Law Professor Calls For Elimination Of Bar Exam Requirement After Latest Results Show Large Racial Gap
“If the bar exam is a known impediment to access to the legal profession, it is beyond time that our accrediting bodies recognize alternative measures of professional competence.”
Many colleges in the country are starting to eliminate standardized testing requirements for admission. Law schools might follow.
The logic behind this is the idea that if some racial groups don’t do as well on the Bar Exam, there must be something wrong with the exam.
Ayanna Alexander reports at Bloomberg Law:
Racial Gaps in Bar Passage Force Reckoning With Legal Education
Paving a path for minority lawyer candidates needs to start well before law school to tackle long-standing racial disparities, attorneys said.
“The pipeline begins with the legal profession playing a role in addressing inequality in the education system—K through 12,” said Dayna Bowen Matthew, dean and Harold H. Green professor of law at the George Washington University Law School.
The law profession, still struggling to diversify its ranks, faces new data showing significant gaps between White law graduates and minority law graduates—most notably, at the bar level. An ABA survey, released Tuesday, found that White law school graduates were more likely to pass the bar exam than test takers from other racial and ethnic groups in 2020…
“The most important thing that the ABA can do is to unequivocally support alternative paths to licensure through supervised practice, clinical or experiential education or a program like the Lawyers Justice Corps,” Marsha Griggs, associate law professor and director of academic support and bar passage at Washburn University School of Law, said in an email. “If the bar exam is a known impediment to access to the legal profession, it is beyond time that our accrediting bodies recognize alternative measures of professional competence.”
Back in March, the ABA Journal reported that some states were trying to make the Bar easier to pass:
Several states consider lowering cut scores on bar exam, making it easier to pass
Rhode Island has followed California’s lead in lowering the bar exam cut score to make the test easier to pass, a step that several other states are also considering.
The Rhode Island Supreme Court lowered the score needed to pass the bar exam from 276 to 270 and made the change retroactive to the February 2021 exam, Bloomberg Law reports. The court said in its March 25 order that it was following the recommendation of the state’s board of bar examiners…
Rhode Island’s move followed decisions by several other states to temporarily lower cut scores for the October 2020 exam. They are Washington, Oregon, North Carolina and Hawaii, according to Bloomberg Law. The states cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason. All except Oregon extended the lower cut scores through the February 2021 exam, and Washington said it was extending the lower score at least through July.
Last week, the ABA Journal published data showing 2020 Bar Exam pass rates by race:
New ABA data parses out bar exam pass rates by race and ethnicity
According to data released Tuesday by the American Bar Association’s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, 87.65% of the white candidates who took a bar exam for the first time in 2020 passed. For people of other races or ethnicities, the first-time pass rate ranged from 66.28% to 79.92%.
According to the data, in 2020 there were 19,453 first-time test-takers who were white. Among other first-time test-takers:
– The pass rate for Asians was 79.92% out of a total of 1,972 candidates.
– The pass rate for Native Americans was 78.02% out of a total of 182 candidates.
– The pass rate for Hawaiians was 77.5% out of a total of 40 candidates.
– The pass rate for Hispanics was 75.59% out of a total of 3,638 candidates.
– The pass rate for Blacks was 66.28% out of a total of 2,328 candidates.Additionally, the data said the pass rate for a total of 1,020 first-time test-takers of mixed race was 81.76%. There were 182 test-takers who were nonresidents of the U.S., and their pass rate was 86.34%.
I am no legal scholar, but instead of doing away with the Bar Exam, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on getting better instruction and additional help to those who need it to pass?
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Comments
Society has operated on the assumption that this is a problem which can be solved. It cannot, at least not yet.
Well, it seems to me that if you fail the first time around, the solution would be to take it again. Isn’t that how the old African saying goes, that if at first you don’t succeed, try try again? Heck I remember learning that in the second grade. That was the happiest two years of my life.
Bring back trial by combat?
Scalpels at a privileged distance. The first colorful clump that takes a knee is no longer viable.
What about Engineering?
… White engineers need master all ten digits.
… Non-White engineers only five or six digits.
… And those smarty-pants Asians? Well, maybe two new digits can be created so they have to master twelve.
Call it Heckquity.
Actually, there are numerous number systems, binary, octal, hexadecimal are common. And computers based on different, as on 4, 8, 12 (old Digital Equipment), 16, 32 and 64, 128, 256, and 512 and chainable 4 bit slice processors where you can chain many together.
The series Sliders had an episode in a dimension where trail lawyers had six guns at their side. The client with the fastest gun usually won their case.
