school doesn’t teach you the law for the most part, and while you learn a lot on the job, studying for the bar has some utility.
In the spirit of law school competition, the bottom X% of each graduating class should not be admitted in accordance with that school’s historical pass rate for that state’s exam (i.e., if the school has a 98% pass rate, then the bottom 2% of the class should not be admitted). This is the only just solution.
...
Just kidding, who cares - admit them!