Allow Anyone to Take the Bar

Allow Anyone to Take the Bar

George Leef^[각주:1]

Updated July 25, 2011, 11:40 AM

The legal profession has long sought to turn itself into a cartel. Among its anti-competitive tactics is mandating that prospective lawyers go through a needlessly long and expensive period of education. The truth is that very little that a lawyer needs to know is learned in law school classrooms and that which is essential, particularly legal research and writing, could easily be learned elsewhere.

In the early 1900s, we had a free market in legal education. People could go to a law school, and the institutions varied considerably. Few schools tried to keep students enrolled for three years, since most students thought the benefits of additional years weren’t worth the costs. But the majority of lawyers did not go to law school at all. Instead, they learned their profession while working in law firms. Many became extraordinary lawyers and jurists.

It’s still true that lawyers learn almost everything on the job. Today, however, they must first go through three years of law school, taking a lot of courses they’ll immediately forget. That high, artificial barrier to entry exists only because the American Bar Association lobbied for state legislation making its model of legal education the only path into the profession. [Read More]

RedSoxFan

Tampa, FL

I have had the experience of being represented by many of the finest law firms in the United States, which has cost me tens of millions of dollars, and I have represented myself in numerous state and federal courts around the country over the past twenty years including, but not limited to, U.S. District Courts in Florida, California, Utah, District of Columbia, New York, Minnesota, South Dakota, Virginia and many more; U.S. Bankruptcy Courts in several jurisdictions; Tax Court; U.S. Court of Federal Claims; U.S. Court of Appeals in the DC Circuit, Second Circuit; Fourth Circuit; Fifth Circuit; Ninth Circuit; Tenth Circuit; and Eleventh Circuit. For the most part, it is clear that law schools contribute almost nothing to the skills and knowledge necessary to practice law. Even when I write a reply brief, I have to check to see if the law has changed since I wrote the initial brief; when I write a motion, I have to check to see if the law has changed between the filing of the motion and the hearing on that motion. Whatever I would have learned in the finest law school would have contributed little to those briefs (and I have attended law classes at Stanford and Harvard).

There are two classes of lawyers and two classes of clients. The ordinary citizen cannot afford to hire a large law firm so he usually goes to a solo practitioner who does not have the resources to battle a large law firm. (Of course, the poor cannot afford to hire anyone.) Most judges are biased in favor of the large law firms. Only very wealthy clients and large companies can afford a large law firm. Most lawyers practicing by themselves cannot charge an ordinary citizen what it costs to do the work properly and thoroughly because no client will pay $200 to $400 per hour (or more) for the amount of time it takes to research and write most legal papers, and prepare and attend a hearing on that paper.

At large law firms, most papers are researched and written by young inexperienced clerks and then read and reread by senior lawyers so the charges are often doubled and tripled. This is done to "save the client money" but the truth is that clerks are under tremendous pressure to maximize billable hours so the charges are often significantly more than if they were done by one efficient lawyer.

One partner can utilize many hungry clerks who are paid a fraction of what the firm bills the client, thereby maximizing billings. What makes all of this so much worse is that the federal judges, appointed for life and accountable to no one, could care less about the law, the truth or justice, especially if a government agency is involved. They screw the average citizen so routinely and so often that I am not sure any of them even realize it is wrong after a while. The higher one goes in the federal legal system, the worse it gets. Appellate judges could be society's most dishonest citizens and very few outside of the legal profession even have a clue as to how little regard these men and women have for our nation's laws. When it comes to our most precious laws that affect our liberty and our constitutional rights, most federal judges could care less. They cheat people every day and only those directly involved even have a clue as to how dishonest and awful the federal judicial system has become.

But one can hardly blame the federal judges. If they rule against the government, the IRS and the US Attorneys are there to make sure they pay the price. If they rule in favor of the government, nothing bad can happen to them and they are considered good candidates for promotion to a higher court. So anything that can be done to allow ordinary citizens to participate in this awful, dishonest system might lead to improvement. Surely, it cannot make it any worse than it is now.

But, until we change the federal legal system to hold federal judges and government lawyers accountable, it will never provide our citizens with justice. It will simply mean the ordinary citizen gets screwed at a better price. At the present, one is far more likely to get a fair shake in state court than in federal court but that does not say much given that one has almost no chance in the federal system. Presently, any person without a license to practice law who attempts to help someone with their legal problems risks going to jail for the unlicensed practice of law. I was threatened with this myself even though I did not charge a penny for my work.

July 25, 2011 at 11:43 p.m.

george

Portland, Maine

Your notable failure to include a practicing lawyer in this debate only serves to highlight the paradoxical rift between the legal academy and legal practice in this country. Law professors scoff that they do not "teach a trade" and write high-minded articles for law journals, while practicing lawyers confront daily, in courts and at conference tables, the factual raw material from which law is "made" and cast a bemused eye towards the ivory tower looking down on them. The sad irony is that because of this disconnect, many law school graduates leave law school lacking the basic tools they need to succeed at their chosen profession (writing - the one task every lawyer, whatever her position, does every day - is a particular weak suit), and are forced to "learn on the job" while wondering why it was borrowed to the hilt to earn their degree in the first place.

Imagine if med school professors turned up their noses at their students who chose to see patients for a living...

July 23, 2011 at 1:47 a.m.

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David Favre

Lansing MI

Sorry, your position is so extreme as to not be worthy of consideration. If the bar exam tested for what was learned in law school - skills, ethics, public policy, professionalims - then we could have a discussion. But it does not. When you see the very poor writing skills of many college graduates, it is shocking. Part of the first year of law school has to be spent being sure they know how to write. Professor of law for thirty years.

July 23, 2011 at 12:03 a.m.

JerryXYZ

NYC

The problem with that theory is that it assumes ability to pass the bar signifies that a person is ready to start practicing as a lawyer. It clearly does not. Anyone who has taken the bar will know that the only skills it exercises is memorization, the ability to answer multiple choice questions, and the ability to mimic model answers to short essay questions. None of this is relevant to the practice of law. The skills one learns in law school are much more relevant.

July 23, 2011 at 5:48 a.m.

realnyer

nyc

I agree that what you learn in law school could be a lot more practical - more in-depth specialized classes, trial advocacy, clinics, etc. But the Bar exam is even less practical or relevant to law practice than is law school - for the Bar, you (re)learn lists of things you will immediately forget and 95% of which you will never use in practice, and it does not teach you how to reason or analyze, much less write. Improve law schools and you can eliminate the Bar exam.

July 23, 2011 at 4:07 a.m.

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Donna

St. Petersburg, FL

After graduating from law school, I took a bar review course to prepare for the bar exam. The lecturers in this review course were far superior to the professors in law school and covered everything in 6 weeks to allow us to pass the bar. Why did we need to go to an expensive law school and spend all that money? if you can pass the bar exam, you should be able to practice law. Another consideration is, if you graduate from an accredited law school, why should you have to take the bar exam

July 22, 2011 at 9:51 p.m.

1. a graduate of Duke University Law School, is the director of research at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy [본문으로]