Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is one of those good old fashioned rootin tootin Rudy Fruity episodes of Stuff you Should.
Know Rudy two D fresh and Fruity.
That's right, I forgot the rest of it, but yes, you knew what I was laying down?
Can I shock you right off the bat?
Yes?
I don't think I have ever been in an I hoop restaurant and eden M I don't think so.
See, this is normally where I'd be like, what yeah, But I don't think you're missing enough to warrant what yeah?
I mean if it was always waffle house, if we were going to do something like that. So yeah, never been in an Eyehup.
The two are actually not really that comparable, to tell you the truth. I mean there, if you went to a waffle House and then went to an ihop, you wouldn't be like been to one, been to the other. Their their menus are different enough, the vibes different enough.
Is I have more relatable to like a Denny's? Yes, Okay, I've been to Denny's, but.
Okay, much, then you don't need to go to ihup.
Can we thank the listener who suggested this episode?
Yeah, I remember their email, but I don't remember their name.
Yeah, because I finally actually wrote it down and we're not doing it weeks later. But this came from listener Rowan. And I'm not sure how to pronounce this last name, but I'm gonna go with Garin DESSI that's a great name, Garon Daisy.
I like Garan Daisy more because of the daisy part.
Yeah, but Rowan wrote in and I was like, you know what, I think someone in Rowan's life had taken the bar and I think they realized that they didn't know much about it. And I was like, you know, I've never really thought much about the bar exam and I don't know anything about it.
Well, didn't they also send like a little clip or a an anecdote about how crazy it gets during the test, like how nuts people will will or what Yeah, so links they'll go to to finish?
Yeah, yeah, I think I do remember that. Actually, Well, save it, save it.
Let's talk about the bar exam. Chuck. For those people who aren't aware, and from what I can understand, essentially every country in the world that has lawyers has a bar exam. But it's the test that you have to take in most places to become a practicing attorney, to become licensed as an attorney. And that's it. There's bar exam everybody, goodbye.
Yeah exactly. And you know they the word bar is there because I think it's named after the literal bar railing in a courtroom that divides the public from you know, the business end.
Right where they yeah, where you're not really supposed to go past, or else a baylift will jump on you.
Yeah, exactly.
I remember there was a local news story once about a judge who'd been drinking like during work, huh, and like they followed him, like on his lunch hour and followed him into like a place where he was drinking. They were like teeing up the story and they said, this judge not only passed the bar, he went in and drank at it. And that I mean, like I saw that fifteen years ago and it stuck with me ever since.
That's so lazy it is, but I mean.
I thought it was pretty good to tell you the truth.
Yeah, Well, that's like when Neil days when we were writers for Howstuff Works dot com, and like a shining week is when I wrote a clever what do you call the thing under the picture caption caption? Now I can't even remember cap with the word caption.
That's been a whole Do you remember any good ones?
No? No, But I was like, hey, I'm gonna check this out. I wrote a clever caption. It was my first professional writing job, so I was, you know, showing pride. No.
I remember that. We used to tell one another there are great clever captions. Yeah, this one music lyrics we'd fit in two articles that we just thought we were so sly about.
Yeah, and now we just say dumb things with our mouths.
Right. Well, I feel like we've shaken off all of the curious lawyers who don't normally listen to us, so we can get started everybody. One of the things about the bar exam I never understood, and I would guess also that most people out there who aren't attorneys or aspiring attorneys wouldn't really get. But there's a lot of
criticism about the bar exam. It's it's not just some tests that lawyers have to take to get licensed, which on its face sounds great because like with any professional licensing that protects the public from incompetent lawyers, they have to show that they understand the minimum standard of how to practice law that will prevent them from being such a dipstick that their clients are going to get electrocuted because they represented them so poorly. It's way way more
kit than that. Yeah, socially speaking, culturally speaking, socio culturally speaking.
Yeah, because you don't want to end up with the Lionel Huts, right.
No, he almost certainly did not pass the bar.
Well, well, we'll get to it, but you don't necessarily have to pass the bar in every state in the United States to practice law. But sit on it, everybody, because that's coming. I guess we should go back in time and talk about a little bit of the history because if you go back to colonial days, pre states in the United States or not in the United States, but you know what will one day be the United States, and then.
Buy the rest of the curious lawyers Exactly.
There were no bar exams because there were no law schools. If you wanted to work as a lawyer, you would apprentice or clerk for a practicing lawyer for you know, sometimes you would just do it and donate your time to working for them. Sometimes you would do that and actually pay them right, which you know, it seems like a pretty good system. And we'll talk more about apprenticing later because for my money, I think that's a pretty good way to do things.
Yeah.
But by seventeen fifty, which pretty early on, all of the colonies got on board basically and said, all right, we need we need standards for people to do this job, and we need to kind of all agree on what that's going to be.
