Bar exam will no longer be required to become attorney in Washington State
52 points by us0r 1 year ago | 110 comments- in3d 1 year agoThey should do the opposite: not require law school but make the bar exam harder. Vermont, California, and Virginia do not require law school.
- throwup238 1 year ago> Vermont, California, and Virginia do not require law school.
California requires >2,000 hours apprenticeship under a practicing lawyer which is even harder (and more exclusive) than law school. It is theoretically cheaper but in reality not very practical as an alternative.
Very few people in California pass the bar without law school via the apprenticeship track. Most years, zero people pass that way.
- gnicholas 1 year ago> Very few people in California pass the bar without law school via the apprenticeship track. Most years, zero people pass that way.
I would bet that the readiness/ability of the people who attempt the apprenticeship track is much lower than those who attend CA law schools. This may be the reason that so few people succeed via this route — not because it's harder.
- throwup238 1 year agoI'm not a lawyer but my understanding is that it is quite a bit harder. Laws schools teach their students to pass the bar exam, but an apprenticeship will focus on whatever the lawyer is working on out of economic necessity. A few thousand hours of tedious corporate or estate law paperwork is a far cry from the general education you'd get at a law school from dozens of lawyers and legal scholars. So to pass the bar exam, you have to self study everything that law schools teach plus practice several thousand hours under a real lawyer. Even not having academic LexisNexis et al subscriptions is a huge disadvantage.
Most people who take the apprenticeship track are pretty exceptional because they have to convince a practicing lawyer to essentially hire them with zero experience. The lawyer-apprentice relationship is very hands on, not like an intern or even a paralegal.
- ken47 1 year agoYou would only take this route if you lacked the means to pay law school tuition, or maybe if your parents were reputable attorneys who are willing to apprentice you.
- throwup238 1 year ago
- tivert 1 year ago> Very few people in California pass the bar without law school via the apprenticeship track. Most years, zero people pass that way.
Is that a vestige of some kind of frontier-days policy, from before they really had law schools in California, or something?
- gnicholas 1 year ago
- nonethewiser 1 year agoAgree strongly. Removing the bar just makes it more political. The objective, merit based standards are the solution.
- afavour 1 year agoIs the bar objective?
- klodolph 1 year agoYes, it subjectively more objective.
(Like, I’m making a cute response here, but there’s not exactly an objective standard for objectivity, when you come down to it. Turtles all the way down and all that.)
- donw 1 year agoMuch more so than academic accreditation.
Anyone can come off the street and take a bar exam. Not everyone can afford the time and financial burden of attending law school.
- nonethewiser 1 year agoProbably the most objective standard for becoming a lawyer that there is. More objective than the hiring process and law school and college admissions, especially when many of these are de-emphasizing standardized testing.
- klodolph 1 year ago
- afavour 1 year ago
- adrianba 1 year agoLaw school was already not required to sit the bar exam in Washington State. See https://www.wsba.org/for-legal-professionals/join-the-legal-....
- rayiner 1 year agoCorrect. Law school is a far bigger barrier to “marginalized groups … becoming practicing attorneys” than the bar exam. But law schools are extremely influential in the bar and have hundreds of thousands of reasons to point the figures at the bar exam instead.
- phmqk76 1 year agoLet’s get rid of med schools, too. Right? I volunteer you as the first patient for those “doctors” who didn’t go to med school…
- loeg 1 year agoYou are being sarcastic, but we could definitely streamline the way doctors are educated in the US! The UK does medical degrees through a 5-6 year undergrad program, compared with 4 year undergrad + 4 year medical school in the US.
- loeg 1 year ago
- phmqk76 1 year ago
- AaronM 1 year agoIn VT though its really difficult to become a lawyer this way, as an existing judge or lawyer has to be willing to apprentice you and prepare you for the exam. You also still need a 4 year degree to enter the program.
https://www.vermontjudiciary.org/sites/default/files/documen...
- bobthepanda 1 year agoFrom TFA:
> Lastly, law clerks can become lawyers without enrolling in law school by completing standardized educational materials and benchmarks under the guidance of a mentoring attorney, along with the 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern.
