Honestly I don’t see how you can remotely verify that the person clicking the keys or the mouse is the person taking the exam.
As a temporary measure until in-person testing resumes? Why not?
I understand the author is a law student and probably quite frustrated they can’t get their license. But this is a terrible idea. A truly awful idea. Do you know what the pass rate is for bar exams in most states? Some schools have less than a 20% pass rate on the ethics portion of the exams. Do you understand that law schools do not actually teach or prepare students for practical law? George Washington Law is a pretty elite school, its graduates will probably do ok. But there are terrible law schools out there that are ABA accredited.
Yes. We need more attorneys providing low cost or pro bono service. This is not how to do it. Giving a license to every law student who graduated from an ABA accredited school will result in a huge mess of malpractice and actual real harm to clients. As in lives ruined.
ABA accreditation is pretty easy to get and has no correlation to attorneys who can actually represent their clients competently.
And that doesn’t even account for the character and fitness issues. Let me say this again automatic license for graduates of an ABA accredited school is a terrible idea and will cause far more harm than good.
A better method is provisional licensing using an apprenticeship program. An established attorney agrees to take responsibility for the graduate and teach them the practical every day knowledge they need. Then after a year, the graduate can have their license as long as neither of the two messed up. Any attorney with substantiated disciplinary history is prohibited from acting as mentor.
Some law board examiners (entities that test for licensing) are considering using hotels. Each examinee has a room paid for by the board. Desk set so it can be seen from the door, doors open, proctors with masks in hallways. Not ideal, but better than the whole room full of people for 2 days like pre-corona. It also avoids the socioeconomic bias caused by remote testing.
We do not need a flood of unqualified, untrained, and ethically challenged new attorneys. We really don’t.
ETA: I agree with some of the opinions above- bar exams do not test if a person will be a good lawyer. They do, however, sift out an awful lot of people who would ruin their clients’ lives if permitted to practice.
2 Likes
Do you want idiot judges? Because this is how you get idiot judges.
You only make partner if you are able to successfully talk your way out after you get caught cheating. They’ll call it the Kirk defense.
1 Like
Canada and other commonwealth countries do this (as I imagine you know, but just adding to the conversation). Here in Canada, the standard path is that after finishing law school you spend a year as an “articling student” with a law firm, to learn what lawyers actually do on a daily basis. You also do some classes through your local law society, which are more focused on practical lawyer skills than law school was. At the end of that year, THEN you are called to the bar as a lawyer. At some point in that year you write the bar exam.
The system has its ups and downs. I do believe that someone who has been through that process is better prepared to be a lawyer than someone who hasn’t. But it also creates new barriers. You can’t be a lawyer until you can convince someone to hire you as an articling student. So that exasperates existing issues of systemic discrimination. Also, different articling jobs pay wildly different salaries - anywhere from $0 to $80k/yr thereabouts. So its another financial barrier for someone who is interested in public interest work, as opposed to taking a “plush” corporate gig. (“Plush” in quotations because that big corporate firm is going to make sure they get their money’s worth out of you, your mental and physical health be damned).
2 Likes
I expect most law schools would think that way, but plausibly the elite law schools might not. They might say, hey, let’s keep the same number of professors, drop to two years, and increase admittance by half. Our yield of admitted students will likely go up, and we’ll end up with way more alumni to donate money in the future.
1 Like
Your comment reminded me of this interview I saw recently in which Gerard Butler
described his years of study and subsequent traineeship to be a Scottish lawyer, just before he became an actor.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