Yeah, And like a lot of stuff or most things with American law, they were following in the tradition of England, which had had some sort of exam or another for people to become attorneys as far back as the sixteenth century. But America wasn't that far behind, you know, a couple hundred years apparently. The first one was Delaware in seventeen eighty three, and it was essentially just you would go and hang out with a judge and they would quiz
you on some legal stuff. Yeah, and if you got it right, you were you were accepted to the bar. You were an attorney. From that point on it was okay for you to practice. It was all so supposedly looked on as very easy too.
Yeah. I imagine a lot of that depended on the judge that you got in, like maybe how much they liked you. In those early days, it was really sort
of the wild wild West there. Libya helped us with this, and she dug up a pretty fun story about Abraham Lincoln, who was a bar examiner for the state of Illinois in the eighteen fifties and was apparently just like at a hotel chatting with a lawyer in a room, and the lawyer answered a few questions and Lincoln was like, congratulations, you're an attorney.
So great man. Yeah, yeah, I love that story too. I mean, I can just see Lincoln butting it out so casually.
Yeah. I think the takeaway is the guy didn't even know the test had begun.
Essentially, No, he had no idea exactly. I'm glad you added that part.
Sure.
So the actual first written bar exam, kind of like they are today, that popped up around eighteen fifty five, I think in Massachusetts, and then it became a requirement about twenty years later in Suffolk County, where Boston wasn't. By nineteen twenty, written exams were like the way to go.
And because now it wasn't just getting quizzed with the judge, law school started popping up and developing to kind of train you to prepare for that written exam at the very least, and they actually became an alternative to apprenticing, which, as you'll see later on, is kind of inverted these days. But that was something you could do if, like say, all of the lawyers in your town were jerks. You
could go to a law school instead of apprenticing. When you graduated law school, then you could take your bar exam. Those were your two ways, your two paths to the bar exam back then.
Yeah, by nineteen twenty one, the American Bar Association was around and they said, you know, we really prefer a written exam to license. They I don't think they mandated it that point, yeah, but they, you know, states generally kind of fell in line behind the ABA, and I think by nineteen thirty one, another decade later, the American Association of Law Schools got together with the committee and they said, all right, we need to develop a real
system here. So they came together with the National Conference of Bar Examiners, and at that time nineteen thirties, they were really like the testing that they were concerned about was what they called black letter law, just sort of really unambiguous black and white yes or no answers to things on like you know, how things are literally legally defined and not a lot of like you know, hypotheticals being bandied about which you're going to get stuff, Yeah, exactly,
which you're going to get more these days in the bar exam.
Yeah, but one of the problems with taking a test like that is that your hand can get cramped. They didn't want prospective lawyers hands cramping. So in nineteen seventy two, the National Conference of Bar Examiners came up with the Multi State Bar exis Amination, and that created a multiple choice test. Yeah, it also really kind of dug into like your knowledge. But at the same time you can also say, like this is where it became a little
more standardized and less lucy goosey. But in that sense it also became a little more scientific minded by creating a test that you can say this is right, this is wrong. And it wasn't just legal terms. They were applying it to hypothetic hypothetical situations, but it was still multiple choice, so you could grate it much more easily.
Yeah, I don't know how I feel about multiple choice in a test like this. Anytime you can sort of guess, right, I don't think you can necessarily guess your way to success. But I don't know.
I think you just came up with a T shirt guess your way to success.
Yeah, totally, and then on the back just ABCD and just a check mark next to the sea. All the above, all of the above, go ahead, you go ahead. No. Well, as this is sort of developing over the decades, I think we're at the seventies here, but it kind of became clear during this period that, like, hey, what we've
got here as a gate keeping service? Essentially Ostensibly the reason was, like you said, is like we want to keep only like you know, really knowledgeable people that know what they're doing in these jobs to protect people that hire them for lots and lots of money. But as this was happening, it became even more clear that there was a side effect of that, which was, you know, immigrants, black people, other people of color that were vying to
become attorneys were having a harder time. And this is evidence. Really early on in nineteen twelve, they accidentally admitted three black attorneys into the ABA, and because they didn't have you know, like check here for race, and then they were like, oh goodness, we accidentally let in three blacks attorneys, so we need to start screening basically for race.
Yeah, they said, we need to add a check here for race thing on the application to take the bar exam, and that's essentially what they did. So from nineteen twelve all the way to nineteen forty three, if you checked African American or god knows what they had down for you to check back, then you were just not allowed to take the bar exam. Sorry. Yeah, like this is it was an actual, like you said, a gatekeeping mechanism to prevent black people from becoming lawyers in the United States.
And so in nineteen twenty five, prospective black lawyers said nuts to that, and they got together with actual black lawyers and they came up with the National Bar Association, which is still around today as an alternative for black attorneys to basically become attorneys rather than have to go through the ABA.