I can’t wait until lawyers that can’t pass a test sue engineers that were taught math is racist over accidents caused by the latter’s mathematical errors. Then and only then, can we say we’ve reached the pinnacle of wokeness.
They made a movie out of that. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: “Idiocracy.”
If you are a graduate of a Wis law school, you do not have to pass the bar to be admitted.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), not limited to racism.
That said, 50 shades of “Every Child Left Behind”, Some, Select [Black] Lives Matter, and other Pro-Choice initiatives.
Does anyone see a problem with lowering all standards all of society to serve 12% of people who perform at the lowest level academically?
For 50 years we had Affirmative Action to raise people up to societal standards.
Guess people came to conclude that AA was not working. So their answer is to bring everyone else down.
Can anyone think of a society in history that succeeded with a lowest-common denominator approach ? Any? Because I cannot.
But I know plenty that failed with that approach: Cuba, Venezuela, USSR.
Affirmative action failed when it mutated and progressed as diversity [dogma], inequity, and affirmative discrimination.
They just never had the Smartest Men™ in charge. THIS TIME we’ll put the Smartest Men™ in charge and it will all go swimmingly. Or maybe another 100 million will die.
The first answer when it became clear that AA was not working was to start handing out sham degrees. I clearly remember when there was a huge push of the narrative that the performance gap was because if environment, They tried to marginalize scientists whose research showed otherwise. People who cannot or are too lazy to perform now are demanding that those who can and do grease their palms.
The entire problem is that the K-12 system has been catering to the lowest common denominator in every discipline since the late ’60’s. It has finally reached math, the only class where there is one correct answer. Now it’s being called racist to make someone figure out that 2+2=4. Asians have a problem with bar exams because the law is an inexact science, which doesn’t reward the Asian’s well known work ethic so much as it rewards creative, out of the box thinking. Blacks have claimed every form of test discriminates against them, from the SAT to ASVAB to the ACT. Activists claiming every test is racist is akin to the claim that voter ID laws put blacks at a disadvantage. First you are flooded with reasons why blacks are equal, how much they’ve progressed, etc. Then in the next sentence the activists claim that since “dem poor ol’ black folks ain’t smart enuf to gets no ID, it’s raciss”. Well, which one is it? Either blacks are smart enough to keep up, or they have a defect that makes them eligible for assistance in every arena of public life. You can’t have it both ways. With the age of the internet, the excuse that blacks are sheltered from anything no longer holds water.
It hasn’t held water since the dawning of broadcast radio.
I’ve been saying that all along.
It speaks volumes to me that, after the 50 year experiment of having a thumb on the scale that we now have to lower ourselves because of “feels”.
100% Agree.
The thumb I refer to is, of course the Federal thumb.
The federal thumb is a marvelous thing. Many people still don’t realize that the reason those “big bad banks” redlined marginal neighborhoods beginning in the 1930s is precisely because the federal agencies whose loan guarantees they depended on required them to do it.
When you study history skeptically, it’s amazing how much of the “systemic racism” in America was caused by federal and state laws REQUIRING people who never wanted to be racist to be racist.
Is this new program of eliminating proven qualifications a frank admission that black people are just plain inferior? I’m not the only person making that point. There have been more than a few black people making the exact same point in their protests to CRT.
A black bloc? A “person of color” (i.e. racist designation)? No, the statistical black, a number, a quota, a democratic lever, a colorful clump of cells.
They may get a bar card, but where will they get clients? This is probably the best way possible to make sure that people in need of legal assistance avoid black, and other AA entitlees, at all cost,
Plenty of clients if they just become a Public Defender and plenty of success these days with bail reform.
Said blacks might be making those points, but the question then becomes if they are savoring the fruit while cursing the vine.
The Onion is getting a little out there these days
Great! We are already saddled with judges who make up law and now will have attorneys who don’t even know the law.
Now do air traffic controllers…
And do surgeons.
Our future:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAcWE_mwaU4
We already have incompetent attorneys, some of whom are white.
🙂
+10
It’s not that black people perform poorly, it’s that those who embrace the ghetto gangster culture reject school, hard work and honest. They leach off of society on welfare and crime. The solution is to end welfare for those who can work and stop increasing benefits for women who have children while on welfare.
Open borders assure Blacks will be a perpetual underclass by making it nearly impossible for Black people to free themselves from dependence on the government.
I guess Dems are happy about this because they can continue to feed the BS that Blacks are victims – and Blacks will buy it. What they don’t seem to realize is that they are actually victims of Dem policies.
