The New Bar Exam - What It Means To You
Level 3 - Advanced Concepts
Welcome Back! Recently, there has been some discussion around the new bar exam that will be piloted in a few years.
While the impacts are not immediate, adoption of a new bar exam will have a significant impact on law schools.
First, a brief history.
For those unaware, the culmination of law school is taking the bar exam - it is a required rite of passage if you want to practice law in the US.
The bar exam is largely state specific, but it is designed to make sure that a potential lawyer has the basic understanding of the laws under the given state they take the bar. For example, the Texas bar requires knowledge of Texas civil procedure.
This worked when law was predominately practiced by small firms and sole proprietorships, but has not translated as well into the modern firm environment where individuals are more specialized. It also has translated poorly in environments where students go to law school in one state but take the bar in another.
In an effort to address these challenges and others, there has been a shift to “modernize” the bar by focusing on legal skill rather than memorization of facts.
What The Change Means To You
At this point, there’s still a long way to go and it does not immediately impact anyone that is in law school.
It does, however, potentially change some law school considerations.
One of the most important things you want to evaluate is the bar passage rate of a law school. If students graduate and don’t pass the bar at a relatively high rate, that’s not a good sign.
Regardless of what your opinion of the bar exam may be (and ours is not very favorable), you have to pass it to practice law. So if your law school does not have a high success rate of passing the bar, you could be setting yourself up for a very expensive set of loans and have nothing to show for it.
If the bar changes, that means the underlying curriculum for some schools will also change.
When that happens, you will want to see what that means for you. Remember, not every law school is the same. Some cram everything that is required into 1L while others spread it out where there are requirements throughout all 3 years of law school.
While it’s impossible to offer a prediction, we would recommend the following:
Prioritize the law school that best prepares you for your specific outcome
Determine what, if anything, the law school is doing to prepare students for the new bar exam, including any curriculum changes
Find out how many required courses you must take - remember the bar is something you only need to pass once. After that, it’s about practicing law.