Yeah. And you know, since then, especially in like thenineteen seventies, there there seemed to be like a series of lawsuits from black lawyers in different states that were suing over various what they thought were, you know, discriminatory policies within the test. I don't think many of those were successful though, were they No.
The one that sticks out the most that I've heard the most described as well just basically A good example of the lawsuits that came around at this time was Tyler versus Vickery, Yeah, or Tyler v. Vickery if you're
a lawyer. It was a class action suit that alleged that Georgia's bar examination's cut score, which is the minimum score you have to have to pass, had been adjusted with the introduction of the multi state Bar exam, remember the multiple choice tests that they introduced, That it had basically been introduced in designed to continue to keep black people from passing the bar exam. And the Fifth Court
of Georgia said, we don't really think that's true. For some reason, they said, we don't see any intent to discriminate, which is neither here nor there under Title seven of the Civil Rights Act, which prevents employment discrimination. Yeah, but they also said, here's the thing. The bar. The American Bar Association is not an employer, they're not a labor organization, they're not an employment agency, so therefore Title seven doesn't
really apply to them. And the court said ABA continue to discriminate through the bar exam as you see fit.
Yeah, that I don't know much about lawyer stuff, and my.
Spit about lawyer.
In my spit in my civilian mind, I see that as kind of a punt legally speaking. And maybe that was that, maybe that's you know, a lot of times you decide something on precedent, and whether or not you feel it's right or not, that's just the precedent. But I don't know, that felt like a punt to me by saying like, well, they're not an employer and an agency or labor organization, so we're just sort of not going to hear this one.
Yeah, And this reveals to me something that I just find fascinating is when lawyers sue other lawyers or bodies of lawyers, or judges rule on the test that it takes to create lawyers and therefore judges, it just seems so fraud with basically opinion because they're so like, it's not like the judges learning about this for the first time. They're coming at it from fresh eyes, like this is like part of their fabric as having been a law student and becoming a lawyer and then becoming a judge.
You know, I just find it fascinating.
Yeah, totally. Should we wrap up sort of the testing stuff and then take a break.
Yeah, let's get back into the evolution of the test again.
Yeah. So now we're in the late eighties, nineteen eighty eight, I'm a junior in high school, still seeking that first kiss, and the NCBE has added the Multi State Essay Examination at this point, so now you're back to essaying, which is how it previously had been until that multiple choice test. And in ninety seven it handed over the Multi State Performance Test, or the MPT, which says, hey, let's sort of do like do some practice stuff like right up a brief for me, or write out a memo, draft
a memo. Let's see how you do on that. And then finally, in twenty eleven, the Uniform Bar Exam or the UBE was adopted by most states, where all three of those tests kind of make that one up as one big test.
Yeah, which is, you know, if you're a state and you don't feel like going to the trouble of coming up with your entire your own bar exam. Now you can just use the UB. Yeah, and it's it's proven. Likes, there's all sorts of great questions in there. You sacrificed state law. But a lot of people say, like, well, like law students don't need to sit around and memorize
state law. That's a waste of time in favor of the UBE, which is pretty rich because a lot of people argue that the UB itself is a waste of time because you have to memorize general law rather than state law, which we'll talk more about that. I just I'm chomping at the bit right now.
Yeah, but it did make it like more easy to transfer from state to state and stuff like that. And we'll get into those specifics too, but let's take that break and we'll get into the basics of the bar right after this.
So, Chuck, it turns out there's fifty six jurisdiction in the United Statesty, I didn't fifty states, plus some territories, you got some overseas possessions, you got you know what else. So there's fifty six and each jurisdiction has its own like highest agency that basically says these are the standards to become a lawyer in the state. And again a lot of them just said you have to pass the
uniform bar exam. That's the standard, but they also can kind of mess with it here there, and it's up to this agency that's associated with the highest court in the state, usually the state Supreme Court.
Yeah, exactly. And most jurisdictions, if you just to take the bar exam, you have to have graduated from an accredited law school from the American Bar Association, which usually means a three year program. Some states, though, are like, hey, if you didn't go to an accredited school, that's fine, We'll still let you take the bar. If you are in Washington State, Virginia, Vermont, or California, they allow a legal apprentice ship to swap out law school, which I
think is super kind of cool. Yeah, and Maine in New York let you about like a year or two about law school for an apprenticeship.
