[gamblor956]

The bar exam is nothing like a whiteboard. It tests knowledge (law is a knowledge-based profession), and skill (the writing portions test an applicant's ability to write legal documents).

As a lawyer, I've found that anyone who could not pass the bar was simply unsuited to providing legal advice, and are generally even unsuited to doing any legal-related task for pay.

The bar exam sets a minimum threshold for a person's ability to research, and remember, large quantities of rules, applications, and theories, and be able to apply or regurgitate all of that within a short time frame. This is similar to real world demands, such as a trial, or contract negotiations, where the lawyer will not have time to go back-and-forth researching every new thing that pops up during the event and must go into it fully prepared ahead of time.

[HWR_14]

As a lawyer, how do you feel about the need to have graduated from a 3-year law school (in almost all states, with the exception for some that have a longer apprenticeship program) to even take the bar? It seems like if the bar is a sufficient screen it would be unnecessary.

[gamblor956]

The same way I feel about requiring doctors to go to medical school before they can do a residency.

The bar exam and law school have different purposes. A law school teaches the laws of the entire country. A bar exam tests the law of the specific state. While many laws are similar, they're not the same, and the differences matter a great deal.

And secondly, a great many people can eek their way through law school who have no business actually practicing law, and the bar exam is essentially the last filter keeping those incompetents away from the practice of law before they can harm clients. (The law provides recourse to clients when a lawyer's actions deliberately harms clients, however, there is little to no recourse for clients if their lawyer makes a mistake.)

[D13Fd]

> The bar exam and law school have different purposes. A law school teaches the laws of the entire country. A bar exam tests the law of the specific state. While many laws are similar, they're not the same, and the differences matter a great deal.

This was true 10 years ago. Now the majority of states use the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), often without a jurisdiction-specific component. It's unfortunate.

I agree with the rest of your comment though.

[WastingMyTime89]

Cost-wise the thing I find extremely strange as a foreigner is the US insistence that people should do a full year BS before studying law and medicine. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Here you just study the field you want to practice from the start.

The costs by themselves are also shocking to be fair. Here the full four years of a law degree allowing you to pass the bar would only set you back 753€ to which you would probably have to add a year of preparation and the cost of the exam itself which probably bring you to somewhere between 2000€ and 4000€ for the academic part of actually becoming a lawyer.

[dtmmax33]

They should do it like medicine. You go to school, then a residency then pass your boards. It would be better if you went to law school, did x number of hours under a lawyer, then take the bar exam.

[hluska]

That is called articling.

[richardfontana]

Incidentally, in the US, the transformation during the early to mid 20th century of the basic law degree (originally typically LLB [Bachelor of Laws]) into a postgraduate JD (Juris Doctor) with a 4-year undergraduate degree prerequisite, and the standardization of the LLB/JD program at three years (from earlier instances that were one or two years) was done by the legal profession in a failed attempt to erect barriers to entry to members of immigrant/ethnic minority communities. When I was in law school I wrote a paper for an ethics class on this topic. (Ethics BTW came to be a required class in ABA-accredited law schools in the wake of Watergate.) Outside the US I believe the basic university law degree is typically an undergraduate, bachelor-level program.

[coding123]

As a customer of a lawyer It seems like an absolute requirement for me.

Why is everyone trying to erode society down to like, nothingness?

Burger flipper to 400k/year lawyer anyone?

[spoiler]

I think they're pointing out the ridiculous costs of law school and the wealth barrier of entry that creates.

Someone who could pass the bar exam, and could end up being a great lawyer isn't even given the chance, because they can't afford to attend law school (which is necessary to take the exam, from what I gather, but IANAL & I'm not from the US).

[abduhl]

Financial aid is readily available at all top tier law schools for anyone that could plausibly end up a “great” lawyer. As much as I dislike the hierarchical nature of post secondary school, there is no doubt in my mind that the hypothetical person who has not distinguished themselves to the point where a top tier law school would notice them and offer financial aid by the time they’ve completed an undergraduate degree and taken the LSAT does not exist or, if they do, they are so rare as to not exist.

Now, are people who could pass the bar exam and be merely a “good” or “acceptable” lawyer being frozen out by the wealth barrier? Absolutely. But actually probably not: these people can go to a lower tier and cheaper school.

[spoiler]

I don't know enough about the system in the US and I might be talking out of my ass here, since most of my impression are formed by reading online discussions, but here goes... I was always under the impression that you can just buy into most unis in the US? There's the scholarship programs, but I was also under the impression they're often through sports rather than grades (and to me it's obvious that there's not necessarily a correlation between someone good at American Football and law).

[HWR_14]

> . I was always under the impression that you can just buy into most unis in the US?

