Known for testing for minimum competency and failing to do its job, bar exam reform advocates have spent years pushing for a meaningful alternative. The perfect solution would be if all law schools did a good enough job of teaching students how to be lawyers that they were work-ready by the time they cross the stage, alas, no such luck. The lion’s share of energy has been spent on making the bar exam better — less expensive, less time consuming, more equitable. While the future is bright for a reformed bar, it isn’t guaranteed. Paul Caron gives a snapshot of the difficulties of NextGen adaptation on TaxProf Blog, courtesy of a new paper by Professors Nachman N. Gutowski (UNLV), Ashley London (Duquesne), Steven Foster (Oklahoma City), Taylor Israel (Thomas Jefferson), :
The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is actively promoting the NextGen Bar Exam (NextGen) as an inevitable and necessary replacement for the current Uniform Bar Examination (UBE)…While the NCBE touts early commitments to the NextGen Bar Exam, these commitments represent only a fraction of the total jurisdictions and even less of the examinees nationally. Many jurisdictions, particularly those with the largest numbers of bar exam takers, have yet to commit to adopting the new exam.
The takeaway here may be to remember the Metaverse. I’ll actually give you a second to remember it. It was huge upon rollout; people took the Metaverse so seriously that they began buying virtual real estate for millions of dollars. Now, the supposed future of virtual working can’t even compete with Zoom. Bitcoin and Blockchain were supposed to be the bedrocks of our future economy. Now, anyone who still believes that probably also thinks that their Bored Ape portfolio will have a second wind.
Innovation doesn’t always translate to adoption. The future of the bar may be NextGen. It may also be apprenticeships — a growing number of states are adopting programs that let prospective attorneys shadow people with years of experience in the field. These approaches to vetting offer a way to separate the wheat from the chaff while also providing hands-on experience that probably contributes more to being a lawyer than getting really good at knowing which of the five provided answers has the best shot of being right.
Questioning The Inevitability Of The NextGen Bar Exam [TaxProf Blog]
Earlier: Oregon’s Supreme Court Could Greenlight Hands-On Bar Exam Replacement
Washington’s Supreme Court Green-Lights Three Ways To Skip The Bar Exam
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
