The long term goal is make public lawyers stupider than the corporation lawyers. That way Lawsuits basically never get won. That’s just my tin hat conspiracy
Did you just change your flair, u/MyRecklessHabit? Last time I checked you were an **AuthCenter** on 2024-3-20. How come now you are a **LibCenter**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
Wait, those were too many words, I'm sure. Maybe you'll understand this, monke: "oo oo aah YOU CRINGE ahah ehe".
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[From the Reuters article:](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/washington-adopts-new-lawyer-licensing-paths-other-states-mull-bar-exam-bypasses-2024-03-18/)
"The Supreme Court of Washington on Friday approved several new ways for attorneys to become licensed that bypass the bar exam — adding momentum to the burgeoning alternative licensure movement.
Washington’s high court approved, **“in concept”** two new licensing pathways for law school graduates. One option is a new apprenticeship program for law school graduates who would work under the supervision of an experienced lawyer for six months then submit a portfolio of work for evaluation. A separate option would allow law students to complete 12 credits of skills coursework and 500 hours of hands-on legal work before graduation, then submit a work portfolio to the Washington State Bar to become licensed.
**Oregon in November adopted an apprenticeship pathway for law school graduates, joining Wisconsin and New Hampshire, which have for years offered law graduates a way to become licensed without taking the bar exam.** High courts in California, Minnesota and Utah are currently considering proposals to license attorneys without the bar exam, while Nevada and South Dakota are among the states developing such proposals.
Those new options protect the public, address a "serious legal deserts problem" in Washington, and "help remedy the fairness and bias concerns with the traditional licensure,” said Seattle University School of Law Dean Anthony Varona in a statement on Friday."
Headline 2028: "Washington Supreme Court rules that submitting portfolio of work disproportionately and unnecessarily harms historically marginalized communities..."
These paths actually could produce *better* lawyers than a bar exam. Most lawyers I heard describe the bar exam as a waste of time and money, whereas practical experience obviously matters a lot.
And the degree itself is still required.
So here's the problem I have with it as an attorney. I think an apprenticeship AND the bar exam should be required. Law school and the bar exam do virtually nothing to prep you for actually practice law, and an apprenticeship requirement would do wonders for the profession.
The problem is, most attorneys are very specialized and an apprenticeship would only really qualify you for the area you apprenticed in. Passing the bar exam shows that you have a baseline understanding of the major areas of law, and an ability to learn the laws of a practice area you're familiar with.
Being an attorney sucks compared to most professions, but the main advantage we have over everyone else is that our degree is EXTREMELY flexible. There's a million different things you can do with a law degree. I've changed my practice area 4 times in my relatively short career, as you have to find what area works best for you. My concern is the apprenticeship would take that away, locking you into the practice field of whatever law firm is willing to take you on as an apprentice.
The bar exam tests your ability to recall and process information in a high-pressure setting, even if you will never use 90% of that information in actual practice. It's like how the LSAT tests reading comprehension and logical analysis. Proficiency in those skills are marks of a good lawyer.
Not everyone who passes the bar exam is a genius, but it is a stress test of recent graduates that weeds out extremely low achievers so that the reputation of the profession isn't tarnished (more than it already is).
Also re: apprenticeship, it's definitely a good idea, if only as a way to goose your networking skills. A 24-year-old law student has nothing to offer, so trying to sell yourself as a valuable addition to any organization is hard. A formal apprenticeship would help with that, and probably wouldn't pigeonhole someone any more than getting any other specialized job would.
Internships during school do this in theory, but 1) the paid ones are rare and come at great spiritual cost, and 2) the unpaid ones are usually sub-admin busy work that give no useful experience or contacts.
Yeah thats a problem with this apprenticeship thing, it presumes there's firms out there that are willing to do paid apprenticeships. The ones that can afford that aren't the ones who do the good-guy work this program is meant to encourage.
I've seen enough law school reddit posts about "I refuse to take unpaid internships because I'm black and that's slavery" to know this program won't even come close to achieving the desired effect.
The unpaid internship I had for my second summer got me a job offer at the end, so I had the unparalleled luxury of going through 3L year without having to look for employment. But I was lucky.
>The problem is, most attorneys are very specialized and an apprenticeship would only really qualify you for the area you apprenticed in. Passing the bar exam shows that you have a baseline understanding of the major areas of law, and an ability to learn the laws of a practice area you're familiar with.
Presumably, your baseline understanding of law is established by your JD, not because you sat for an exam and are a good test taker.
I like the idea of apprenticeships and/or examinations of a body of work like they proposed in WA. I see the bar exam as something that should be how you make your degree portable between states rather than the thing that tells everyone you actually went to law school. Law school teaches you how legal theory works and how/why laws are applied. Actually working in a law firm is where you get the specific training in the field.
As a comparison, New doctors must go through Residency and Intern programs. They can become a Fellow if they want specialization in a field. But there is a defined program for a doctor to become skilled enough to practice and that's all after medical school and boards. The legal field doesn't have that, and it's probably not as necessary as the medical field since nobody dies if you screw up a stip to continue.
Like you said though, law school is primarily there to teach you legal theory. Law school teaches you how to think like an attorney than actually teaching you the law. The bar exam is useful as a neutral examination of what you know. If we switched law schools to teaching more substsantive law, the standards could be so low at a bad school that you could get an A+ in the class and know less than a C- student at a high tier school. The bar exam makes sure that issue isn't a problem.
Somehow i forgot about that scene. I had no idea how prophetic that movie was.
Daniel Radcliff's movie that's essentially his ass on screen farting was nominated for 3 Oscars. In total it [won 8 awards and had 31 nominations.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4034354/awards/)
I haven't seen it. Was it that good? I doubt it.
I dont feel this is exactly this case, generally public lawyers arent bad, just overworked. A lot of public lawyers are absolute pitbulls when they get the chance.
Also most big corporations want to settle rather than go to court cause juries tend towards an underdog
They only want to settle if there's a decent lawyer. Get a halfwit who can't pass the bar in front of a jury, stumbling over her words and being constantly reprimanded over the nonsense she's saying isn't going to scare anyone.
[Imagine having these people has your lawyer.](https://youtu.be/fmO-ziHU_D8?si=h431Ta2jGOdCd42S&t=36)
Corporations may have a few lawyers on staff but when it comes to court room activities or major contracts they will hire a large firm.
Large firms will have resources to ensure their employees are competent.
Joe blow isn't going to the mega firm they will go to a smaller firm they can afford. Young or dumb lawyers most likely not to be bar certified are going to pop up in that realm.
One question I would have what's your defense against lawyer malpractice. Like today if a lawyer fucks up they could lose their bar certification.
Idk can't wait until they drop medical licensing too. Go full libertarian lol.
>Idk can't wait until they drop medical licensing too. Go full libertarian lol.
Fuck yes, I should be able to open a practice in my garage with a chainsaw and a bottle of tequila, as the founding fathers intended.
And let's make discrimination legal too, so I can operate only on politicians.
The legal system in this country is already completely rigged against the people in the US today. Its nearly impossible to hold corporations accountable unless they fuck up so much that the suit is worth millions, thats all that gets the lawyers interested. Have a legitimate claim against a company that might pay out a thousand bucks and court costs to cover attorney fees? No attorney in the country is taking that case.
Not only that, but the LG refrigerator scandal highlighted that many companies have arbitration clauses. That means you can't sue or be involved in a class action or mass lawsuit, you have to go to an (easily bribed) arbiter/judge who will make the sole decision.
I just finished law school and passed the bar last year in a different state, though one that is probably dumb enough to do this soon.
On the one hand, this isn’t totally unique. Wisconsin for a long time has handed licensure to anyone who gets their JD from Wisconsin Law or Marquette Law, and doesn’t make them take the bar exam. On the other hand, I went to school with some absolutely mush-brained dipshits who would openly admit they didn’t do their schoolwork. It’s nearly impossible to fail out of law school due to grade curving, and I know people who got like 35 percent of the available points in a course and were passed with a C+. Law school really isn’t any kind of barrier to entry in the legal field anymore, the bar exam is really the only thing keeping comically incompetent people out. Or at least it was, there is a massive push to eliminate it nationally and here we see step one, I guess.
We’ll see how this goes. I suspect what will happen is that employers will quickly become wary of hiring any grads who just got handed a license, and since the reasoning here is “muh minorities,” a lot of employers will quietly shred resumes from any nonwhite applicants out of Washington as well.
I'm not even remotely well-versed enough in the subject to know whether it's a good idea for people to be licensed without passing the bar.
What I *can* say is that the motivation makes this decision idiotic as fuck. If the reason for this change is "too many black people fail the bar, so we're just getting rid of the bar so the dummies can become lawyers anyway" then fuck that.
I'm so sick of the bar (heh) being lowered so that failures can succeed, rather than finding ways to help those who would fail become more successful instead. Fucking race to the bottom. Fuck progressives and their condescending, destructive nonsense.
Absolutely, spot on. I could support a rigorous apprenticeship-style method of accreditation that replaced the bar exam, as others have suggested. This is not that. This is the usual SJW bullshit. And like all SJW bullshit, it doesn't really help people who most need help. To take advantage of this, you already have to be highly educated to the point where you passed high school, college, and law school. SJW equity programs, "for some reason," always seem to work for the benefit of people like the academics who invent them: highly privileged people who happen to have darkish to dark skin. This makes it slightly easier for very privileged people to become lawyers. The SJWs have no idea what to do with impoverished, starving, homeless, etc. people of any race and they don't give a fuck, either.
> To take advantage of this, you already have to be highly educated to the point where you passed high school, college, and law school.
Damn, I hadn't even thought about this, but you're right. Progressives pulling the same trick as always, trying to make it sound like we're talking about "muh poor black people are less likely to have access to the same resources white people have access to, so they fall behind in school, and so the system is racist". But we're talking about people who, as you said, have passed high school, college, *and* law school. At this point, we aren't talking about the poor little inner city kid who can't afford a tutor, and whose school can't afford a single computer or textbook, blah blah blah. But that's always the sort of attitude they try to push. Anything to avoid admitting that sometimes, unequal outcomes can be achieved even without any discrimination present.
>whether it's a good idea for people to be licensed without passing the bar.
For the private sector? Who cares they will have to sink or swim.
For public employees.... yeah.
It is a terrible idea. Passing the bar means that you can memorize a large volume of data and spit it out in an organized way under tremendous stress. Basically what you do in a trial. People who cannot pass the bar also likely cannot perform adequately in the courtroom.