- gnicholas 1 year agoThe 500 hours is somewhat meaningless because that could all end up being doc review on a single case. That is to say, it's possible to complete hundreds of hours of work without actually learning anything about the law. (IAAL)
- gnicholas 1 year ago
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- shicholas 1 year agoDisagree, IAAL and they should both eliminate the bar exam and the law school requirements. We need more lawyers subject to background checks and swearing an oath to act ethically. There’s an ethics test called the MPRE that should stay.
We need more lawyers bc imo the biggest need with AI is trust and safety, and that’s something humans must decide for ourselves in perpetuity, we need as many diverse voices as possible to ensure equity for everyone.
- ketzo 1 year agoFree market seems disastrous here. Most people hire an attorney… once? twice? in their entire lives, and the consequences of that person being incompetent could be life-altering.
There’s not a quick enough feedback loop here, I think. The vast, vast majority of people would not be “informed buyers,” so to speak.
- wmidwestranger 1 year agoClose relative just curled one finger of that monkey's paw in a trust dispute: can confirm, they were not especially happy with either the outcome nor the months of optimism from the lawyer before the final calamity. Even after having heard about it regularly and in-depth and having read the written communications, I have no idea where that lawyer would land on a scale of 1-10. I suppose in this case, nearer the bottom but given it's the most I've ever observed a lawyer, I have zero context or basis for expectations.
- shicholas 1 year agoimo if there were substantially more lawyers or startups in this forum can dole out legal advice, there would be substantially more legal interactions.
People should see a lawyer frequently for preventative care (e.g. having someone do a prenup or look over their employment contract) the same way people should see a doctor and do preventative care for their bodies.
- wmidwestranger 1 year ago
- jahewson 1 year agoYes a bunch of incompatible opinions is the solution.
- Turing_Machine 1 year agoIsn't that pretty much how the court system works in the first place?
- shicholas 1 year agoBetter to have disagreement than coerced conformance.
- Turing_Machine 1 year ago
- nonethewiser 1 year agoHow would you rank the merits of candidates?
- shicholas 1 year agoIMO anyone who passes the MPRE and a background check is fit to serve - free market and who customers choose to rank the merits of their lawyers is their own prerogative. I'm against the gatekeeping to the profession.
Once you're a lawyer checks like malpractice insurance are great for everyone.
- shicholas 1 year ago
- ketzo 1 year ago
- phmqk76 1 year agoSpoken like someone with zero legal experience.
- thaumasiotes 1 year agoRequiring an exam is a much better policy than requiring law school. But it would be better to do neither.
- AmVess 1 year agoOnly a foolish person would hire or retain the services of a "lawyer" that has neither a law degree nor a bar card.
- 1 year ago
- gnicholas 1 year agoAs a lawyer, this was my first thought. Caveat emptor!
- 1 year ago
- nickburns 1 year agoi do believe there is a certain responsibility a lawyer swears to ethically uphold and maintain toward lay society which justifiably warrants some reasonable evaluation of the degree to which the candidate is able to comprehend and/or adhere to that oath. an academic degree, an exam, and a professional license application are certainly valid ways to do that.
are you suggesting only the fitness and character assessment should be necessary? or do you disagree with that requirement as well?
- thaumasiotes 1 year agoActually, I'd suggest that licensing of lawyers violates the constitutional guarantee of a right to an attorney. It is viewed by the modern system as a positive right, an obligation on the part of existing attorneys to work for you for free. But that is obviously not what was intended; it is meant as the right of anyone to be represented by a designee, as opposed to being required to represent themselves, and this has been criminalized today.
> i do believe there is a certain responsibility a lawyer swears to ethically uphold and maintain toward lay society which justifiably warrants some reasonable evaluation of the degree to which the candidate is able to comprehend and/or adhere to that oath.
This is just an argument that licensure has benefits. That's true, but they don't exceed the costs.
- shicholas 1 year agoimo fitness & character is absolutely necessary, rote memorization tests aren't. (ofc you want your lawyer to go off the top of their head instead of looking things up when you explain your problems /s)
- thaumasiotes 1 year ago
- AmVess 1 year ago
- throwup238 1 year ago
- keernan 1 year agoI've been an attorney for over 40 years. While I don't have answers to the political and moral issues involved, I can say with very high confidence that attending law school and passing the bar has zero to do with whether that person is capable of practicing law.