Yeah, for sure, which is pretty neat. It's old schools to throw that kind of thing. Yeah, if you want to take the bar exam, most of the time it's given in February and July. Those are your two options. And then you're gonna pay some money for it. And there's a lot of ways you're gonna pay money for it. Just to register to take it the bar exam itself. It can be a few hundred dollars. It can be more than one thousand dollars, depending on your state and
how greedy they are. Yeah, if you want to use a laptop, you want to type out your briefs and your memos and your essays rather than write them out because you get hand cramps like the old lawyers used to. Yeah,
you're gonna have to pay a fee for that. And the reason why is because there is no chance you are going to be allowed to bring your own laptop because they keep the the place so tight and are so hawkish about preventing cheating that they actually provide tampons to people who need them because you're not allowed to bring in your own tampon.
Wow. Really, yeah, that's.
Happened, And apparently it's not just an isolated thing that they have a bowl of tampons. Wow, you grab one if you need it, and you hope that they don't run out. If you really need it. So yeah, it's it's like, there's no way you're bringing your own laptop in.
Yeah, or tampon exactly. So wow, I never knew that. That's a nice little tidbit.
Thanks. I thought that was pretty great too.
So, uh, you got to have money to register, Like you said, you have to have money to you know a lot of times people take off work for several months, So you have to have a life that can do that, you know, which indicates a certain amount of at least either privilege or maybe hard work in saving if that's how you did it, which is great. And then almost assuredly, you have paid several thousand dollars, maybe as much as
six thousand dollars to take preparatory courses. About sixty percent of the market share in the United States is a company called barri Barbary can be up to six thousand, maybe as low as eighteen hundred bucks, and they have been around since the nineteen fifties. And I was like, what does Barbarie stand for? And I had a weirdly hard time finding out what it stood for until I
sadly Wikipedia just turned it up. I should have gone to the most obvious place, but I think when they merged in twenty twenty one or no, no, no, they merged in the seventies, I think, And it was just the names of two companies. I think Bay Area Review was bar and the Bar Review Inc. Was Bri and so they just squashed those together. Kind of a boring story.
I had seen that it was a merger of Barbizon Modeling School Oh and Bree, meaning the makers of Bree cheese around the world.
Wow, that's a that's a mashup I could enjoy.
Right, And the six thousand dollars one that you can pay for like the premium test prep. They actually have somebody to take the test for you, and they even provide the person with a wig that matches your hair so it looks a lot like you too.
I did see, though, they have a guarantee if you do not if you pay that money to them and you don't pass the bar, you I think, you get to take the course again for free, one more time. If you're taking the exam again.
Okay, nice.
You don't get your money back, but you get to retake the course at no charge. No.
Barbizon Modeling has long had a model you don't get your money.
Back right, Yeah, exactly.
So let's break down the UBE the uniform Bar examination, which is the culmination of decades of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, hard work, sweat, blood, tears, joy pain. Yeah, and again it's you can break it down in the three parts that kind of came along separately. The first remember was that multiple choice tests, the multi state bar examination. Yeah, there's two hundred multiple choice questions. I've seen one hundred
and seventy five. I guess it depends on I don't know your jurisdiction and how much how valuable they find twenty five questions.
Yeah, maybe, but it.
Covers seven different areas of the law.
You want to take them, sure, simple procedure, contracts of course, nice towrts, oh, constitutional law, criminal law, that sexiest law, careful criminal on procedure, that is evidence which is its own category, and real property kuching. And that is fifty percent of the UB score. Then the other two are the multi state essay once again, which is thirty percent, and then the two multi state performance tasks and that is twenty percent.
Yeah, so you're like, okay, I could take that, no problem. Sure you might be able to take it. You probably wouldn't pass, and you'd give up twelve hours plus of your life, twelve hours just of the test. It's spread out over three days technically, but the UBE takes up two of those days, twelve hours divided by two days divided by four sessions. So three in the morning, three in the afternoon, go to your hotel room, can't sleep,
toss and turn. Come back the next morning, three in the morning, three in the afternoon.
Yeah, oh well we should mention too. That's another reason you might be paying some extra money if you don't live near a testing site, like travel and room and board and all that stuff. Good point and scotch at the end of the day.
Of course, that's right.
It's graded on a four hundred point scale. Depends on the state on what they consider passing, generally to sixty to two seventy. I said, state of course, jurisdiction. And then apparently it's like, it's not like acing the bar gets you anything more than passing the bar. You pass it, and that's great. But I have some inside info from attorney friends, which i'll kind of dabble in here and there, but I think it's sort of untoward to you don't go in and be like, oh, it's the bar. Yeah.
I saw a Reddit post where somebody posted like I got a score of three thirty, and I mean, is that high. I don't mean to make anybody who's got lower than that feel bad, but I'm just curious, like what do you guys think? And it was like you discussed us like that is just sad. So yeah, it's not really cool to flex on people over your.
Pass bar score. And you pass it, all that matters.
That's right. And then if you do pass, there's always a gaggle of attorneys, usually quite experienced, seasoned attorneys who just are waiting for you to finish, and when you finish, they embrace you, and that's how you know that you've passed the bar exam.