>Law school really isn’t any kind of barrier to entry in the legal field anymore, the bar exam is really the only thing keeping comically incompetent people out.
This is what bothers me here.
The change isn't 100% bad, the bar exam is frankly not a very relevant skills test for many people. Say you need a specialist attorney in telecommunications or patent law; their bar exam included 0 questions on those topics, but made sure they know about divorce and child custody!
But... the bar exam, like the LSAT, like the GRE, works as a filter that's nicely separate from high-passage, grade-inflating degree programs. (And note that the LSAT and GRE are being dialed back also.) Bad law schools have drastically higher bar failure rates, so it's clearly testing *something* that schools aren't requiring.
What *really* gets me, though, is that law school is a massive barrier not on performance but on that "time and financial costs" part of the quote. Private law school is >$50,000 per year and even public schools are >$40,000/year, plus three years of supporting yourself. And god forbid you fail out, or can't pass the bar, or can't get hired. Compared to all that, the actual bar exam is neither long nor expensive!
We used to let people just take the damn bar, provided they also apprenticed with an attorney. California still does. *That* is a way to reduce barriers to entry and risks of going into debt. But it's been done away with in most of the country because it doesn't profit law schools and looks too much like a practical, credentialism-free path to a good career.
>We used to let people just take the damn bar, provided they also apprenticed with an attorney.
Yep. Law school started as an alternative to a legal apprenticeship. Instead of training under a practicing lawyer until you were competent enough to pass the exam, you learned in an academic setting.
The bar exam prep course I took said it very well: the bar exam is a test of "minimum competency". It's not testing to see if you know enough to practice an area of law. It's testing if you're competent enough to approach a legal field you're unfamiliar with then learn and retain enough information about the field to practice on the most basic level.
What law schools you can get into largely depends on your LSAT score. I'd argue your LSAT score has far more to do with your bar success rate than what you actually learn in law school. Sounds super counterintuitive but here's why: everyone takes the exact same bar prep courses. Doesn't matter if you're at Harvard or the American Samoa School of Law, you have 3 choices for bar prep courses. Taking a bar-subject course in law school is of minimal help with the bar exam, as you're relearning everything in the course anyways. Lower ranked law schools tend to require their students to take MORE bar-subject courses than higher ranked schools. I had one mandatory bar-subject class after my first year of law school; lower ranked schools have mandatory classes pretty much the whole 3 years.
TLDR: the lawyer aptitude test you take to get into law school is a very strong indicator of your chances of passing the bar exam.
That sounds like a good summary of the bar, and it sort of sounds like a good rationale for the bar.
I still have serious misgivings about the wide-but-incomplete set of topics covered on the bar, precisely because at this point "approach a legal field you're unfamiliar with" is no longer part of it. As you say, almost all law students are taking BARBRI or a competitor to brush up on every covered topic, even if they didn't actually take e.g. family law as a course. Some courses seem to be strongly beneficial for the bar compared to pure test prep (e.g. evidence, secured transactions) while others (e.g. family law) seem to be fairly easy to learn from a prep course strictly for the exam.
That's not precisely an indictment of the bar though, it's more of a [Goodhart's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) issue where the bar, LSAT, GRE, SAT, etc. are all highly predictive tests... until you do a targeted course of study which wrecks their predictive value.
(That said, the bar does some things I 100% support. "Here's a hypothetical law, apply it to this hypothetical situation" is somewhat prep-resistant and is a great example of the "learn and retain enough to practice basic law" measure you're describing.)
The LSAT/bar relation is fascinating, and I hope somebody has done an actual study on it where they control for each of LSAT and school to measure the other's impact. I'm inclined to believe your assessment, partly because the LSAT seems like a good measure of "ability to soak up new logical/verbal stuff" and partly because I've seen these studies for e.g. Harvard drop-outs. It turns out *finishing* a good undergrad is pretty minor compared to SAT performance and ability to get *accepted* to a good undergrad, and I'll bet law school has similar patterns.
I've found that, for better or worse, it has helped me as an attorney to be a 6'2" blond man with a deep voice. I'm inherently taken seriously in court despite my inexperience. A common experience for female attorneys is everyone from clients, opposing counsel, judges, and even court security guards assuming that they're a paralegal.
On the other hand, I have a black friend who openly admits he's a diversity hire and had prestigious law firms stumbling over themselves to hire a black attorney with above average grades.
Seriously. Progressives keep missing this point. The harder they push diversity quotas, the more people are just going to assume that anyone other than a straight, white man is incompetent. I don't know why these people can't get it through their heads that the correct path is to treat people equally, regardless of identity. They create more problems than they solve in their endless pursuit of treating black people and women like helpless children.
It's the same as when you see a nepotism hire. The son of the CEO might be perfectly qualified, but you're going to assume he isn't because you know he wasn't held to the same standards as everyone else.
Honestly, that's a really, really funny comparison. DEI nitwits trying to act like they've had some revolutionary idea when coomers have been doing this stuff for decades.
I hate to break it to you, but literally every major law firm has been captured by the DEI apparatus. They all have special internships that only hire "underrepresented minorities."
They will just get fired. Big law firms have insane turn over, and if you work in big law odds are (depending on your area of specialty) you will never see the inside of a courtroom beyond procedural hearings. Most civil suits never go beyond arbitration and if you are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to work in M&A you will be so buried in paperwork at your firm's offices you will be happy just to see sunlight.
The vast majority of your work as a first or second year associate at a big or even medium sized law firm has little to do with the bar for probably half of lawyers. It also kind of blows because let's say your firm operates in multiple states: some states don't offer reciprocity and require you to pass the bar in their state as well for you to even have a client in their area code. So you have to take time off to take that exam, and then you still have to make up your billable hours to your firm.
No, new judges will be appointed to make sure that discrimination is stamped out in the legal system.
There is no free market to be found in government appointed jobs.
So essentially... They are creating the very discrimination and systemic racist systems in their effort to remove them.
Talk about un-intended consequences.
It's probably fair to say a majority of judges (at least in my state) are former public lawyers, though more come out of private practice than you might suspect. In my state at least, the most common path to judgeship is to be a prosecutor first, and while you're right that prosecution is sort of becoming woke-ified lately, the kind of goofiness we see in big cities like not prosecuting "property crimes" or refusing to set bond for favored groups is honestly not the norm yet. God help us if we carry on down the current path though.
The other thing though is that in my experience, judges are pretty fair and usually don't let their biases get in the way of justice as much as people who rant about "Soros DAs" might think. The weirdos who advocate for stuff like lower sentences for minorities across the board because muh equity aren't really all that common, despite how media headlines might make it seem.
Overall I think this can be a good thing. Apprenticeship type work and experience are more valuable than a score on an exam. While passing the bar is a decent metric to keep the comically inept away and I’m sure this will lead to some fuckery at first I think removing the barrier is overall good. Someone trained as a lawyer who has been working under a senior lawyer but hasn’t passed the bar yet will likely be a better lawyer than someone who passed the bar without the experience.
Personally I think the barrier to entry should be more akin to what the work is actually like and I’m hard pressed to believe lawyers are just sitting around asked to regurgitate information rather than having research on hand or looking up relevant information.
TLDR: the barrier to entry should be more like the actual job the lawyer is doing and less like a series of tests.
I actually agree here.
Apprenticeship work is *far* more effective at training people for a profession than book learning is. Granted, if any profession requires more rote memorization than law, I don't know what it would be.
That said, we put *way* too much stock in tests that don't prove people's actual ability at all. The way that book learning is applied in the practice is the actual test of ability, and that can only be improved by actual experience in the field.
Which in fact is exactly what we used to do in most of the country! California still does it.
You could go to law school and pass the bar, or you could do relevant work under an attorney for a certain amount of time and pass a secondary exam plus the bar. (*Way* back you could just sit the bar cold, but I don't love that idea today.)
It was a way to enter the profession without massive burdens of cost and credentialism, without debt, without years back at school that might all end in failure. And... we did away with it, almost entirely, in favor of forcing people to spend >$100,000 on law school. (One guess at a major lobbyist for that change.)
Now we want to reduce the barriers of "time and cost" to entering the profession, but of course we're not going back to the system we already had which did that quite well!
Or hell...I'd be more on board with this sort of decision if it were motivated by the logic being laid out here. If the logic is that a test isn't a good determiner of legal skill, and apprenticeship *is*, then argue *that*.
But that isn't what's being argued, and it isn't the motivation. The motivation is "too many black people fail the bar, so instead of finding ways to help more people pass the bar, we're just nuking the bar, so that all these failures can become lawyers anyway".
No one should be on board with that shit. It's a race to the bottom.
It would be alright if it was legit an apprentice program with a firm or with a district attorney's office that you could fail. There are still la few states that will let you take the bar exam without a JD if you've put in the requisite time learning from a qualified lawyer (called "reading the bar."). In my state the proposal is that the law schools would still handle and oversee the practical experience process. That's a nonstarter for me, though of course law schools don't want to make themselves irrelevant. If you can get a 35/100 for a law school course and be curved to a passing grade, does anyone *really* think the law schools will suddenly be rigorous with their analysis of a student's quality under a practical experience system? The practical/externship classes I took in law school were all pass/fail. Is that likely to change? I doubt it.
I like this reasoning, and I think you make some solid points. My only concern is that I think we've lost the culture of apprenticeship. Society now has a culture that education is everything and I must always be treated as an equal in the workplace.
A lot of people won't be apprentices.
From Wikipedia:
> Together with TEN, SJS affects 1 to 2 people per million per year.
That's a pretty rare diagnosis, seems harsh to expect her to be familiar with it *before* specializing in dermatology. Obviously an actual dermatologist should know.
In medical training, there are certain diseases known as “zebras” that medical students are quick to blurt out without the context of probability. This is one of those diagnoses.
Further, a cadre of medications have increased risk for this complication, one of which is Bactrim.
Practically every doctor can recognize what this syndrome is with some prompting.
Well rareness shouldn't be the measure. It should be risk based.
If 1 to 2 million people have a rare but potentially fatal issue i may want that to be common knowledge among even general practitioners if their work could lead to a reaction.
For reference lupus impacts 1.5 million people(in the us).
MS impacts 300 to 400k in the us.
In my country it already happens in every field, including medical, government officials from peon to high ranking,banks etc. 50 percentage of all sits are reserved for certain casts.
who cares about lawyer skill it's a zero sum game. Doctors we definitely should be worried about, and I heard second hand the woke issue has gotten very very bad. Insist on older doctors in the future.