Law school does one important thing: teach how to divine legal principles from reading a written judicial opinion. And, correspondingly, that is the only skill the bar exam measures.
While certainly important, knowing how to read case law is a far cry from knowing how to practice law. There is only one way to learn how to practice law: and that is practicing law.
That is especially true of trial work, which I've done for over 40 years. In my opinion, it takes a minimum of 20 jury trials before an attorney even begins getting a faint idea of the art involved in winning trials; and then spending the balance of their career crafting the art.
The idea that law school or bar exams are essential in any way - either to the eventual lawyer or to protect the public - is way off target. Indeed the myth generated by every judicial branch in the USA that being given a bar card means the holder is ready to offer services to the public, is the most outrageous legal concept I have ever heard. IMO it should be illegal for any lawyer to offer legal services to the public the day after he/she was handed a bar card. That's how little law school prepares - and how poorly the bar exam measures - an attorney's readiness to engage in the actual practice of law.
- gnicholas 1 year agoIt's also possible that law school and/or the bar exam have changed in the last 40 years. I went to law school in the early aughts and found it to be quite helpful for teaching me how to be an effective lawyer. It's also certainly not true that the only skill the bar exam measures is knowing how to divine legal principles from reading a written judicial opinion. There is a huge memorization component, which ensures that lawyers know a fair amount of substantive law (at least at one point in time), and that they are capable of memorization (which can be a useful skill for people who work with complex fact patterns).
It was also well known that the bar examiners gave lots of credit based on your application of the law. Even if you misremembered a legal test, you could get lots of points just for logically applying the law as you stated it to the fact pattern.
- keernan 1 year ago>ensures that lawyers know a fair amount of substantive law (at least at one point in time), and that they are capable of memorization
Thinking you know substantive law can be a dangerous thing for any lawyer who believes they don't need to bother researching. Obviously we all absorb the law in our areas of expertise but to suggest that practicing lawyers actually use law they learned in law school is a stretch imo.
You are right, of course, that both law school and the bar test memorization. I have always thought that to be a big flaw. As a trial attorney I have, of course, had to deal at times with very large and complex fact patterns. I never had to memorize anything. Dealing with the same fact pattern for 24-48 months reading documents, and deposing witnesses doesn't require memorization - it just requires memory.
As for the bar exam, I'm quite sure it has changed. Back when I took it, it required two full days. Eight hours writing essays one day. Then the multi-state multiple choice the second day. Not sure if states still require a separate day writing several blue books worth of essays. Either way, none of that has the slightest to do with being prepared to engage in the practice of law - which was the primary point I intended to convey.
- ghodith 1 year ago> Thinking you know substantive law can be a dangerous thing for any lawyer who believes they don't need to bother researching.
This is always true, independent of whether one has gone to law school or not.
- ghodith 1 year ago
- keernan 1 year ago
- jaybrendansmith 1 year agoI'm not sure that's what the intent of the bar exam is. It was put in place for one reason alone ... to stop charlatans. As a culture we have the Saul Goodman archetype, and he isn't going away. Bar exam is at least an impediment. We remove it at our peril.
- gnicholas 1 year ago
- kirykl 1 year agoThis will push down the quality of public defense
- dataflow 1 year agoYeah... won't this make the wealth of each party an even larger factor than it already is in how good of a lawyer they get?
- nickburns 1 year agohow so?
- gamepsys 1 year agoThe idea is that a lawyer that hasn't gone to law school or passed the bar is a worse lawyer. If true, then they would presumably be the cheapest lawyers too. This means the quality gap between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer will be larger than it ever has been.
The skill gap between a very good lawyer and a worse than average lawyer is already huge. The impact of this gap is highlighted by the O.J. Simpson quote "In America, you get as much justice as you can afford."
- gamepsys 1 year ago
- nickburns 1 year ago
- snapetom 1 year agoLuckily crimes are just given token prosecution in Seattle. (kinda /s)
- dataflow 1 year ago
- zachmu 1 year agoCan't we just skip to the part where the signalling value of the certification is severely diluted and they backpedal?
