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‘Yessssss! This is awesome!’
One of the hardest barriers to abolishing the bar exam is the lack of easily articulable alternatives to the system. Thankfully, alternatives to memorizing Richard Freer’s civil procedure lectures or risking your fingerprints not being good enough to sit for the test are sprouting up. The most recent bloom comes from Washington. ABA Journal has coverage:
The Washington Supreme Court has adopted alternative pathways to a law license, becoming the second state to do so in a little more than four months.
The state high court approved three ways to bypass a bar exam in Washington state, with different standards for law school graduates, law students and law clerks participating in a lawyer-tutoring program already in existence. All involve apprenticeships or internships.
The different standards, which can be found in the court’s press release, are as follows. Graduates need to complete a 6 month apprenticeship with an attorney and finish three classes. Law students will have to finish 12 qualifying skill credits and 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern. Once they finish that, they just have to submit the portfolio of their work to the bar. Both of these options should better appeal to the people who would rather a more immersive, hands on approach to becoming an attorney.
If none of the alternatives pique your fancy, you may — much to the delight of Kaplan and Barbri — still opt to take the bar the old fashioned way. While the goal should still be designing law school experience in a way that produces lawyers ready to practice, multiple routes to ensuring competency is a big step in the right direction.
This State Is Creating A Way To Skip The Bar Exam And Making It Easier To Pass For Those Who Take It [ABA Journal]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
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