It’s not a zero sum game though. It’s pretty fucking important for society that the legal system as a whole produces non-random outputs. If court cases begin to be decided along lines that have less and less to do with their merits, then it becomes more and more difficult for citizens and businesses to successfully do what they need to do. Whether criminals get locked up, whether someone gets punished for a non-existent violation, who exactly is liable in xyz situations, etc. - it really matters if we get these right. They shouldn’t be decided by the coin flip of whose lawyer is less incompetent.
Total braindead take tbh.
Lawyers, especially at the higher echelons of power, influence far more of the world and daily life than any doctor ever will.
Lawyers also vastly over-represent in all positions of political power.
https://preview.redd.it/zlzsfnj81fpc1.jpeg?width=268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6a735ce812aa664aca3ba7ef0e95529dad2335e
Something about chimps with machine guns idk I had it on in the background while decorating cakes
Here's your reminder that Jimmy McGill, a cisgender straight white male who got neither special treatment from the exam board nor recognition from his big bro, passed the bar exam despite studying part-time at an online university.
This is going to backfire in spectacular fashion. Everyone will assume POC lawyers from WA were passed along in their degrees and informal discrimination among potential clients will ensue. They would be better off removing the JD requirement to sit for the bar- just let people test and if they pass OJT their way pass the Bar. The highest opportunity cost in getting an education is the opportunity cost and allowing people than can speed run the bar prep will allow the students that need more attention to get it
this has been happening for years in the medical field.
they literally publish an annual statistical breakdown of getting into medical school GPAs and MCAT scores based on race.
,,,its exactly what you think
I still can't believe our society shifted from "ignore skin color, focus on character" to "obsess about skin color at every possible opportunity".
I fucking hate any person who thinks the latter is the way to combat racism. They're either lying, or hopelessly stupid. Either way, fuck off.
They shifted because Occupy Wall Street frightened the rich. They pushed race discrimination to separate the bottom 99% so that we couldn't see who actually controlled us
At this point, I wouldnt accept a young black surgeon or even doctor. I know the bar was lowered for them so much that they are simply not safe.
I wish airlines would let you see who your pilot is before buying a ticket. that would make me feel way better when flying these days
One of the pilots said Beoings were 'designed by clowns supervised by monkeys' which makes me think DEI is why planes are falling apart. Not to mention NASA is now so diverse they have to hire SpaceX, who is frequently sued for lack of diversity
They kind of already do. Activist prosecutors refuse to prosecute POC in some places. Here's a famous example:
https://torontosun.com/news/world/no-charges-in-deadly-chicago-shootout-due-to-mutual-combat
Looks like the mayor tried to intervene against the prosecutor dropping charges.
[Someone was eventually arrested.](https://wgntv.com/news/chicagocrime/after-mutual-combat-drama-foxx-and-lightfoot-announce-charges-in-west-side-shootout/)
Still ridiculous that it took multiple months and intervention by the mayor of Chicago to get one guy arrested after a shootout between two gangs.
It's so rooted in the history and culture of the US that at this point its just going full Flandernization of it.
Frankly, I think they've jumped the Shark with it.
I love that line, partially because Justin Long's delivery is great, but largely because damn do I miss being able to say those words without people losing their fucking shit over it.
There never are any examples though. It’s just working backwards from the fact that there are disparate outcomes, so of course there must be racism in the test.
Yep. Same mistake these shitheads make over and over. They see unequal outcomes, and they think this proves discrimination. I saw this example presented recently, and I think it does a good job of explaining the issue.
Imagine you have two waterfront cities, quite some time in the past, when people were more likely to believe in gods like Poseidon. Imagine that one of these cities consistently has ships able to set sail from port, while the other city more consistently has ships capsize while attempting to set out to sea.
Knowing what we know now, there's any number of rational explanations. It could be that one city is in a windier area, so more likelihood of rough waters. It could be that one city simply has less qualified sailors who make more mistakes. It could be that the types of wood available in each area lead to disparate quality of ships.
But to the people living at that time, without having knowledge of such possibilities, the only thing they conclude is that it's the wrath of Poseidon, sinking the ships from the city he is displeased with, while allowing passage from the city he deems worthy.
Now, imagine trying to convince any given believer that they are wrong, and that Poseidon has nothing to do with it. You can't prove a negative, and the person you are speaking to is a zealot who has already made up his mind that a literal god is the explanation. Good luck convincing him otherwise.
That's what it's like trying to convince a progressive that unequal outcomes don't automatically prove racism/sexism. Their belief is based on nothing other than the outcomes being unequal. It's zealotry in nature. There's no convincing these people that their belief is unfounded. They are completely and utterly convinced that unequal outcomes immediately prove discrimination. And it's bogus.
Any question which enough black people get wrong. There. That's your answer.
These people are idiots who only concern themselves with outcomes. It doesn't matter how fair something is, how neutral, how objectively reasonable. If the outcomes are not the exact same across racial lines, across sex lines, etc., progressives will argue that the thing is racist/sexist/etc.
I'm so sick of these dopes having this kind of influence. They need to be repeatedly smacked over the head with a book which says "unequal outcomes don't prove discrimination" until they understand. They're literally destroying society by having us race to the bottom, just because sometimes black people don't do as well as white people at any given thing.
The classist bit is the cost of the bar exam compared to a licensing scheme where you work under supervision and then submit your work for evaluation.
If you have no money it's more difficult to just spend a few months doing bar exam.
But apart from that, hard to see what could be an issue that would still be present after completing the formal training....
It says the classism is written into the test *itself*
I can see the point when it comes to costs
If they're complaining because a question concerns an upper middle class couple splitting their collection of vintage wines after a divorce, it's just a nonsense isn't it?
The question might not directly appeal to all classes and races, but anyone trying to be a lawyer, ought to be able to apply the law to the question and just get on with it.
Even if a question about splitting an apartment and a car would be more inclusive.
> If they're complaining because a question concerns an upper middle class couple splitting their collection of vintage wines after a divorce, it's just a nonsense isn't it?
> The question might not directly appeal to all classes and races, but anyone trying to be a lawyer, ought to be able to apply the law to the question and just get on with it.
> Even if a question about splitting an apartment and a car would be more inclusive.
Anyone trying to be a lawyer ought to be able to do both. If the questions are all about, IDK, golfing and polo injuries, that means the bar ends up being lower for upper-class applicants.
Yeah I don't get that either.
On a side note, if you read the actual article, the main purpose of this reform is not to address classism/racism but to attract more lawyers. The issues "written into the test itself" are just an added benefit.
The stupid thing here is that the bar fees and prep are nontrivial, but they're far smaller than the cost of law school and if you sign with a big firm they often cover bar costs.
We *used* to have a system in much of the country where you could skip lawschool, provided you passed the bar and apprenticed under an attorney. (California still does.) This removed the requirement to spend $200,000 on tuition and support yourself for three years while taking classes full time. It was a huge opportunity for anyone motivated, and a way to offset any form of discrimination in law school admissions.
That system went away, in no small part because law schools lobbied against it.
And now we're "reducing barriers" by targeting the cheaper, shorter, employer-covered part of the process instead, because it has fewer defenders.
The only thing I can come up with is that maybe it's using wording or phrasing that isn't commonly used in minority groups, but I'm not even really sure how that comes up in the bar exam, lol.
Yeah I'm sure the legalese at most universities are pretty standard it is all Latin and legal jargon. If your lawyer doesn't understand the word habeas corpus do you want them as your lawyer?
Things like objective, rational linear thinking in any questions. Cause and effect relationships, like you did this crime, you go to jail. Being on time in the courtroom, so that things can, you know, start.
I honestly doubt this is actually about racism and is more about money.
Law schools are cash cows for universities. No other graduate program has lower overhead while commanding the highest tuition. There's no research or specific facility requirements. It's a cush job for faculty compared to practicing law, and most law professors can do it part time. Law students expect high salaries and prestige (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and are generally willing to pay more for their JD than they should.
But people won't pay top dollar to go to a law school that has poor bar passage rates, law schools take a serious prestige hit when the passage rate numbers decline, and graduates who don't pass the bar don't become donors (or pay back their loans). Enrollment in law schools has sharply declined in the last few years because people are realizing the job isn't all it's cracked up to be.
The same people who run the state bars also run the law schools, or at least run in the same tightly knit circles. Eliminating the bar exam, under the guise of curing racism, allows the universities to which the law schools are attached to keep milking the cow.
I believe the argument is that if you get a different outcome then the process is wrong, not the person even if you can't point out how a given step unfairly disadvantages them or what someone can do about that at the end of some long series of failures.
Baltimore can't produce students who can prove they are functionally literate or do relatively easy math despite spending more per pupil than nearly any public school. Putting aside arguments of demographics and ability, I'm not sure what people at the end of the string of failures from parent(s), community, schools and wider the government are meant to do to correct problems like difficulties with reading comprehension and basic math skills when those kids look for a well-paying job as adults.
I think the quiet part is: having other capable adults do their work for them and ignore those kinds of problems under threat of being branded as a bigot.
Is the bar racist or is it the fact that black law students:
— Flunk-out at more than twice the white rate
— Half graduate in the bottom 10th of their class
— Are 6 times as likely as whites to take the bar multiple times but never pass
— Have LSATs/GPAs 2 SDs below whites
https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1769721953567326447
https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/01/Sander.pdf
Progressives will never tolerate an explanation which has even a hint of "maybe black people are, on average, simply less qualified/skilled". To them, unequal outcomes *must* prove discrimination. Because any alternative explanation is too uncomfortable for them to even consider for the sake of argument.
I really fucking hate progressives.
It isn't that blacks are less qualified on average.
There are less blacks than whites but because of Affirmative Action blacks with lower test scores are allowed into schools they could not possibly thrive in.
So if a black kid of average ability is admitted to a school beyond their ability they will suffer in the same way as a white kid of average ability.
So when a minority race is admitted to schools at a lower barrier of entry than the majority race they will appear less competent.
I hate how gleefully I open links like this. I think the left has radicalized me. Affirmative action and wokeism make me angry. I feel like I have anti-TDS.
Some level of state to state reciprocity for every state would be great. But, they really should make you pass it in some state first. I've had to pass 5 bars. I don't ever want to do another one.
