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Doctors, nurses, teachers, CPAs, CFA, social workers all have to take exams after years of school, training, studying, etc to obtain their designations and/or licenses. No test or specific education curriculum is perfect, but awyers need to be tested and licensed and regulated just like any other profession.
The State, through passing the bar exam, grants lawyers the responsibility and ability of interpreting, determining, advising, and enforcing the law. That is not an insignificant responsibility. It's actually pretty big. The bar exam is the STATE'S way of having one standard for all lawyers in its state, regardless of where one was educated and measuring what the State considers minimum competence and training. Lawyers don't need to have any practical training as part of their requirements to graduate or sit for the bar. One could literally have never worked a day in their life, graduate, pass the bar and take on a criminal case and have someone's FREEDOM in their hands. Even MBA programs want to see at least two years of work experience.
Do I think law schools and the legal industry need to shift their priorities in terms of training and hiring? Yes. Do I think that we should require a least 2 years of work experience before law school in addition to required apprenticeship during law school? Yes. I think that would reduce a lot of the buyer's remorse and complaints from students and lawyers and increase the more practical thinking that comes with having work and life experience.
I don’t think other professions are necessarily great comparisons. The passage rate for med boards among the top 110 law schools is 96%. That’s a lot higher than the bar exam and more comparable to like, the MPRE.
I never thought I’d defend the bar exam, but I had to learn a lot of subjects that I didn’t take in law school like criminal procedure, family law, secured transactions (and however many odd NY specific subjects Barbri included). I never had to take them and would never have any knowledge of them without the bar requirement.
That said... 4 years later and I couldn’t tell you a thing I learned on those subjects just for the bar exam, so maybe it’s just a test to prove you can learn things efficiently?
It’s a money grab
Revisionist History podcast. Season 4, Eps. 1 and 2.
Rising Star
cruel? or a corrective to a testing methodology that foolishly screens for one type of talent of limited relevance at the expense of others?
Rising Star
we have a winner. it's a self perpetuating industry where all participants are committed to keeping things the way they are and won't face much resistance in normal times because people now take for granted that a) professional licensing b) standardized, time pressured testing c) professional degrees d) massive student debt are simply how things are supposed to be.
the people interested in maintaining the status quo have the most influence thereon. they may be outnumbered by people with an interest jn changing it - every consumer who may require legal services, every aspiring lawyer not yet in the system - but there's no American Not Yet Admitted To Bar Association, and few people advocating for clients' affordable access to legal services are willing to do so by introducing fair competition from non attorneys, people with less training (for tasks that don't at all benefit from having it), and other nonincumbents who would threaten their (our) legally-enshrined advantages.