This is true at the richest levels. If you are willing to write a multi-million dollar check as a donation (name a building/room after your family), you will probably be admitted. In 1999, apparently a $2.5 million donation secured Jared Kushner's admittance into Harvard. This has to be adjusted not just by regular admission but also by the increased competition (it is more than twice as competitive). So I would expect we might be getting closer to a $10 million donation. Although schools would probably cap it/auction it off if they got too many donations.

This is by far the minority of admissions.

Other cases where people "pay to get in" are literally bribes, and people can and have gone to jail.

> There's the scholarship programs, but I was also under the impression they're often through sports rather than grades

There are a lot of scholarship types: academic, need-based, interest based (an engineering may spend money to help aspiring engineers), corporate (we'll pay your tuition if you work here for 2 years after), and athletic. Not all schools offer all types, and some (like interest based scholarships) are unaffiliated with any school (although athletic scholarships are).

Also, athletic scholarships are limited to your undergraduate (pre-law or pre-med or your BA/BS in X).

In all cases, the scholarships help you pay for school, but tend to be different from the actual admittance process. So the correlation would be between someone good at Football and someone who can afford school. Which, if you think about it as a job (they make the school a ton of money) is fair in a way.

[abduhl]

Post-baccalaureate study scholarships are unrelated to sports scholarships. Law is a post bachelor degree. “Buying” your way into a top law school is possible but basically entails buying your way through an undergraduate degree as well which means that you might have “bought” your way in but you’re still ultimately incredibly well prepared. And these people who buy their way in subsidize the exact people you’re concerned about being kept out: poor but well qualified candidates who can become “great” lawyers.

[HWR_14]

I'm not trying to erode society down to nothingness. I dislike academic credentialism.

I just want there to be many paths to learning. Formal schooling. Apprenticeship. Private mentoring. Hell, you could probably get a series of YouTube channels (with a very low success rate) or something closer to a MOOC.

Obviously, you need to demonstrate you learned from those paths. And I wondered if the bar exam was sufficient to show that. So I asked someone who claimed to be a lawyer on the internet as I don't know how sufficient the bar is as a measure.

[yellowapple]

> Burger flipper to 400k/year lawyer anyone?

Are you saying that a "burger flipper" should always be one and never aspire to eventually be a lawyer?

[barneygale]

Could you /imagine/ a world without lawyers? shudders

[HWR_14]

> Could you /imagine/ a world without lawyers?

Yes, I can. And, frankly, it sucks.

I don't do my own roofing. The idea that I would have to argue my own case in court sounds horrible. I don't know how. And then the people who right now are (or become) lawyers would just use their superior system knowledge to extort others. Far better that the responses available to a claim of some tort are "I guess I should call a lawyer" and not "I guess I should pay $5,000 for this to go away or spend the next 2 years learning the law to fight it on my own."

[devteambravo]

Chamath Palihapitiya would be mad if all he made was 400k/yr, and Burger King was his place a choice as a young man looking to flip burgers.

[ksdale]

As a lawyer, there is so much more that falls under the umbrella of "practicing law" that is nowhere near as demanding as a trial or contract negotiations. I personally think the credentials that lawyers have are completely unnecessary for a large portion of the tasks that only lawyers are allowed to perform.

I think the bar exam is more like, sufficient but not necessary, anyone who can pass the bar is easily capable of being a lawyer, but I don't think the bar is necessary at all to prove that someone is capable.

[D13Fd]

What kind of law do you practice? In my view every litigator has to be ready to go to trial.

I guess if you are going to be a contract document review attorney or something then maybe the bar is overkill in some ways. But I would argue that the only value added by someone like a document review attorney is the fact that they passed the bar (demonstrating a broad base of knowledge).

[ksdale]

I was under the impression that most attorneys are not litigators. You can easily spend a career writing wills or creating trusts or doing business formations, or helping people through real estate transactions without ever setting foot in a courtroom.

One of the first things they taught us in law school is that most lawyers won't actually spend much time at all in a courtroom, and I've found that to be true. There's so much else that lawyers do, and a lot of it is done preliminarily by paralegals, and in my opinion, a lot of it could go out the door at that point, having been done by the paralegal. I actually think a lot of work does go out the door at that point and there's just a grand performance happening where we all pretend that the lawyer did more than a cursory review.

Maybe that's not how law should be practiced, but judging by the wills and LLC agreements that come across my desk, it's how it is practiced and the world goes on without noticing.

[HWR_14]

I am not a lawyer, but I would guess there is a position for "slightly more than Legal Zoom". I want to create a will (and don't need to worry about estate taxes.) I want to create an LLC. My counterparty and I agree on the terms and we need someone to draft or modify a contract that specifies what we say.

[ksdale]

This is exactly how I feel as well. There is a ton of stuff that lawyers do that is basically rote, there are a handful of questions you need to ask, and then you do the thing, and there's no reason someone with an associate's degree and a six week training course couldn't do it, with a strict rule to refer more complicated stuff to the attorneys.