WA: No bar exam needed and we will lower standards

Referrals were 90% of my practice way, way back in the day. I think that was the case with most single practitioners. (I suspect there aren't may these days.) I never had anyone ask me about the bar exam or my GPA in law school. Potential clients were interested in past results and your personality, and the latter was not that important.

 

The Holiday Inn Express has been creating attorneys for years. This is no different.

 

That and the back of the phone book back in the day.

 

Adding the caveat that maybe there have been changes in the last 40 years or so based on my personal experience having passed two state bar exams (Florida and Virginia), a state bar exam is a really much more of a test of the effectiveness of the bar review course one has taken prior to the exam than it is of one's competence to practice law.

 

Too many lawyers as it is.
Aren’t there enough “he got me $600,000” commercials and billboards.

Perhaps it might lower the cost but I doubt it.

 

There are plenty of bad attorneys that pass the bar exam. I know of a couple of local attorneys that do car accidents and have never taken a case to court. They take what they can get the insurance company to agree to. The companies know who they are so the client is not getting the best offer.

 

can't resist: What is the difference between a roadkill deer and a dead lawyer by the side of the road? There are skidmarks leading to the deer...I'll show myself out.....

 

The funniest “qualifier” I ever encountered was a potential client wanting to know what kind of vehicle I drove because he saw that as a measure of success and in turn my ability.

 

That reminds me of the new client who saw me drive up for depositions in my youngest daughter's VW Bug years ago. He said he didn't expect me in such a car. I told him my Rolls was in the shop. He got a laugh, and we got along splendidly. But you're right, appearances are important to some people.

 

This is true that credentialing has the potential to protect the public from malpractice. Indeed, there is usually a large information asymmetry between a lawyer and a client. That said, people really want good legal representation, and because it is something people want, mechanisms would almost certainly evolve to help provide this. I can’t personally vet the quality of a lawyer, but I can vet ways to vet them. One example is in the film industry, where the MPAA evolved to give parents information regarding the appropriateness of content for different age groups. If the MPAA didn’t exist, there would doubtless be another entity providing this information.

 

We have various “ratings” industries in the legal profession but I wouldn’t put much stock in it knowing how it is gamed and that many attorneys do not participate in it.

 

Yes. Professions have vetting mechanisms. But for professionals, it is a mandatory test that must be passed,and then proven ability through the State’s Bars.

I hated taking the bar. But so what? Passing the bar exam establishes a baseline of competence. It shows that the lawyer was able to prepare, learn and pass a hard test.

Doctors and nurses have one.
Accountants have one.
Lawyers should have one.

I mean this in the nicest way possible; if you can’t handle the anxiety and stress of taking the bar — and there is gobs of anxiety and stress — the practice of law might not be for you.

 

You are reading me correctly I think, as I am kind of making the radical sounding point that we don’t need state certifications for surgeons. As I wrote to joseph above, people would still want a way to assess the efficacy of their providers and therefore such a method would evolve. Any surgeon that is incompetent is going to be found out. Perhaps there are ways to hide one’s incompetence from whatever assessment approach evolves, but that is clearly true of our current system as well, evidenced by the many charlatans that already exist. I’m not a fan of current trend toward (possibly) reducing rigor of our educational system either, but I think this is a somewhat orthogonal point to the one regard mandatory state credentials.

The benefits of reducing state barriers come in the form of increased access of the public to these services. The most infamous example might be the credentialing requirements for hair braiders. Indeed, this is a skill often passed from mother to daughter, and in some places the licensing supposedly costs hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours. It ends up driving up prices and driving down access for citizens. Relatedly, I sometimes go to an urgent care where I see a nurse instead of an MD. I think this is great. This person is quite capable of diagnosing strep throat, and it opens up more time for the MDs to see other people with more serious needs, again lowering costs and increasing access.

Now that we’ve had the current system for decades, I’m not suggesting just scrapping all state certifications immediately, but I do think we on average overvalue their benefit and undervalue their costs.

 

Agreed, gaming is a real problem. However, clearly the bar isn’t infallible to gaming either.

 

I expanded my argument to pitboss above.

But I don’t disagree with you that we need ways to assess the quality of technical professionals, and this is not an easy task. 2,000 years ago Plato noted the challenges of assessing the quality of a doctor. I only meagerly suggest that state requirements aren’t necessarily the most efficient approach to this problem. And I’m not so much worried about testing anxiety as simply the cost. The more costly it is to enter a profession, the more costly will be its services. I just don’t want us to lose sight of that part of the equation.

 

I am going to quibble here as I think you are really speaking to efficacy. I don’t agree the bar exam is open to gaming. It’s an open and transparent system applicable to every attorney that measures the ability to issue spot and write at a certain level. The argument there is whether it actually translates to ensuring a basic minimum competence.

 

The state may not "require" the exam after 2026 but I suspect many law firms will, especially the larger ones.

How many of you would go to an accountant who didn't pass the CPA exam to prepare your taxes, or a dentisat who didn't pass their dental boards to have oral surgery?

FTR this is a stupid idea. Professional degrees should have professional standards.

 

My reaction to this title was Washington must need lawyers, that's why they lowered their standards. Florida has lawyers crawling out of the woodwork. That's why we don't have reciprocity with any other state and I doubt you'll see the requirements for admission to the Florida Bar lessened.

 

It's my understanding that Florida along with California and maybe a few other states do not have reciprocity over the concern that retired attorneys moving from other states will end up hanging out their shingles and practicing part time.

 

I always thought it was more that California doesn’t want to leave it to other states to decide minimum competence. That’s one reason they have a more rigorous bar exam. That being said, even California is contemplating allowing this alternative pathway to bar admission which would align the entire west coast. Having taken California’s three-day bar exam, which required a couple days of extensive writing, I would be ecstatic if I were a graduating law student and I could practice in lieu of studying for and taking the exam.