We did mention that those UB scores are portable. You can It's not like the old days when you had to pass that state's bar, you know. I think that's how it used to be kind of across the board, right. They're transferable for two to five years after taking the exam. It depends on the jurisdiction, of course, and then if they if you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't utilize that UB test. Most of them still have the NB as a big part of their exam, usually with their own
specific like state laws stuff if they do that. And there's usually also a third day, which you were talking about earlier, that third test, which is like a sixty question ethics test.
Right, it's called the Multi State Professional Responsibility Examination the MPRE yes, and they ask you questions. It scored separately, but they have questions like, you know, Attorney Lionel Hutts brought in a bag of pot to one of his one of his clients into prison. Is Attorney huts guilty of loving too much?
Right? Was that a real Simpsons thing?
No?
Oh okay, because I could see that.
They only really talked about pot, like on a couple of really great episodes. But you know, no, that wasn't their bag normally, that wasn't their bagot.
No, yeah, that wasn't their sack.
Don't use that word.
Yeah, sack's kind of gross, isn't it moist? Oh boy? What was the other one?
Moist? Sacugh or pussy? Go look that up in the transcript.
Don't do it. Let's talk about pass rates because it really obviously depends on the state. They can vary pretty wildly. Actually, from looking at some of these stats, I think for first timers from July of this year's testing twenty twenty five first time or pass rates there was a range like from sixty six percent in Connecticut to almost ninety
percent in Utah. So go Utah. If you look at overall rates, not necessarily just first timers twenty twenty five, only fifty four percent in the state of Alabama, once again compared to eighty six in Utah. So I don't know what's in the water out there in Utah, but those attorneys are sipping it up.
Oh, it's widely considered a really easy state to pass the bar.
Oh is it really?
Yeah?
Oh? Interesting?
Okay, some very hard places to take the bar around the world, actually that I saw Nigeria, Singapore, Korea, Japan, Ontario, Canada, Canada, Okay, New York State all like New York States. Bar exam is so difficult. It's like as hard as the entire nations of Singapore's so there are. It definitely varies by jurisdiction and by country just how hard it can be.
Wow, that's interesting. I do know that of the twenty twenty two graduates this is just another sort of stat for you. Over ninety percent graduates from accredited schools passed within a couple of years. But there's from what I see, there's really no shame for it to take a cracker two to pass the bar. I don't think. I don't know if it's something you're gonna like run around the office telling people on your first day, but I don't
think it's like a mark of shame. There have been plenty of very successful attorneys, very famous attorneys that didn't pass the bar on the first go, including Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton and all the degens I think JFK Yeah, a bunch of d ims. JFK. Junior, I think took two or three times to pass, and old Kim Kardashian took a time or two.
Yeah, I think three, three. And there's actually limits on how many times you can take it, depending on your state, your jurisdiction, your territory.
Oh well, they just say sorry once. It sounds like you should try another line of work.
There are some places that say that, I don't know if they actually say that. The gaggle of attorneys tell you that when you fail the sixth time, But there are other places that have discretionary rules where after you reach a certain number, like say, I think six is the highest I've seen, you can apply to take it again. You can basically go to the state bar and be like please, yeah, I want to be a lawyer so bad. I'm just really terrible at this.
Yeah, I mean, it is a test, and some people aren't great test takers. We'll kind of talk about that in a little bit. But also I imagine there's plenty of things you can do with the law degree if you haven't passed the bar.
Right, Yeah. I mean it's like you see somebody referred to like, oh this is a lawyer or something, but they have like they're in some field has nothing to do with law. Yeah, you're just like they very frequently are advisors, like just they know how how far you can bend the law. Okay, A lot of stuff you can do with it.
All right, Yeah, you always teach. I imagine, Oh.
Yeah, that's too. I have a little cute little addition and dundum to this part.
Let's go.
The youngest person ever to pass the bar is Sophia Park. She passed the bar in twenty twenty four at age seventeen seventeen years eight months.
And was that after law school even.
Yeah, she started law school at thirteen.
Uh, she's one of those.
So she beat the previous record by three months. The previous record had been set at age I guess eighteen years in one month by her brother Peter. Isn't that the nuts? It's the smart family, it is they really wanted to be lawyers.
Yeah, or you know, are they practicing law or are they just like I just wanted to show off.
Oh I believe they're both practicing law. Yeah, I guess, so, well, should we take another break, Chuck? I guess we should.
Well, the one more little tidbit here at the end. You know, we said that at a bar exam is basically to say, hey, you can practice law. The one other thing that it does is it helps determine what schools can teach it because the ABA requires that law schools, if you want to be an accredited law accredited law school, a certain percentage of your graduates have to pass the bar within two years, otherwise your accreditation goes away.
Yeah, I saw seventy five percent of your graduates have to pass.
