As I noted here, the Southern California Institute of Law sought to challenge a requirement that it disclose the bar passage rate of its graduates. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the judge was not too impressed with this argument. SCIL’s attorney says the school may appeal. More from the WSJ Law Blog and ABA Journal.
Archive | Bar Exam
California Law School Claims First Amendment Right Not to Report Bar Passage Rates
By Jonathan H. Adler on August 17, 2013 2:29 pm in Academia, Bar Exam, Freedom of Speech, Law Schools, Legal Profession
The WSJ Law Blog reports that the Southern California Institute of Law claims that it cannot be required to disclose the bar passage rate of its graduates as a condition of accreditation. Such a requirement, SCIL claims, runs afoul of the First Amendment. Southern California Institute of Law is suing bar association officials for requiring […]
A Cautionary Tale About Driving and Bar Fitness
Law students thinking ahead about not just passing the bar exam, but also the fitness and character requirements might take a lesson from a former student of mine. He contacted me with some alarm a few days ago to tell me that the Virginia bar committee that has to approve fitness and character of applicants […]
Panel on Reform of Lawyer Licensing at the University of Washington School of Law
This Friday at 4 PM, I will be on a panel on reform of the licensing system for lawyers at the University of Washington School of Law, in Seattle. I will be joined by Paula Littlewood, Executive Director of the Washington State Bar Association, and University of Washington law professor Thomas Andrews. The panel is […]
Clifford Winston’s Case for Abolishing the Requirement that Lawyers Must get Law School Degrees and Pass the Bar Exam
Brookings Institution scholar Clifford Winston recently published a good column advocating the abolition of legal requirements mandating that all lawyers must graduate from law schools and pass bar exams: For decades the legal industry has operated as a monopoly, which has been made possible by its self-imposed rules and state licensing restrictions — namely, the […]
Law School Admissions and the Wisdom of Crowds
With U.S. News rankings due out tomorrow, I thought I’d repeat part of a post from two years ago. First, U.S. News has several methodological problems. E.g.: Consider how U.S. News ranked part-time programs [for the first time in 2009]–it sent out a survey asking professors and deans to list fifteen schools with outstanding part-time […]
Why Better Bar Exams are Not the Answer
In a thoughtful response to my recent post on the bar exam, prominent criminal lawyer Nathaniel Burney agrees with my view that the current bar exam system is flawed, but argues that the best solution is to adopt a new and better exam: We are not fans of the bar exam, either, but we think […]
Richard Epstein and John Yoo on the Bar Exam
Richard Epstein and John Yoo have responded to Elizabeth Wurtzel’s critique of the bar exam, which I previously commented on here. Surprisingly, Epstein comes to the defense of the bar exam: There is a good reason why some Yale Law School graduates fail the bar. They do not learn enough law in law school to […]
Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Case for Abolishing the Bar Exam
At the Brennan Center for Justice, Elizabeth Wurtzel makes the case for abolishing the bar exam: In 2005, Kathleen Sullivan, then dean of Stanford Law School, took and failed the California bar exam. After many years in legal academia—Ms. Sullivan literally wrote the book on constitutional law—she was going to practice law and needed a […]