Elite colleges literally just went through this with standardized tests.
- phmqk76 1 year agoSeriously. Rigor matters.
- phmqk76 1 year ago
- kylecazar 1 year ago"While people always have been able to study law under another attorney, then become licensed themselves by taking the bar exam, this new pathway creates standardized education materials and removes the examination requirement."
So no LSAT/law school, no bar is a potential pathway to practice law. Wow.
- nickburns 1 year agothese is modern times, the fact that the learned practice of law itself predates both the LSAT and modern notions of a legal education quite considerably notwithstanding.
- jltsiren 1 year agoDepends on what you mean by modern notions. Western tradition of formal legal education has its roots in ancient Rome. It was less prevalent in England than on the continent until the revival in the 19th century, probably because there was less Roman influence in the culture in general.
- nickburns 1 year agoi mean like U.S. News & World Report ranked legal educations. but i take your point, thought of that as well.
- nickburns 1 year ago
- jltsiren 1 year ago
- j45 1 year agoApprenticeship and experience on the job was a long established path to practice law before lsat and law school.
- nickburns 1 year ago
- autoexec 1 year agoI guess I don't really care if there is a bar exam, some other test (perhaps one even more difficult) that isn't controlled by a state's bar association, or some other means to demonstrate that someone is qualified. It makes no difference as long as the quality of newly licensed attorneys doesn't suffer and more importantly as long as we can still revoke the license of attorneys who can't or wont do their job.
Any concerns about people ending up able to practice law when they are unqualified can be addressed by exactly the same kind of oversight and accountability we should want/have in place for everyone in the field no matter if they took the bar or not.
- nickburns 1 year agogreat points. bar examiners call what you allude to a 'character and fitness assessment.' all bar applicants must subject themselves to one regardless of any other application requirements.
- nickburns 1 year ago
- gnicholas 1 year agoWhen CA lowered the pass threshold on the bar exam, one of my friends who went to a regional law school decried the move because it will open up the profession to even less-qualified lawyers. She said that she'd seen enough bad lawyering with the higher threshold.
I wonder what firms will end up employing these barless lawyers, and who will end up retaining their services. I also wonder if they'll be able to get malpractice insurance. I would think it would be quite expensive — like getting car insurance for someone who opted to get a driver's license without taking the driver's test.
- 1letterunixname 1 year agoThere are already way, way too many lawyers in the US. The field should be more difficult and selective, not less so, especially not for knee-jerk DEI feel-good "help" that doesn't address said underserved groups by not actually helping them improve their skills.
- 1letterunixname 1 year ago
- minedwiz 1 year agoHonestly sounds like the return of reading law, a kind of legal apprenticeship (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_law), as opposed to a new experiment.
- dragonwriter 1 year agoReading of law, where retained, replaces law school, not the bar exam.
- barbazoo 1 year agoIt sounds like you still go to law school but there are alternatives to the bar exam now, e.g.
> Law school graduates can complete a six-month apprenticeship while being supervised and guided by a qualified attorney, along with finishing three courses.
- dragonwriter 1 year ago
- calvinmorrison 1 year agoShould drive costs down! A paralegal can do 90% of the work anyway
- catlover76 1 year ago[dead]
- AmVess 1 year agoIt will do nothing of the sort. People with no bar exam will not get jobs at reputable firms. People who do not possess the capability to pass the bar exam will not have the chops necessary to earn a decent living.
- hindsightbias 1 year agoI’ve worked with a scary number of people with law degrees who passed the bar and could not make a living at it.
Why will reputation matter in a few years? Our judges are elected.
- 1letterunixname 1 year agoYep, my mom's BFF's kids have fancy law degrees but only middling jobs. Surgeons, MDs, dentists, biotech scientists, data scientists, and software engineers make a lot more.
- nickburns 1 year agoi agree with your first point.
chiming in only to add that judges are not elected in every jurisdiction. in many, they are appointed by the executive and approved by the legislature.