All right, or they're like sorry, I guess you're not teaching well enough exactly.
I wanted my ti bit to be last, so I'm just going to repeat it now. Okay, I had on second thought. We'll just go to break. How about that?
All right, we'll be right back. All right, So we're back with more critiques and problems on the bar, because if you start to do a little digging, it turns out there's been a lot of a lot of that over the years for a lot of different reasons. You know, we've mentioned some of the stuff while it was developing, basically, you know, banning people of color from even taking the test for a long time. But black and Hispanic Americans
are still very underrepresented in the field of law. And you know that's a problem because when you're a practicing attorney, like a lot of opinion. That's why they call them opinions, and judgment goes into it. And sure it's based on precedent, but your perspective is important, and having diverse perspectives is also important.
Right, Yeah, for sure, it's a white male profession. Essentially, statistically speaking, that is far and away the largest population represented in the legal profession in the United States, and there's statistics and figures that kind of show the disparity. Here.
There's some data from twenty twenty one from the American Bar Association that showed that white law school graduates passed on their first try at the bar exam at a rate twenty four percent higher than black students, thirteen percent higher than Hispanic students, and fifteen percent higher than Native Americans. So those are really substantial disparities in passing the bar the first time, and so being in the hot seat, the National Conference of Bar Examiners is like, hey, hey, hey,
everybody mellow out here. This is this is this track with other scoring of racial disparities, like law school grades, l sac grades, Like this is in line with them. Just leave the bar exam alone. And by the way, their interpretation is that this is an example of long standing systemic racial disparities in the American education system, right that start way back long before the somebody gets to law school and goes to take the bar, and that the bar exam is just showing us, it's just reflecting
this problem elsewhere. So again, stop looking at the bar is essentially what the NCBE says.
It also kind of sounds like we're just a part of the grand history of systemic discrimination throughout our country.
Well, that's a critique of them. Two people are like, that's your answer, Like, yeah, we're just perpetuating an already existing racial disparity. Like that's essentially what they're saying in that argument.
Yeah, it's a it's definitely a strange argument. Other people say that, you know, just part of that disparity is, you know, the cost associated with law school and to be a successful candidate, and like we said, the privilege that it takes to maybe be able to pay for that and then take off month's work and pay for the very best preparatory courses. You know, that's it's just sort of all in the big soup of privilege, you know, right.
I saw that black and Hispanic students who take the bar examer of fifty percent likely or to work during their bar prep period then a white student, Like it's just logistically speaking, racially speaking, it's just much likelier that a white test taker is going to be able to not work and just dedicate their time to prepping for
the bar. And I mean that alone explains a lot of it, because the bar exam is essentially like it's a standardized test that where you memorize essentially year one law school stuff.
Yeah. I mean, that's one of the other critiques is that you know, it's a memorization test, and there have been plenty of studies that show that it doesn't necessarily isn't a marker towards your future performance as an attorney
or you're like, you're how successful you may be. There was a study in twenty twenty four from Nevada that compared scores on the MB and other components of their test of I think a little more than five hundred new attorneys and how they were basically rated how affected they were by their peers and their supervisors and judges. And they did find a small positive relationship between some of the ratings some parts of the bar, but at the end of the day, overall they said it was
minimally predictive of career success and negligibly related. The Nevada Performance Test was negligibly related to success.
Yeah, those low correlations were as low as one to four percent. Yeah, I think four percent was the highest as far as the actual whole bar exam. Relating to these ratings of how effective these lawyers were by their peers, they said, we can only account for that with twelve percent of the Bar exam. The other the rest of the distinctions or the differences in effectiveness, has nothing to do with their score on the Bar exam. And so people say like, well, what the heck is the bar
exam doing? And again the National Conference of Bar Examiners are like, we're testing for lawyer competents to protect the public dummy. And people say, well, how are you testing for legal competence? Like what is legal competence? And this is where the National Conference of Board Examiners like pull their shirt away from their necks so you can see like some sweat breaking out on their forehead because they've
never given a definition of competence. And if you don't have a definition of competence, how can you in a standardized way test people for whether they meet that definition or not. So people say, like, the Bar exam under that that description is by definition invalid, is not It's not a valid test, meaning that it doesn't test the thing it purports to test, because we just have no idea what it is testing.
You know what you just sounded like what an attorney sounds like? You just dropped the mic and court and then sat down and I was to your just sat down on your left and I put my hand on your shoulder and was like, oh yeah, I'm man got them. There's also been a lot of just sort of disasters in recent years, very public ones in terms of the bar. During COVID, they offered remote exams and it was just
sort of a joke in a lot of cases. There were a lot of computer problems, like programs crashing, They had facial recognition issues, and that sometimes they failed to identify dark skin test takers. So that's that's bad right off the bat. You also, again, you know, it was remote, so you had to keep your eyes on the screen at all times or they would think you're cheating if you're looking around or looking into your lap or something.