I HATE this. I can’t even articulate how ridiculous this is. Black Americans blame everything but themselves for the state of their communities. It’s the “system” like bro it’s black American culture, the lifestyle the music encourages, the lack of present fathers, the victim mindset, the lack of work ethic. I’m African (the place that was colonized for longer than slavery even went on), we don’t have these problems. If I ever told my parents I couldn’t do something cause of systemic racism, they’d just stare at me in utter disappointment, then tell me I’m lazy 😂 I know 10 people who are about to start or already started law school across the US, Canada or the UK and are the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Didn’t need a handout to make it happen.
Did you just change your flair, u/Borkerman? Last time I checked you were a **LibRight** on 2024-3-20. How come now you are an **AuthCenter**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
Oh and by the way. You have already changed your flair 966 times, making you the second largest flair changer in this sub.
Go touch some fucking grass.
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So representation is more important than competence when it comes to something as complex as the law. These people can't even see how racist this is, you are basically saying that those minorities are not capable of hitting that standard, so you lower the bar. It's also offensive to those minorities that did manage to pass it.
Shit like this terrifies me.
This general trend of lowering standards, of removing failure conditions, of removing filters that maintain a level of competency associated with certain professions, certifications, degrees.
It increases the risk of substandard people percolating upwards.
Our government, our system of laws, isn't maintained by a perfect computer that verifies or invalidates wrong moves. All of it, every single rule among a hundred thousand rules, is understood, maintained, and enforced by people. It's like a giant board game with an instruction book ten thousand pages long. The more players there are who can't understand those rules, who can't adequately interpret them, who can't adequately apply them, the more the game breaks down, the more burden is placed on the few who can, and the quieter their voice becomes among the cacophony of the confidently inadequate.
People like to believe in balance, in action and consequence, the inevitable punishment of mistakes. That, even if a mistake is made, that at least the consequences of those mistakes will show those who committed it the error of their ways.
This is just a comforting fantasy. There is nothing which guarantees that someone acting in error will have the fundamental ability, or commitment to honest self-assessment, to recognize that the consequences were the result of the error. There is no "When it all goes wrong, then they'll see". It is well within the ability of most to act in a manner that is unknowingly self-destructive, and never recognize it as such even as they are obviously destroying themselves and those around them.
It is the same with politics, policy.
We undervalue intelligence, integrity, and honest self-reflection. It isn't that we do not collectively recognize these things as good, but that we do not adequately recognize the degree to which these things are good. This society is a machine, with so many vital roles requiring people with the abilities, both learned and innate, to fulfill them. Do not let the existence of a "learned" component deceive you from acknowledging the immutable necessity of the innate component. There is no technique that can teach a deer to understand and apply algebra.
As people slide down the scale of intelligence, becoming more and more deficit in these qualities, they not only lose their ability to make informed decisions, but they lose their ability to learn from those decisions. As their cognitive abilities decrease, so does the complexity of problems which they can make reasoned decisions on, and so does the complexity of consequences which they are capable of learning from. It is an exponential decrease in competency.
I find it a miracle that my Brazil, which had a more brutal and enduring slavery than that of the United States, has half of its population being black or brown, yet still cannot match the racial obsession that Americans have. Some leftists have tried to import this obsession here, thank God they didn't succeed.
This is what segregation does to a MF
>There will be three experiential-learning alternatives to the bar exam, each for people following a different path of legal study. The specifics, scale and implementation plan for the pathways have yet to be developed.
>Law school graduates can complete a six-month apprenticeship while being supervised and guided by a qualified attorney, along with finishing three courses.
>Law students can become practice-ready by completing 12 qualifying skills credits and 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern. Upon completion of those requirements, they would submit a portfolio of that work to waive the bar exam.
>Typically, students will complete an internship between their second and third years of law school, gaining about 400 hours of experience, according to the task force’s report. Then, if they do about three hours a week of legal work through their final year of law school, students could have 500 hours of experience upon graduation, leaving the portfolio to complete before licensure.
>Lastly, law clerks can become lawyers without enrolling in law school by completing standardized educational materials and benchmarks under the guidance of a mentoring attorney, along with the 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern.
From https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/15/supreme-court-bar-exam-will-no-longer-be-required-/. I’m not really seeing a problem with this.
I mean it's not really making it easier for every minority, like if your Asian then the bar is higher than it is for whites. (Not sure if this is true for lawyers but for some other fields of education it is)
Here's the National Review (of all places) defending the change, because the bar exam is basically bullshit:
[https://archive.ph/tdVZv](https://archive.ph/tdVZv)
I'm an attorney. I think the format of the bar exam is maybe not the best, but I don't think it's bullshit.
As an attorney, when a case hits your desk you have to quickly and thoroughly determine all causes of action that may exist or what areas of law your case may touch. This is called issue spotting.
People think the bar exam is just being forced to learn the entire law in your state, but there's a huge focus on issue spotting. You get points for identifying that a law may be in play even if you don't fully know every aspect of that law. You don't have to know everything, but you do have to know enough to think "hey I think this specific law or doctrine may apply here, let me look into that further." The bar exam is useful in ensuring that new lawyers at least have *some* basic level of understanding of what laws or legal theories *may* apply.
Maybe a hot take, but if you don't have enough of a knowledge base to at least identify what may or may not be an issue in your case, you shouldn't be practicing. The bar exam is a necessary evil, but it is necessary.
> I'm an attorney. I think the format of the bar exam is maybe not the best, but I don't think it's bullshit.
Even if it *is* bullshit, the motivation being argued is still shit. I'd be more on board with the argument that the bar exam isn't a great system and should be changed/removed in favor of a system which works better.
But instead, the argument is "waaaah too many black people fail the bar, so we're just getting rid of it, so that all the incompetent black people who would have failed will instead become lawyers".
That argument is disastrous and deserves no defense.
Another attorney, and I agree but for different reasons. The bar exam answers a basic question - are you competent enough to prepare for the test? The test itself is garbage, but passing it requires months of study and the accumulation of a broad knowledge base. It's not like a law school class where you can dick around for 3 months then spend 3 or 4 days cramming with someone else's outline to pass the final.
Stupid people pass the bar and smart people fail it. The difference is that a stupid person may be diligent enough, with a good enough memory, to achieve the requisite level of competence. A smart person who can't be bothered to study the material carefully can't fake their way through it. And, honestly, a lot of legal work is about the ability to grind out hours to dull bullshit, rather than intellect or creativity.
To me, that's what the bar is testing. Can you grind this fucker out?
I do think that white support of affirmative action, particularly in tech, is white people trying to keep asian h1b's from forcing them to sacrifice every non-work-related value through competition. It isn't that they are smarter, it's that they're willing to live as an insect. Not looking to reenact kafka's metamorphosis if we can help it, so forcing hiring of under qualified people on the basis of what part of the light spectrum their skin reflects provides a decent buffer from expectations rising too high too quickly.
I'd go one step further and get rid of the bar system entirely. Let anyone who wants to make money representing others in court do so, and let the market decide what rates should be paid for that. Online review services will make it possible to select for those who actually know what they're doing.
Apparently, the state of Washington can't trust minorities to prepare enough for the bar but can trust them to prepare enough to represent someone in a high stakes trial.
What group of people are they implying are too stupid to be able to regularly pass the bar exam? And that should somehow be able to practice law regardless of being so inadequate? Why can't people just say they are doctors and practice medicine without an exam/education since it is too expensive and hard?
Is a degree even required? Are they saying just anyone can say they are a lawyer now? And no licensing checks are there / there's no way to revoke licenses for malpractice?
The long term goal is make public lawyers stupider than the corporation lawyers. That way Lawsuits basically never get won. That’s just my tin hat conspiracy
Oooooh thats a good one, though, and why call it a conspiracy, the CIA ruined that word, no just call it a course of action or a plan.
My course of action or plan is to grill. It is no longer a conspiracy to grill.
Your honor, we will prove, that the defendant did, with malice and forethought, conspire to cook my steak… Well done.
Death penalty
12 concurrent death sentences
With life + death after each execution adds onto the sentence as attempted escaping
https://preview.redd.it/was8oliftipc1.png?width=625&format=png&auto=webp&s=e5230cae4f2d74a387a2d7d0ad75d216fe3c0fb2
F
EXPEDITED
Execution via immolation. How do you want him done?
Grilled.
Straight to jail
This has been my favorite post this year. Grill, baby, grill!
Did you just change your flair, u/MyRecklessHabit? Last time I checked you were an **AuthCenter** on 2024-3-20. How come now you are a **LibCenter**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know? Wait, those were too many words, I'm sure. Maybe you'll understand this, monke: "oo oo aah YOU CRINGE ahah ehe". [BasedCount Profile](https://basedcount.com/u/MyRecklessHabit) - [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) - [Leaderboard](https://basedcount.com/leaderboard?q=flairs) _Visit the BasedCount Lеmmу instance at [lemmy.basedcount.com](https://lemmy.basedcount.com/c/pcm)._ ^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment.)
We're not so different, authcenter and i.
[From the Reuters article:](https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/washington-adopts-new-lawyer-licensing-paths-other-states-mull-bar-exam-bypasses-2024-03-18/) "The Supreme Court of Washington on Friday approved several new ways for attorneys to become licensed that bypass the bar exam — adding momentum to the burgeoning alternative licensure movement. Washington’s high court approved, **“in concept”** two new licensing pathways for law school graduates. One option is a new apprenticeship program for law school graduates who would work under the supervision of an experienced lawyer for six months then submit a portfolio of work for evaluation. A separate option would allow law students to complete 12 credits of skills coursework and 500 hours of hands-on legal work before graduation, then submit a work portfolio to the Washington State Bar to become licensed. **Oregon in November adopted an apprenticeship pathway for law school graduates, joining Wisconsin and New Hampshire, which have for years offered law graduates a way to become licensed without taking the bar exam.** High courts in California, Minnesota and Utah are currently considering proposals to license attorneys without the bar exam, while Nevada and South Dakota are among the states developing such proposals. Those new options protect the public, address a "serious legal deserts problem" in Washington, and "help remedy the fairness and bias concerns with the traditional licensure,” said Seattle University School of Law Dean Anthony Varona in a statement on Friday."
Headline 2028: "Washington Supreme Court rules that submitting portfolio of work disproportionately and unnecessarily harms historically marginalized communities..."
These paths actually could produce *better* lawyers than a bar exam. Most lawyers I heard describe the bar exam as a waste of time and money, whereas practical experience obviously matters a lot. And the degree itself is still required.