- 1letterunixname 1 year ago
- hindsightbias 1 year ago
- catlover76 1 year ago
- syngrog66 1 year agoI get an eerie feeling its because Micrsoft/OpenAI wants to allow GPT to be granted a law license. or some similar AI shenanigan
- banana_feather 1 year agoI passed the California bar exam on my first attempt (I only say this to head off cries of sour grapes), and I think this is good news.
The MBE in particular is an embarrassment and the NCBE should be ashamed of themselves. The idea that the MBE or any portion of the UBE is a reasonable test of one's ability to practice law is worse than a joke, as it extracts an enormous amount of money in preparation and administration fees from applicants.
An expanded form of something like the California Performance Test would, in my opinion, be a pretty good test of minimum competency to protect the public, but if what we're actually offered looks like the UBE, just forget the whole thing.
- adolph 1 year agoThis should clear the way for an OpenAI powered law practice.
- 1letterunixname 1 year agoIt will demand to be recognized as a person too, given that corporations are also afforded this luxury.
Next step: AI-run corporation that demands both individual and corporate personhood including limited liability between the two.
- abhinavstarts 1 year agoThis is very dank.
- 1letterunixname 1 year ago
- 1letterunixname 1 year agoSo.. teach said groups better rather than lower the ... bar.
Washington state is going full lunatic.
- AmVess 1 year agoGood luck getting a good job as a lawyer without passing the bar exam. No reputable firm will hire you, and you'll have an expensive degree that has no value.
- baron816 1 year agoI think Washington also allows you to become a lawyer without having a law degree. I think you can work at a law firm as an apprentice. Presumably, that law firm would just decide to hire you as a lawyer. So, I bet it’s not that far off from most other jobs now where you don’t need an accreditation.
- TeaBrain 1 year agoI don't think your comment really contests their point that a lawyer will be hard-pressed to be hired by a decent firm without a law degree. From what I've heard, it is already difficult enough without having graduated from a top law school.
- ankushnarula 1 year agoI have known temporary staff attorneys at large prestigious firms who were paid by the hour to read documents and summarize them for the case team. It’s not a junior associate’s income or career, but it’s a good living for even the most semi-committed and minimally experienced lawyers.
Also, it’s not difficult to imagine that many decent firms have been advising their clients on the legal risks and alignment benefits of DEI and ESG compliance. Will they not heed their own advice?
- ankushnarula 1 year ago
- TeaBrain 1 year ago
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- baron816 1 year ago
- csours 1 year agoPassing a test proves you can pass a test, not do the thing on the test.
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Edit, if you don't like this comment, please consider applying Bayesian logic similar to medical tests. You get both false positives and false negatives.
- nickburns 1 year agobut what if the thing on the test isn't even the ultimate thing you're trying to do either? there's gotta be some way to assess competence by proxy, no?
- eikenberry 1 year agoApprenticeship.
- chiggsy 1 year agoAnd who evaluates the mentors of these apprentices? What if they are the Weinstein of legal practice? Or they have a tattoo of a bowling ball covering up the swastika they had done when they were 17? Or maybe it's the apprentice who has the tat, and is getting preferential treatment.
Just like utilities written in C, the fact that they have not shown obvious flaws yet is no guarantee those flaws don't exist.
Nah. The more objectivity, the better.
- chiggsy 1 year ago
- eikenberry 1 year ago
- kelnos 1 year agoI get where your cynicism around standardized testing comes from, but I don't think the solution is to throw up our hands and just trust any rando with an immense responsibility that can have profoundly negative consequences for their clients if done poorly.
- chiggsy 1 year agoHow does one solve an arbitrary law problem? Algorithmically. Test questions have solutions, sure. They are guaranteed to have solutions, in linear time. You sit down and write the test in constant time, either you find the solutions, meaning your algorithm is good, or you don't, and have to modify said algorithm.
This modification costs time, and money. It's expensive.
They don't predict the ability to solve any law problem. How could they? How could they guarantee such an algorithmic solution? To an arbitrary law problem?
Is the solution to do away with such testing because of this potential undecidability? No, it is not. Write the bar exam, and pass it. Then move on to law problems that may or may not be solvable.
- nickburns 1 year ago