So people were like literally urinating themselves in their seat because they couldn't move. And one woman went into labor and went through the test and gave birth and then came home and finished the second day.
Yeah, if you want to know how tough Loyola University law students are, there, you go.
What about California with the chet GPT questions?
This one it's kind of lost schadenfreud around it, but California said, nuts to the UBE, we can do a better program ourselves and save money. So they designed their own bar exam, like just completely eschewed the uniform bar examination right, and it just the rollout was horrible. There were people who were taking the test. They would get error messages, the program would crash during the test. It
wouldn't save their essays. Can you imagine finishing an essay you can save it and they're like nope, sorry, do it again.
That's every student's nightmare.
Yeah, and remember this is time, Like you have three hours per segment, right, Like, if you don't finish in time, sorry, like you have to stop. So that's a huge part of it. And then also, like you said, chat GPT, it turned out was involved because some students were like, there, like are misspellings and typos in some of these multiple choice questions. In the California State Bar said wait.
What Yeah, it turns out that some of those questions were chat beat GPT written by chat GPT. They weren't even reviewed by a lawyer or a copy edited by the state agency that oversaw the test. Because you know, I don't know money, I guess.
And this was another case of lawyers suing lawyers and lawyers suing their state bar and all that, and it like California has just lost so much money on it. Remember this is a money saving thing too, So again there's like a little bit shoden Freud it too.
Yeah. And there was one incident in New York where someone went into cardiac arrest while taking the test. That was this year in the July test, and you know, people are like, you know, we should help here, right, and the test proctors were like no, everyone be quiet, and like, you know, just keep taking your test and we'll deal with this in the next lunch break.
Yeah, Like they had to keep taking their tests while the paramedics were saving this this person's life like next to them. Essentially, that was what they were forced to do. That's how I don't know, you choose remember where they are about assigning these tests or carrying out these tests.
I was working at TV commercial one time as a PA years ago out in the desert and in California, and a crew member had a cardiac arrest and the director told them to move a big fake rock in front of and they were tending to the guy, but they were like, we need to keep shooting, Like go move that big fake rock in front of the paramedics so we can keep shooting.
I guess it's better than the director being like, take that fake rock and finish them off with it. Yeah, yeah, and then drag them out of the way.
One thing I wondered, because I always kind of wonder like, how would we do if we took the sat now, like you know, at the stage in life or something. I wondered about, like a really experienced attorney years later if they took the bar again, and Lyvia dug into that and found a study from twenty twenty one sixteen like successful experience practicing attorneys from Oklahoma retook the bar
essentially with no prep. It was just like, you know, their prep was their career on the theory that hey, it's if it's measuring ability, then this should bear out in the grades. And none of them passed. They got scores ranging from twenty six to fifty two percent, so nobody would have passed that bar, and the lawyers who had been practicing the longest did the worst out of all of them.
And then one general criticism of the bar exam two in a day to everything else we've just talked about, is that it doesn't in any real way kind of jibe with what these lawyers are going to do in the legal profession. Right, it's general questions about law generally in the United States. Again, it's essentially the stuff you learn in your first year at law school, because the next two years you start to get into your specialization and it's a lot of memory and memorization and a
lot of lawyering. After you graduate and go through the bar and become an attorney is open book research to figure out where law applies exactly. The bar exam is closed book, rapid fire testing. So they're like, this is not like even putting away everything else, all the other arguments. At its base, it's kind of a flawed test to start with.
Yeah, for sure. And because of that, there are a lot of jurisdictions that have long had workarounds in alternatives, and there are changes on the horizon for the bar itself. Wisconsin it's the only state, I guess, only jurisdiction that never stopped saying, hey, you went to law school and you can practice law in the state. You don't have to take the bar here, which is pretty cool. I think you have to graduate from one of the states to law schools there and they call it diploma privilege.
I think in the past couple of decades New Hampshire has followed suit a little bit. And if you graduate with honors from University of New Hampshire Law School and you participate in court simulations and have practical experience, then you can be admitted to practice law without the bar.
Yeah. And we had said earlier that the law school was originally created as an alternative to apprenticeship. Some states have gone the other way now where the apprenticeships are alternatives to law school. Like it's a path like that. Bar I like it too. Vermont and Virginia they allow apprenticeships instead of actually instead of the bar exams themselves. Oregon offers apprenticeships where if you're a law school graduate,
you can become a lawyer without the bar exam. If you apprentice for I think six hundred and seventy five hours over four weeks in supervised work, you will basically become a lawyer after.
That four weeks, four months, no, four years.
No, I was joking. There's only six hundred and seventy five hours in four weeks.
So Oh, okay, we're.