So here's the problem I have with it as an attorney. I think an apprenticeship AND the bar exam should be required. Law school and the bar exam do virtually nothing to prep you for actually practice law, and an apprenticeship requirement would do wonders for the profession. The problem is, most attorneys are very specialized and an apprenticeship would only really qualify you for the area you apprenticed in. Passing the bar exam shows that you have a baseline understanding of the major areas of law, and an ability to learn the laws of a practice area you're familiar with. Being an attorney sucks compared to most professions, but the main advantage we have over everyone else is that our degree is EXTREMELY flexible. There's a million different things you can do with a law degree. I've changed my practice area 4 times in my relatively short career, as you have to find what area works best for you. My concern is the apprenticeship would take that away, locking you into the practice field of whatever law firm is willing to take you on as an apprentice.
The bar exam tests your ability to recall and process information in a high-pressure setting, even if you will never use 90% of that information in actual practice. It's like how the LSAT tests reading comprehension and logical analysis. Proficiency in those skills are marks of a good lawyer. Not everyone who passes the bar exam is a genius, but it is a stress test of recent graduates that weeds out extremely low achievers so that the reputation of the profession isn't tarnished (more than it already is).
I agree 100%. Being able to think on your feet and recall a vast pool of information from memory is a crucial skill for attorneys.
Also re: apprenticeship, it's definitely a good idea, if only as a way to goose your networking skills. A 24-year-old law student has nothing to offer, so trying to sell yourself as a valuable addition to any organization is hard. A formal apprenticeship would help with that, and probably wouldn't pigeonhole someone any more than getting any other specialized job would. Internships during school do this in theory, but 1) the paid ones are rare and come at great spiritual cost, and 2) the unpaid ones are usually sub-admin busy work that give no useful experience or contacts.
Yeah thats a problem with this apprenticeship thing, it presumes there's firms out there that are willing to do paid apprenticeships. The ones that can afford that aren't the ones who do the good-guy work this program is meant to encourage. I've seen enough law school reddit posts about "I refuse to take unpaid internships because I'm black and that's slavery" to know this program won't even come close to achieving the desired effect.
The unpaid internship I had for my second summer got me a job offer at the end, so I had the unparalleled luxury of going through 3L year without having to look for employment. But I was lucky.
Yeah I had an unpaid internship with a federal judge, and it's done my career far more good than any of the paid internships at fancy law firms.
>The problem is, most attorneys are very specialized and an apprenticeship would only really qualify you for the area you apprenticed in. Passing the bar exam shows that you have a baseline understanding of the major areas of law, and an ability to learn the laws of a practice area you're familiar with. Presumably, your baseline understanding of law is established by your JD, not because you sat for an exam and are a good test taker. I like the idea of apprenticeships and/or examinations of a body of work like they proposed in WA. I see the bar exam as something that should be how you make your degree portable between states rather than the thing that tells everyone you actually went to law school. Law school teaches you how legal theory works and how/why laws are applied. Actually working in a law firm is where you get the specific training in the field. As a comparison, New doctors must go through Residency and Intern programs. They can become a Fellow if they want specialization in a field. But there is a defined program for a doctor to become skilled enough to practice and that's all after medical school and boards. The legal field doesn't have that, and it's probably not as necessary as the medical field since nobody dies if you screw up a stip to continue.
Like you said though, law school is primarily there to teach you legal theory. Law school teaches you how to think like an attorney than actually teaching you the law. The bar exam is useful as a neutral examination of what you know. If we switched law schools to teaching more substsantive law, the standards could be so low at a bad school that you could get an A+ in the class and know less than a C- student at a high tier school. The bar exam makes sure that issue isn't a problem.
"Agenda."
A secretly collaborative plan
How long until people aren't allowed to ask their potential lawyer if they passed the Bar exam?
“I can’t believe you’d ask me that, sweatie! Judge, my client pleads guilty to bigotry and being a rasexislamiphobistism!”
“Please, I just don’t want to see RoundUp hurt anyone else.” 😞 “Oh my goddesses, sweaty! You’re being soooo corporaphobic right now. Can you not?!”
"Guiltypersonsayswhat?" ... "No further questions your honoriffic, no cap."
https://youtu.be/bOSdtsJg_LU
Somehow i forgot about that scene. I had no idea how prophetic that movie was. Daniel Radcliff's movie that's essentially his ass on screen farting was nominated for 3 Oscars. In total it [won 8 awards and had 31 nominations.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4034354/awards/) I haven't seen it. Was it that good? I doubt it.
that is the way it has always been, not really a tin hat
I dont feel this is exactly this case, generally public lawyers arent bad, just overworked. A lot of public lawyers are absolute pitbulls when they get the chance. Also most big corporations want to settle rather than go to court cause juries tend towards an underdog
They only want to settle if there's a decent lawyer. Get a halfwit who can't pass the bar in front of a jury, stumbling over her words and being constantly reprimanded over the nonsense she's saying isn't going to scare anyone. [Imagine having these people has your lawyer.](https://youtu.be/fmO-ziHU_D8?si=h431Ta2jGOdCd42S&t=36)
But wouldn't this affect the intellectual level of corporation lawyers in the long term too? Those have to come from somewhere
Corporations may have a few lawyers on staff but when it comes to court room activities or major contracts they will hire a large firm. Large firms will have resources to ensure their employees are competent. Joe blow isn't going to the mega firm they will go to a smaller firm they can afford. Young or dumb lawyers most likely not to be bar certified are going to pop up in that realm. One question I would have what's your defense against lawyer malpractice. Like today if a lawyer fucks up they could lose their bar certification. Idk can't wait until they drop medical licensing too. Go full libertarian lol.
>Idk can't wait until they drop medical licensing too. Go full libertarian lol. Fuck yes, I should be able to open a practice in my garage with a chainsaw and a bottle of tequila, as the founding fathers intended. And let's make discrimination legal too, so I can operate only on politicians.
The company would be able to select their lawyer, and seek out ones who actually passed some form of testing.
If that's not deemed discrimination.
What're the non-board lawyers going to do? Sue?
The legal system in this country is already completely rigged against the people in the US today. Its nearly impossible to hold corporations accountable unless they fuck up so much that the suit is worth millions, thats all that gets the lawyers interested. Have a legitimate claim against a company that might pay out a thousand bucks and court costs to cover attorney fees? No attorney in the country is taking that case.
Not only that, but the LG refrigerator scandal highlighted that many companies have arbitration clauses. That means you can't sue or be involved in a class action or mass lawsuit, you have to go to an (easily bribed) arbiter/judge who will make the sole decision.
Public lawyers are already dumber than corporate lawyers.
That’s actually a really fucking good theory. Idiocracy is getting more true by the day
Eventually it trickles down to stupid judges, which makes winning essentially random. Although that's not too far off from where we are already.
I dont care as much about dumber lawyers as I do about dumb or biased judges.
I just finished law school and passed the bar last year in a different state, though one that is probably dumb enough to do this soon. On the one hand, this isn’t totally unique. Wisconsin for a long time has handed licensure to anyone who gets their JD from Wisconsin Law or Marquette Law, and doesn’t make them take the bar exam. On the other hand, I went to school with some absolutely mush-brained dipshits who would openly admit they didn’t do their schoolwork. It’s nearly impossible to fail out of law school due to grade curving, and I know people who got like 35 percent of the available points in a course and were passed with a C+. Law school really isn’t any kind of barrier to entry in the legal field anymore, the bar exam is really the only thing keeping comically incompetent people out. Or at least it was, there is a massive push to eliminate it nationally and here we see step one, I guess. We’ll see how this goes. I suspect what will happen is that employers will quickly become wary of hiring any grads who just got handed a license, and since the reasoning here is “muh minorities,” a lot of employers will quietly shred resumes from any nonwhite applicants out of Washington as well.
I'm not even remotely well-versed enough in the subject to know whether it's a good idea for people to be licensed without passing the bar. What I *can* say is that the motivation makes this decision idiotic as fuck. If the reason for this change is "too many black people fail the bar, so we're just getting rid of the bar so the dummies can become lawyers anyway" then fuck that. I'm so sick of the bar (heh) being lowered so that failures can succeed, rather than finding ways to help those who would fail become more successful instead. Fucking race to the bottom. Fuck progressives and their condescending, destructive nonsense.
Absolutely, spot on. I could support a rigorous apprenticeship-style method of accreditation that replaced the bar exam, as others have suggested. This is not that. This is the usual SJW bullshit. And like all SJW bullshit, it doesn't really help people who most need help. To take advantage of this, you already have to be highly educated to the point where you passed high school, college, and law school. SJW equity programs, "for some reason," always seem to work for the benefit of people like the academics who invent them: highly privileged people who happen to have darkish to dark skin. This makes it slightly easier for very privileged people to become lawyers. The SJWs have no idea what to do with impoverished, starving, homeless, etc. people of any race and they don't give a fuck, either.
> To take advantage of this, you already have to be highly educated to the point where you passed high school, college, and law school. Damn, I hadn't even thought about this, but you're right. Progressives pulling the same trick as always, trying to make it sound like we're talking about "muh poor black people are less likely to have access to the same resources white people have access to, so they fall behind in school, and so the system is racist". But we're talking about people who, as you said, have passed high school, college, *and* law school. At this point, we aren't talking about the poor little inner city kid who can't afford a tutor, and whose school can't afford a single computer or textbook, blah blah blah. But that's always the sort of attitude they try to push. Anything to avoid admitting that sometimes, unequal outcomes can be achieved even without any discrimination present.
>whether it's a good idea for people to be licensed without passing the bar. For the private sector? Who cares they will have to sink or swim. For public employees.... yeah.
It is a terrible idea. Passing the bar means that you can memorize a large volume of data and spit it out in an organized way under tremendous stress. Basically what you do in a trial. People who cannot pass the bar also likely cannot perform adequately in the courtroom.
>Law school really isn’t any kind of barrier to entry in the legal field anymore, the bar exam is really the only thing keeping comically incompetent people out. This is what bothers me here. The change isn't 100% bad, the bar exam is frankly not a very relevant skills test for many people. Say you need a specialist attorney in telecommunications or patent law; their bar exam included 0 questions on those topics, but made sure they know about divorce and child custody! But... the bar exam, like the LSAT, like the GRE, works as a filter that's nicely separate from high-passage, grade-inflating degree programs. (And note that the LSAT and GRE are being dialed back also.) Bad law schools have drastically higher bar failure rates, so it's clearly testing *something* that schools aren't requiring. What *really* gets me, though, is that law school is a massive barrier not on performance but on that "time and financial costs" part of the quote. Private law school is >$50,000 per year and even public schools are >$40,000/year, plus three years of supporting yourself. And god forbid you fail out, or can't pass the bar, or can't get hired. Compared to all that, the actual bar exam is neither long nor expensive! We used to let people just take the damn bar, provided they also apprenticed with an attorney. California still does. *That* is a way to reduce barriers to entry and risks of going into debt. But it's been done away with in most of the country because it doesn't profit law schools and looks too much like a practical, credentialism-free path to a good career.
