Read on Twitter
Thread (while I take a short break): I’m studying for the bar exam again (everyone knows bc I complain constantly). I couldn’t take PA and NJ together so I now have to retake the MBE and MEE even though NJ has no state specific portion. PA isn’t a UBE state so I can’t just waive
2) in. I’m a practicing trial attorney. For the past 2 years I’ve been practicing law everyday. For a year before that I was a law clerk (who had passed the bar but had a C&F investigation), so I was doing mostly everything except going to court and signing motions.
3) I can’t practice in NJ ethically bc I haven’t passed their bar despite my experience. I have to pay the fees associated, buy the study materials, prove my character, the whole process, just to practice in the state I live that’s 10 minutes away from where I’m licensed to
4) practice. For anyone who doesn’t know, the exam itself is two days (that I have to take off), 6 hours each day, 200 multiple choice and 8 essays. Right now it’s remote meaning I have to kick my family out of the house to take it. If it weren’t I’d have to pay for a hotel
5) near where the exam is administered (Atlantic City). Redoing the process itself is crazy. But then there is the content of the exam. I’ve been using legal knowledge and practicing for nearly three years now. I spent the three years before that in law school learning about
6) the law. That’s 6 years of legal learning (not counting legal studies classes in college). I currently *teach students* about skills to practice, evidence and oral advocacy. And I still have to redo this process.
7) 6 years of legal education and I still have to spend 18 hours a week studying for this bar (and longer in the coming weeks). Why? Because it’s tests subjects I don’t and likely will never use. I’m a personally injury lawyer, I don’t deal with nuanced rules about
8) trusts, wills, estates, family law, contracts, con law, criminal law, property, etc. And, even if I did, as a practicing lawyer I not only have the ability to, but am expected to, research the current state of the law in the jurisdiction in which the case sits. That means
9) I don’t need to know, off the cuff, whether a property is a vested remainder subject to open held in a fee simple determinable or whether UCC 2-207 created a contract with merged terms. I get to, and prudently should, research such an issue if it ever comes up.
10) Meanwhile, for the bar; I’m making 500 plus notecards to try to understand, memorize, and reliably apply these concepts to fake fact patterns (while also being a lawyer and a mom), something I don’t ever have to do in practice! What’s the takeaway? The bar is a barrier to
11) entry, a right of passage, a sort of hazing new lawyers (and apparently experienced lawyers), for reasons I can’t begin to understand. If I practice everyday and still have to dedicate 18 hours a week to studying for it, it’s probably not a great indicator of one’s ability
12) to be a good, functioning, competent, or ethical lawyer. I don’t even want to, or have the time to, get into the fact that I’m also privileged beyond belief with an incredible support system (emotional, financial, child care, etc), that allows me to dedicate time and money
13) to this, something I also luckily had the last time I took the bar. But there are so many people who don’t have that that are unreasonably tested in their ability to simply find time to put in the necessary hours to study for this exam, let alone do it more than once.
14) Lawyers and the legal profession need to take a serious look at what the bar is for, if it achieves its alleged goals, and at the minimum, push for *every state* to adopt the UBE to avoid having to take the exam more than once. We’re stifling good lawyers, the less
15) privileged, the people who aren’t good test takers but great attorneys, the people who don’t have child care or family support or thousands of dollars for a bar class or hotel room or a computer that can handle the software for the exam, and for what? To never use this
16) knowledge or type of skill in your career? To prove you can memorize concepts without research, something you *shouldn’t do* in practice?
End rant. Back to learning about corporations.
End rant. Back to learning about corporations.
@senatorshoshana plz include the bar in occupational licensing reform I beg you