Doing twenty four hours a day for a month as an apprentice.
Which seems I'll assume your math checks out.
It does. I even used a calculator.
Oh great. I think Washington State has a plan coming in twenty twenty six, so more states are kind of getting on board with this. California last year actually rejected a proposal to become more like Oregon with those apprenticeship hours, even though the State Bar of California's Board of Trustee said, we think this is a good idea, right, the State Supreme Court said no, no, no, no. But coming around the corner, now we have the next gen bar exam, right.
Yeah, the NCB is like everybody settled out, So starting in twenty eighteen, they're like, we're going to change this a little bit. The test's going to be shorter, we're going to make it so it's possible to take it remotely if need be. And then it's it's just going to be a little different where I think it's a little more sa heavy than the original test. But they're also carving out some stuff that they're not going to test on, like family law and that kind of thing.
So it's a little leaner, meaner kind of bar exam that they're coming up with. All Right, two things that I saw that are worth mentioning real quick. If you do away with the bar exam. There's a couple of benefits to that. One is that it puts the onus
on law schools themselves to graduate competent lawyers. Right now, there are some law schools that are considered diploma mills because as long as seventy five percent of your graduating's past the bar within two years, like, you stay accredited and you can make a lot of money off that other
twenty five percent. That's one thing that would happen. Another one is that legal fees would probably come down because one of the functions of gatekeeping that the bar exam does is it artificially keeps the supply of lawyers low, which artificially inflates the fees associated with lawyers too.
Ah, pretty think about that. Yeah, Yeah. I spoke to my friend. I think I know a few attorneys here and there, but only like one good friend who's a lawyer who is electing to remain anonymous in this case. But I did text him kind of about all this, and he said I would say it's only useful and that it shows how you can collect and synthesize a lot of information under time pressure. But that's not really
much different than most standardized tests. But as far as being an indicator of how you'll be as a practitioner, yet not so much. He says, for example, the bar will test you to some extent on the rules of civil procedure, but passing the bar doesn't mean you can walk into a deposition the day after you pass and know how to do that. As someone who's taken hundreds of depositions, you learn by watching, listening to more experience attorneys do it, and then by trial and error, no
pun intended, doing it yourself. He is in favor of the apprenticeships. He said it's probably a lot more helpful as long as your mentor, you know, knew what they were doing, and then said one thing he would like to see change is, like, I think more emphasis on writing. He said, I see so many briefs written by someone
who allegedly passed the bar. They're just horrible. He said that's probably just a criticism of the legal education more than the bar, and then he said he wanted to remain anonymous, and he said, I know it sounds silly or overly cautious when there are Scotis justices who can accept luxury vacations with impunity. But I'm supposed to be impartial here, so writing on the bar might not a good look.
I think that's smart. Yeah, you got anything else?
I got nothing else.
Well, thanks for tapping your anonymous friend. That was good info. Sure, if you wanted to learn more about the bar exam, could take the bar exam and in the meantime it's time for listener mail.
It'd be kind of fun I mean, if it was free, I would take the bar exam just to like, with zero knowledge of anything, just to see like how poorly I would do.
Yeah, I would too. I'd be right next to you, peeing in my seat and going into labor and having a heart attack.
Wouldn't that be funny?
Though?
If we got like I don't know, even like a twenty percent or something.
Or if we passed and we just automatically became lawyers.
Yeah, let's do it. All right, all right, this is about the Sultan Sea. You called for a listener mail, right, all right, Hey, guys, I was listening to the saltan sea episode. In college, I took an ocean geography class and learned about inland seas an inland sea, because remember we sort of wondered difference between seas lakes. He said, an inland sea can either be entirely landlocked or have
a single river connected to the ocean. Inland seas are larger than lakes and have a salinity between a lake and an ocean. So I think you've mentioned something about salinity. They are typically remnants of larger oceans and have numerous islands. But of course the scientific community names these things, and sometimes it can be rather confusing. The Caspian Sea, for example, it is classified as a lake despite being known as
the largest inland sea in the world. And the Hudson Bay is an island sea, which is Did you know.
That an island sea or inland sea?
He says island but probably meant inland.
Okay, I didn't, So I had no idea whether it's an island sea or an inland sea. I had no idea.
Or Dylan's favorite sea is the Larapentine Sea or the La Rapentine Sea. It's an ancient sea that split Australia in half during the Cambrian explosion. Being a longtime listener learning about new things is the best part of my commute. Guys, that is from Dylan.
Thanks a lot, Dylan, that was great info. I still like your interpretation, Chuck, which I if I remember correctly, you were saying that an inland a lake would be landlocked.
I think, yeah, I mean it sounds like there's no true definition.
I don't know, and let's keep going with yours. Great nice try, Dylan. If you want to be like Dylan and send us a great email, you can send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
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