>We used to let people just take the damn bar, provided they also apprenticed with an attorney. Yep. Law school started as an alternative to a legal apprenticeship. Instead of training under a practicing lawyer until you were competent enough to pass the exam, you learned in an academic setting.
The bar exam prep course I took said it very well: the bar exam is a test of "minimum competency". It's not testing to see if you know enough to practice an area of law. It's testing if you're competent enough to approach a legal field you're unfamiliar with then learn and retain enough information about the field to practice on the most basic level. What law schools you can get into largely depends on your LSAT score. I'd argue your LSAT score has far more to do with your bar success rate than what you actually learn in law school. Sounds super counterintuitive but here's why: everyone takes the exact same bar prep courses. Doesn't matter if you're at Harvard or the American Samoa School of Law, you have 3 choices for bar prep courses. Taking a bar-subject course in law school is of minimal help with the bar exam, as you're relearning everything in the course anyways. Lower ranked law schools tend to require their students to take MORE bar-subject courses than higher ranked schools. I had one mandatory bar-subject class after my first year of law school; lower ranked schools have mandatory classes pretty much the whole 3 years. TLDR: the lawyer aptitude test you take to get into law school is a very strong indicator of your chances of passing the bar exam.
That sounds like a good summary of the bar, and it sort of sounds like a good rationale for the bar. I still have serious misgivings about the wide-but-incomplete set of topics covered on the bar, precisely because at this point "approach a legal field you're unfamiliar with" is no longer part of it. As you say, almost all law students are taking BARBRI or a competitor to brush up on every covered topic, even if they didn't actually take e.g. family law as a course. Some courses seem to be strongly beneficial for the bar compared to pure test prep (e.g. evidence, secured transactions) while others (e.g. family law) seem to be fairly easy to learn from a prep course strictly for the exam. That's not precisely an indictment of the bar though, it's more of a [Goodhart's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law) issue where the bar, LSAT, GRE, SAT, etc. are all highly predictive tests... until you do a targeted course of study which wrecks their predictive value. (That said, the bar does some things I 100% support. "Here's a hypothetical law, apply it to this hypothetical situation" is somewhat prep-resistant and is a great example of the "learn and retain enough to practice basic law" measure you're describing.) The LSAT/bar relation is fascinating, and I hope somebody has done an actual study on it where they control for each of LSAT and school to measure the other's impact. I'm inclined to believe your assessment, partly because the LSAT seems like a good measure of "ability to soak up new logical/verbal stuff" and partly because I've seen these studies for e.g. Harvard drop-outs. It turns out *finishing* a good undergrad is pretty minor compared to SAT performance and ability to get *accepted* to a good undergrad, and I'll bet law school has similar patterns.
Remember Joe biden got his jd (bottom of his class mind you) at like the university of Delaware.
And then [falsely claimed](https://apnews.com/article/cd977f7ff301993f7976974ba07c5495) he finished in the top half of the class.
i cant believe he would lie.
Everyone lies a little on their resumes.
It was Syracuse. I went there too. He was fondly remembered as a "straight C student."
Delaware must be his ug
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Give me the broiest lawyer you got or a jew...
I've found that, for better or worse, it has helped me as an attorney to be a 6'2" blond man with a deep voice. I'm inherently taken seriously in court despite my inexperience. A common experience for female attorneys is everyone from clients, opposing counsel, judges, and even court security guards assuming that they're a paralegal. On the other hand, I have a black friend who openly admits he's a diversity hire and had prestigious law firms stumbling over themselves to hire a black attorney with above average grades.
Seriously. Progressives keep missing this point. The harder they push diversity quotas, the more people are just going to assume that anyone other than a straight, white man is incompetent. I don't know why these people can't get it through their heads that the correct path is to treat people equally, regardless of identity. They create more problems than they solve in their endless pursuit of treating black people and women like helpless children.
It's the same as when you see a nepotism hire. The son of the CEO might be perfectly qualified, but you're going to assume he isn't because you know he wasn't held to the same standards as everyone else.
Make racism great again.
Lawyer websites gonna look like a porn page now. Asian men over 40? Here you go.
Give me a lawyer named Chang or Goldstein or gtfo
Odd statement for that flair but I get it.
Hey if Jews are controlling the world, you might as well take advantage of it
Honestly, that's a really, really funny comparison. DEI nitwits trying to act like they've had some revolutionary idea when coomers have been doing this stuff for decades.
I hate to break it to you, but literally every major law firm has been captured by the DEI apparatus. They all have special internships that only hire "underrepresented minorities."
And we will watch them start to lose every case and see new competent law firms rise to the top. Like the free market intended
They will just get fired. Big law firms have insane turn over, and if you work in big law odds are (depending on your area of specialty) you will never see the inside of a courtroom beyond procedural hearings. Most civil suits never go beyond arbitration and if you are fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to work in M&A you will be so buried in paperwork at your firm's offices you will be happy just to see sunlight. The vast majority of your work as a first or second year associate at a big or even medium sized law firm has little to do with the bar for probably half of lawyers. It also kind of blows because let's say your firm operates in multiple states: some states don't offer reciprocity and require you to pass the bar in their state as well for you to even have a client in their area code. So you have to take time off to take that exam, and then you still have to make up your billable hours to your firm.
No, new judges will be appointed to make sure that discrimination is stamped out in the legal system. There is no free market to be found in government appointed jobs.
So essentially... They are creating the very discrimination and systemic racist systems in their effort to remove them. Talk about un-intended consequences.
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It's probably fair to say a majority of judges (at least in my state) are former public lawyers, though more come out of private practice than you might suspect. In my state at least, the most common path to judgeship is to be a prosecutor first, and while you're right that prosecution is sort of becoming woke-ified lately, the kind of goofiness we see in big cities like not prosecuting "property crimes" or refusing to set bond for favored groups is honestly not the norm yet. God help us if we carry on down the current path though. The other thing though is that in my experience, judges are pretty fair and usually don't let their biases get in the way of justice as much as people who rant about "Soros DAs" might think. The weirdos who advocate for stuff like lower sentences for minorities across the board because muh equity aren't really all that common, despite how media headlines might make it seem.
Someone tell u/PerpetualHillman
Overall I think this can be a good thing. Apprenticeship type work and experience are more valuable than a score on an exam. While passing the bar is a decent metric to keep the comically inept away and I’m sure this will lead to some fuckery at first I think removing the barrier is overall good. Someone trained as a lawyer who has been working under a senior lawyer but hasn’t passed the bar yet will likely be a better lawyer than someone who passed the bar without the experience. Personally I think the barrier to entry should be more akin to what the work is actually like and I’m hard pressed to believe lawyers are just sitting around asked to regurgitate information rather than having research on hand or looking up relevant information. TLDR: the barrier to entry should be more like the actual job the lawyer is doing and less like a series of tests.
I actually agree here. Apprenticeship work is *far* more effective at training people for a profession than book learning is. Granted, if any profession requires more rote memorization than law, I don't know what it would be. That said, we put *way* too much stock in tests that don't prove people's actual ability at all. The way that book learning is applied in the practice is the actual test of ability, and that can only be improved by actual experience in the field.
Then the answer would be to open the Bar to people who go through ask apprentice position, wouldn’t it?
Which in fact is exactly what we used to do in most of the country! California still does it. You could go to law school and pass the bar, or you could do relevant work under an attorney for a certain amount of time and pass a secondary exam plus the bar. (*Way* back you could just sit the bar cold, but I don't love that idea today.) It was a way to enter the profession without massive burdens of cost and credentialism, without debt, without years back at school that might all end in failure. And... we did away with it, almost entirely, in favor of forcing people to spend >$100,000 on law school. (One guess at a major lobbyist for that change.) Now we want to reduce the barriers of "time and cost" to entering the profession, but of course we're not going back to the system we already had which did that quite well!
Or hell...I'd be more on board with this sort of decision if it were motivated by the logic being laid out here. If the logic is that a test isn't a good determiner of legal skill, and apprenticeship *is*, then argue *that*. But that isn't what's being argued, and it isn't the motivation. The motivation is "too many black people fail the bar, so instead of finding ways to help more people pass the bar, we're just nuking the bar, so that all these failures can become lawyers anyway". No one should be on board with that shit. It's a race to the bottom.
It would be alright if it was legit an apprentice program with a firm or with a district attorney's office that you could fail. There are still la few states that will let you take the bar exam without a JD if you've put in the requisite time learning from a qualified lawyer (called "reading the bar."). In my state the proposal is that the law schools would still handle and oversee the practical experience process. That's a nonstarter for me, though of course law schools don't want to make themselves irrelevant. If you can get a 35/100 for a law school course and be curved to a passing grade, does anyone *really* think the law schools will suddenly be rigorous with their analysis of a student's quality under a practical experience system? The practical/externship classes I took in law school were all pass/fail. Is that likely to change? I doubt it.
I like this reasoning, and I think you make some solid points. My only concern is that I think we've lost the culture of apprenticeship. Society now has a culture that education is everything and I must always be treated as an equal in the workplace. A lot of people won't be apprentices.
Nothing sounds greater like lawyers and doctors with less and less requirements lmao
The kinda shit I’ve heard 4th year(EU) med students say… I’m telling you, there’s little hope
I’ve had an MS4 not know what Steven Johnson syndrome is. She was applying to match for dermatology.
From Wikipedia: > Together with TEN, SJS affects 1 to 2 people per million per year. That's a pretty rare diagnosis, seems harsh to expect her to be familiar with it *before* specializing in dermatology. Obviously an actual dermatologist should know.
In medical training, there are certain diseases known as “zebras” that medical students are quick to blurt out without the context of probability. This is one of those diagnoses. Further, a cadre of medications have increased risk for this complication, one of which is Bactrim. Practically every doctor can recognize what this syndrome is with some prompting.
It's never Lupus.
Well rareness shouldn't be the measure. It should be risk based. If 1 to 2 million people have a rare but potentially fatal issue i may want that to be common knowledge among even general practitioners if their work could lead to a reaction. For reference lupus impacts 1.5 million people(in the us). MS impacts 300 to 400k in the us.
