[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.