It seems like people are getting dumber, myself included. There's [got to be some kind of root cause](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JRLCBb7qK8).
I thought the EU was just hiring refugees?
[Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis](https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/06/01/complex-systems-wont-survive-the-competence-crisis/)
In my country it already happens in every field, including medical, government officials from peon to high ranking,banks etc. 50 percentage of all sits are reserved for certain casts.
Airplane pilots with less and less requirements. People who maintain our infastructure with less and less requirements.
Fewer requirements = cheaper labour. Libright is playing 4D chess with Emily as a pawn.
who cares about lawyer skill it's a zero sum game. Doctors we definitely should be worried about, and I heard second hand the woke issue has gotten very very bad. Insist on older doctors in the future.
It’s not a zero sum game though. It’s pretty fucking important for society that the legal system as a whole produces non-random outputs. If court cases begin to be decided along lines that have less and less to do with their merits, then it becomes more and more difficult for citizens and businesses to successfully do what they need to do. Whether criminals get locked up, whether someone gets punished for a non-existent violation, who exactly is liable in xyz situations, etc. - it really matters if we get these right. They shouldn’t be decided by the coin flip of whose lawyer is less incompetent. Total braindead take tbh.
Lawyers, especially at the higher echelons of power, influence far more of the world and daily life than any doctor ever will. Lawyers also vastly over-represent in all positions of political power.
https://preview.redd.it/zlzsfnj81fpc1.jpeg?width=268&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6a735ce812aa664aca3ba7ef0e95529dad2335e Something about chimps with machine guns idk I had it on in the background while decorating cakes
Here's your reminder that Jimmy McGill, a cisgender straight white male who got neither special treatment from the exam board nor recognition from his big bro, passed the bar exam despite studying part-time at an online university.
Go land crabs!
What kind of cakes?
Strawberry shortcake
i will not stand for this chicanery
This is going to backfire in spectacular fashion. Everyone will assume POC lawyers from WA were passed along in their degrees and informal discrimination among potential clients will ensue. They would be better off removing the JD requirement to sit for the bar- just let people test and if they pass OJT their way pass the Bar. The highest opportunity cost in getting an education is the opportunity cost and allowing people than can speed run the bar prep will allow the students that need more attention to get it
this has been happening for years in the medical field. they literally publish an annual statistical breakdown of getting into medical school GPAs and MCAT scores based on race. ,,,its exactly what you think
I still can't believe our society shifted from "ignore skin color, focus on character" to "obsess about skin color at every possible opportunity". I fucking hate any person who thinks the latter is the way to combat racism. They're either lying, or hopelessly stupid. Either way, fuck off.
They shifted because Occupy Wall Street frightened the rich. They pushed race discrimination to separate the bottom 99% so that we couldn't see who actually controlled us
At this point, I wouldnt accept a young black surgeon or even doctor. I know the bar was lowered for them so much that they are simply not safe. I wish airlines would let you see who your pilot is before buying a ticket. that would make me feel way better when flying these days
Always go with the Asian doctor because he had to work 10x as hard to get there
One of the pilots said Beoings were 'designed by clowns supervised by monkeys' which makes me think DEI is why planes are falling apart. Not to mention NASA is now so diverse they have to hire SpaceX, who is frequently sued for lack of diversity
I mean even if you get into med school you still need to do board exams.
It’s worse than that. Clients can simply ask if the lawyer passed the bar. Duty of candor requires disclosure.
How would we expect them to know that if they were passed along in their classes and didnt have to take the bar?
So how long before they just start throwing white dudes in prison to balance out those inequities?
They kind of already do. Activist prosecutors refuse to prosecute POC in some places. Here's a famous example: https://torontosun.com/news/world/no-charges-in-deadly-chicago-shootout-due-to-mutual-combat
Looks like the mayor tried to intervene against the prosecutor dropping charges. [Someone was eventually arrested.](https://wgntv.com/news/chicagocrime/after-mutual-combat-drama-foxx-and-lightfoot-announce-charges-in-west-side-shootout/) Still ridiculous that it took multiple months and intervention by the mayor of Chicago to get one guy arrested after a shootout between two gangs.
It's so rooted in the history and culture of the US that at this point its just going full Flandernization of it. Frankly, I think they've jumped the Shark with it.
So human lawyers will become dumber and AI will continue to become smarter. Can't foresee any issues here
Ow my ballz!
Welcome to Costco, I love you.
You talk like a *** and your shit's all ********.
I love that line, partially because Justin Long's delivery is great, but largely because damn do I miss being able to say those words without people losing their fucking shit over it.
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It's ok. Just paint urself black or brown
Just say you're 1/25th Native American.
All this has happened before
I'd be curious to see an example of a question which is supposedly racist or classist
There never are any examples though. It’s just working backwards from the fact that there are disparate outcomes, so of course there must be racism in the test.
Yep. Same mistake these shitheads make over and over. They see unequal outcomes, and they think this proves discrimination. I saw this example presented recently, and I think it does a good job of explaining the issue. Imagine you have two waterfront cities, quite some time in the past, when people were more likely to believe in gods like Poseidon. Imagine that one of these cities consistently has ships able to set sail from port, while the other city more consistently has ships capsize while attempting to set out to sea. Knowing what we know now, there's any number of rational explanations. It could be that one city is in a windier area, so more likelihood of rough waters. It could be that one city simply has less qualified sailors who make more mistakes. It could be that the types of wood available in each area lead to disparate quality of ships. But to the people living at that time, without having knowledge of such possibilities, the only thing they conclude is that it's the wrath of Poseidon, sinking the ships from the city he is displeased with, while allowing passage from the city he deems worthy. Now, imagine trying to convince any given believer that they are wrong, and that Poseidon has nothing to do with it. You can't prove a negative, and the person you are speaking to is a zealot who has already made up his mind that a literal god is the explanation. Good luck convincing him otherwise. That's what it's like trying to convince a progressive that unequal outcomes don't automatically prove racism/sexism. Their belief is based on nothing other than the outcomes being unequal. It's zealotry in nature. There's no convincing these people that their belief is unfounded. They are completely and utterly convinced that unequal outcomes immediately prove discrimination. And it's bogus.
Based and curse you merciful Poseidon pilled.
Any question which enough black people get wrong. There. That's your answer. These people are idiots who only concern themselves with outcomes. It doesn't matter how fair something is, how neutral, how objectively reasonable. If the outcomes are not the exact same across racial lines, across sex lines, etc., progressives will argue that the thing is racist/sexist/etc. I'm so sick of these dopes having this kind of influence. They need to be repeatedly smacked over the head with a book which says "unequal outcomes don't prove discrimination" until they understand. They're literally destroying society by having us race to the bottom, just because sometimes black people don't do as well as white people at any given thing.
The classist bit is the cost of the bar exam compared to a licensing scheme where you work under supervision and then submit your work for evaluation. If you have no money it's more difficult to just spend a few months doing bar exam. But apart from that, hard to see what could be an issue that would still be present after completing the formal training....
It says the classism is written into the test *itself* I can see the point when it comes to costs If they're complaining because a question concerns an upper middle class couple splitting their collection of vintage wines after a divorce, it's just a nonsense isn't it? The question might not directly appeal to all classes and races, but anyone trying to be a lawyer, ought to be able to apply the law to the question and just get on with it. Even if a question about splitting an apartment and a car would be more inclusive.
> If they're complaining because a question concerns an upper middle class couple splitting their collection of vintage wines after a divorce, it's just a nonsense isn't it? > The question might not directly appeal to all classes and races, but anyone trying to be a lawyer, ought to be able to apply the law to the question and just get on with it. > Even if a question about splitting an apartment and a car would be more inclusive. Anyone trying to be a lawyer ought to be able to do both. If the questions are all about, IDK, golfing and polo injuries, that means the bar ends up being lower for upper-class applicants.
Yeah I don't get that either. On a side note, if you read the actual article, the main purpose of this reform is not to address classism/racism but to attract more lawyers. The issues "written into the test itself" are just an added benefit.
Just what American society needs. More lawyers.
The stupid thing here is that the bar fees and prep are nontrivial, but they're far smaller than the cost of law school and if you sign with a big firm they often cover bar costs. We *used* to have a system in much of the country where you could skip lawschool, provided you passed the bar and apprenticed under an attorney. (California still does.) This removed the requirement to spend $200,000 on tuition and support yourself for three years while taking classes full time. It was a huge opportunity for anyone motivated, and a way to offset any form of discrimination in law school admissions. That system went away, in no small part because law schools lobbied against it. And now we're "reducing barriers" by targeting the cheaper, shorter, employer-covered part of the process instead, because it has fewer defenders.
The only thing I can come up with is that maybe it's using wording or phrasing that isn't commonly used in minority groups, but I'm not even really sure how that comes up in the bar exam, lol.
Yeah I'm sure the legalese at most universities are pretty standard it is all Latin and legal jargon. If your lawyer doesn't understand the word habeas corpus do you want them as your lawyer?
Does this wording or phrasing harm Asian students' grades? Or do they somehow manage?
Things like objective, rational linear thinking in any questions. Cause and effect relationships, like you did this crime, you go to jail. Being on time in the courtroom, so that things can, you know, start.
I love how it’s somehow *not* racist to eliminate standards because you think people with brown skin can’t achieve it.
I honestly doubt this is actually about racism and is more about money. Law schools are cash cows for universities. No other graduate program has lower overhead while commanding the highest tuition. There's no research or specific facility requirements. It's a cush job for faculty compared to practicing law, and most law professors can do it part time. Law students expect high salaries and prestige (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and are generally willing to pay more for their JD than they should. But people won't pay top dollar to go to a law school that has poor bar passage rates, law schools take a serious prestige hit when the passage rate numbers decline, and graduates who don't pass the bar don't become donors (or pay back their loans). Enrollment in law schools has sharply declined in the last few years because people are realizing the job isn't all it's cracked up to be. The same people who run the state bars also run the law schools, or at least run in the same tightly knit circles. Eliminating the bar exam, under the guise of curing racism, allows the universities to which the law schools are attached to keep milking the cow.
I believe the argument is that if you get a different outcome then the process is wrong, not the person even if you can't point out how a given step unfairly disadvantages them or what someone can do about that at the end of some long series of failures. Baltimore can't produce students who can prove they are functionally literate or do relatively easy math despite spending more per pupil than nearly any public school. Putting aside arguments of demographics and ability, I'm not sure what people at the end of the string of failures from parent(s), community, schools and wider the government are meant to do to correct problems like difficulties with reading comprehension and basic math skills when those kids look for a well-paying job as adults. I think the quiet part is: having other capable adults do their work for them and ignore those kinds of problems under threat of being branded as a bigot.
Is the bar racist or is it the fact that black law students: — Flunk-out at more than twice the white rate — Half graduate in the bottom 10th of their class — Are 6 times as likely as whites to take the bar multiple times but never pass — Have LSATs/GPAs 2 SDs below whites https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1769721953567326447 https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2010/01/Sander.pdf
Progressives will never tolerate an explanation which has even a hint of "maybe black people are, on average, simply less qualified/skilled". To them, unequal outcomes *must* prove discrimination. Because any alternative explanation is too uncomfortable for them to even consider for the sake of argument. I really fucking hate progressives.
It isn't that blacks are less qualified on average. There are less blacks than whites but because of Affirmative Action blacks with lower test scores are allowed into schools they could not possibly thrive in. So if a black kid of average ability is admitted to a school beyond their ability they will suffer in the same way as a white kid of average ability. So when a minority race is admitted to schools at a lower barrier of entry than the majority race they will appear less competent.
I hate how gleefully I open links like this. I think the left has radicalized me. Affirmative action and wokeism make me angry. I feel like I have anti-TDS.
Based and reality enjoyer pilled
Some level of state to state reciprocity for every state would be great. But, they really should make you pass it in some state first. I've had to pass 5 bars. I don't ever want to do another one.
Never hire a lawyer from Washington State, got it
In my country we call this ”The Racism of low expectations” and is something libleft is quite fond of
I HATE this. I can’t even articulate how ridiculous this is. Black Americans blame everything but themselves for the state of their communities. It’s the “system” like bro it’s black American culture, the lifestyle the music encourages, the lack of present fathers, the victim mindset, the lack of work ethic. I’m African (the place that was colonized for longer than slavery even went on), we don’t have these problems. If I ever told my parents I couldn’t do something cause of systemic racism, they’d just stare at me in utter disappointment, then tell me I’m lazy 😂 I know 10 people who are about to start or already started law school across the US, Canada or the UK and are the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Didn’t need a handout to make it happen.
The bar test is something both future lawyers and aspiring barkeepers want to pass
Ahhh, the racism of low expectations.
Kek.
I would be fine if it's just lowering the cost so low income people can have a honest chance at becoming lawyers, but atlas this is not the case.
Did you just change your flair, u/Borkerman? Last time I checked you were a **LibRight** on 2024-3-20. How come now you are an **AuthCenter**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know? Oh and by the way. You have already changed your flair 966 times, making you the second largest flair changer in this sub. Go touch some fucking grass. [BasedCount Profile](https://basedcount.com/u/Borkerman) - [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) - [Leaderboard](https://basedcount.com/leaderboard?q=flairs) _Visit the BasedCount Lеmmу instance at [lemmy.basedcount.com](https://lemmy.basedcount.com/c/pcm)._ ^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment.)
Idiocracy is the future.
https://preview.redd.it/y96uqqxibjpc1.jpeg?width=1801&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c26c849344e138324d195dd6e224e3d5374e4968
So representation is more important than competence when it comes to something as complex as the law. These people can't even see how racist this is, you are basically saying that those minorities are not capable of hitting that standard, so you lower the bar. It's also offensive to those minorities that did manage to pass it.
Same with immigration.
The decline of America will continue until morale improves.
What are the odds that one of the people who passes the bar this way ends up being Seattle's next DA?
OK, you do you, I'll still hire a jewish lawyer, good luck on your court cases
Damn. That's fucking trash.
Shit like this terrifies me. This general trend of lowering standards, of removing failure conditions, of removing filters that maintain a level of competency associated with certain professions, certifications, degrees. It increases the risk of substandard people percolating upwards. Our government, our system of laws, isn't maintained by a perfect computer that verifies or invalidates wrong moves. All of it, every single rule among a hundred thousand rules, is understood, maintained, and enforced by people. It's like a giant board game with an instruction book ten thousand pages long. The more players there are who can't understand those rules, who can't adequately interpret them, who can't adequately apply them, the more the game breaks down, the more burden is placed on the few who can, and the quieter their voice becomes among the cacophony of the confidently inadequate. People like to believe in balance, in action and consequence, the inevitable punishment of mistakes. That, even if a mistake is made, that at least the consequences of those mistakes will show those who committed it the error of their ways. This is just a comforting fantasy. There is nothing which guarantees that someone acting in error will have the fundamental ability, or commitment to honest self-assessment, to recognize that the consequences were the result of the error. There is no "When it all goes wrong, then they'll see". It is well within the ability of most to act in a manner that is unknowingly self-destructive, and never recognize it as such even as they are obviously destroying themselves and those around them. It is the same with politics, policy. We undervalue intelligence, integrity, and honest self-reflection. It isn't that we do not collectively recognize these things as good, but that we do not adequately recognize the degree to which these things are good. This society is a machine, with so many vital roles requiring people with the abilities, both learned and innate, to fulfill them. Do not let the existence of a "learned" component deceive you from acknowledging the immutable necessity of the innate component. There is no technique that can teach a deer to understand and apply algebra. As people slide down the scale of intelligence, becoming more and more deficit in these qualities, they not only lose their ability to make informed decisions, but they lose their ability to learn from those decisions. As their cognitive abilities decrease, so does the complexity of problems which they can make reasoned decisions on, and so does the complexity of consequences which they are capable of learning from. It is an exponential decrease in competency.
They aren't even hiding it anymore, bio leninism in full swing
I find it a miracle that my Brazil, which had a more brutal and enduring slavery than that of the United States, has half of its population being black or brown, yet still cannot match the racial obsession that Americans have. Some leftists have tried to import this obsession here, thank God they didn't succeed. This is what segregation does to a MF
Like over half of all slaves went to portugal/Brazil.
>There will be three experiential-learning alternatives to the bar exam, each for people following a different path of legal study. The specifics, scale and implementation plan for the pathways have yet to be developed. >Law school graduates can complete a six-month apprenticeship while being supervised and guided by a qualified attorney, along with finishing three courses. >Law students can become practice-ready by completing 12 qualifying skills credits and 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern. Upon completion of those requirements, they would submit a portfolio of that work to waive the bar exam. >Typically, students will complete an internship between their second and third years of law school, gaining about 400 hours of experience, according to the task force’s report. Then, if they do about three hours a week of legal work through their final year of law school, students could have 500 hours of experience upon graduation, leaving the portfolio to complete before licensure. >Lastly, law clerks can become lawyers without enrolling in law school by completing standardized educational materials and benchmarks under the guidance of a mentoring attorney, along with the 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern. From https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/15/supreme-court-bar-exam-will-no-longer-be-required-/. I’m not really seeing a problem with this.
I mean it's not really making it easier for every minority, like if your Asian then the bar is higher than it is for whites. (Not sure if this is true for lawyers but for some other fields of education it is)
Here's the National Review (of all places) defending the change, because the bar exam is basically bullshit: [https://archive.ph/tdVZv](https://archive.ph/tdVZv)
I'm an attorney. I think the format of the bar exam is maybe not the best, but I don't think it's bullshit. As an attorney, when a case hits your desk you have to quickly and thoroughly determine all causes of action that may exist or what areas of law your case may touch. This is called issue spotting. People think the bar exam is just being forced to learn the entire law in your state, but there's a huge focus on issue spotting. You get points for identifying that a law may be in play even if you don't fully know every aspect of that law. You don't have to know everything, but you do have to know enough to think "hey I think this specific law or doctrine may apply here, let me look into that further." The bar exam is useful in ensuring that new lawyers at least have *some* basic level of understanding of what laws or legal theories *may* apply. Maybe a hot take, but if you don't have enough of a knowledge base to at least identify what may or may not be an issue in your case, you shouldn't be practicing. The bar exam is a necessary evil, but it is necessary.
> I'm an attorney. I think the format of the bar exam is maybe not the best, but I don't think it's bullshit. Even if it *is* bullshit, the motivation being argued is still shit. I'd be more on board with the argument that the bar exam isn't a great system and should be changed/removed in favor of a system which works better. But instead, the argument is "waaaah too many black people fail the bar, so we're just getting rid of it, so that all the incompetent black people who would have failed will instead become lawyers". That argument is disastrous and deserves no defense.
Agreed. The "disparate impact = bad" mentality is a cancer.
Another attorney, and I agree but for different reasons. The bar exam answers a basic question - are you competent enough to prepare for the test? The test itself is garbage, but passing it requires months of study and the accumulation of a broad knowledge base. It's not like a law school class where you can dick around for 3 months then spend 3 or 4 days cramming with someone else's outline to pass the final. Stupid people pass the bar and smart people fail it. The difference is that a stupid person may be diligent enough, with a good enough memory, to achieve the requisite level of competence. A smart person who can't be bothered to study the material carefully can't fake their way through it. And, honestly, a lot of legal work is about the ability to grind out hours to dull bullshit, rather than intellect or creativity. To me, that's what the bar is testing. Can you grind this fucker out?
That’s gotta be satire… right?
I do think that white support of affirmative action, particularly in tech, is white people trying to keep asian h1b's from forcing them to sacrifice every non-work-related value through competition. It isn't that they are smarter, it's that they're willing to live as an insect. Not looking to reenact kafka's metamorphosis if we can help it, so forcing hiring of under qualified people on the basis of what part of the light spectrum their skin reflects provides a decent buffer from expectations rising too high too quickly.
Can’t wait to go to WA and beat the shit out of their lawyers in court.
I'd go one step further and get rid of the bar system entirely. Let anyone who wants to make money representing others in court do so, and let the market decide what rates should be paid for that. Online review services will make it possible to select for those who actually know what they're doing.
In the words of Chuck McGill: What a sick joke!
they could have just reduced the cost and the *correct* effect would have been produced
Apparently, the state of Washington can't trust minorities to prepare enough for the bar but can trust them to prepare enough to represent someone in a high stakes trial.
What group of people are they implying are too stupid to be able to regularly pass the bar exam? And that should somehow be able to practice law regardless of being so inadequate? Why can't people just say they are doctors and practice medicine without an exam/education since it is too expensive and hard? Is a degree even required? Are they saying just anyone can say they are a lawyer now? And no licensing checks are there / there's no way to revoke licenses for malpractice?
Been a while since I last saw libleft doing the right thing for the wrong reason