Sounds like they want to give out participation awards.
They also want quotas which limit prosecution to the same percentage or less than average.
“Equity” IS participation awards.
Any IQ-like test gives the results that IQ tests do, averaged by race.
Just abolish the ABA and let anyone “identify” as a lawyer who wants to.
No, even better…
Lawyers use “Esquire,” right? Well, let’s just broaden the analogy.
Get rid of the exam. Do lawyers like we did knights. Kneel down in front of the king, and he decides all by himself whether to dub you, or not.
Saves a hell of a lot of paperwork, for precisely the same result.
Where do I sign up? 😉
Meghan and Harry are doing it on the side. You can find it under Sussex Royal Brand.
Sounds good to me. The true purpose of the Bar is to limit the supply of lawyers. So they can charge big bucks per hour and treat their non-multimillionaire clients like they’re doing them a favor. They recently made disbarment a political weapon to attack Giuliani. And have now decided to dispense with minimal merit and competency standards as a criteria for practicing law.
There are two separate issues here:
1) When the consumers of legal services shop for lawyers, how can they be assured that the firm/person selected will be competent.
2) How can the profession guarantee that the new lawyer has an adequate set of skills? This is more of a debate because many people would expect a lawyer to have a mastery of the English language, oral presentation skills, writing skills, and general analytical skills. These skills correlate to higher scores on IQ tests, standardized tests, high school and college grades, and (we hope) law school grades.
If public policy finds factor #1 important, then we don’t want to lower the cut off grade for passing the bar exam.
If public policy finds factor #2 important, then we could consider “supervised practice, clinical or experiential education or a program the Lawyers Justice Corps,” What is not being said is that while society as a whole has high expectations for its lawyers, social justice warriors question how standards developed by “dead white men” can be fairly imposed upon people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Let’s be clear, the standards for admission to the bar are designed to protect consumers of legal services and to protect the overall process that in turn depends upon competent lawyers on both sides. It is not an instrument of racial oppression designed to oppress poorly prepared candidates for bar admission. If we allow people into the bar at a lower standard because certain identity groups frequently score low, then we will stigmatize all minority lawyers and we will oppress members of minority groups that will seek legal services from those people in a greater proportion because they may to realize the deficiency.
A cynic would respond to this in light of the recent Coca Cola scandal where its General Counsel demanded that African-Americans be assigned to Coke’s legal work, without regard to competence. “If a major firm like Coca Cola does not want to protect itself from substandard legal work, why should the ABA and the Bar Admissions testers protect them?” However, two wrongs do not make a right, and if a person cannot master the skills and knowledge to pass the bar exam, we are not doing that person a favor by lowering the standards.
“When the consumers of legal services shop for lawyers, how can they be assured that the firm/person selected will be competent.”
If they’re doing it now by the very fact of licensure, they’re doing it wrong now.
A government license means squat. Less than squat. Always has, except now we can point to Uber and Lyft to keep proving it.
It’s more important to me that a tradesman be insured than be licensed. And for most jobs, even the insured part isn’t all that crucial.
Beyond substantive law, the bar exam tests the ability to make coherent written statements under time pressure, which is a requisite of much of the practice of law. Many AA law students lack the ability to write at the level once expected of a high school graduate. That can’t be taught In law school.
Go down to the traffic court and watch the junior DA’s in action, and then tell me you think passing a bar exam or having a law degree indicates a form of proficiency.
Were I a movie producer I’d make a comedy based on that, group.
“Night Court’s” been done.
Had this discussion in the early seventies. I worked in medicine. Blacks were being admitted to medical. schools with much lower scores than whites were allowed. A coworker was arguing their case, saying it was only fair. (There were black docs who had not gotten through medical school with lowered expectations at that time). I asked her to tell me which neurosurgeon she would choose, not knowing their qualifications, the black one or the white one. She couldn’t answer.
Now, the best pediatrician we had at that time was black. He had gone through school before affirmative action. His book was full, no new patients. He was wonderful.
Further, it is not fair to those minority physicians who meet the qualifications because anyone with a brain will likely assume that said physician got to his or her professional place based on AA.
Common problem I have a friend with 4 children, each accomplished in their field. Two are medical docs, one a chemical engineer and I have forgotten the field of the youngest. All black, all worked hard, none helped by affirmative action.
They know they are looked at in that manner.
Sad.
Are any of them speaking up?
Exactly. I’m an academic physician. I’m fortunate to teach at a first-tier university that has no “AA hires”. All our faculty regardless of color are excellent, and I trust them all clinically. I shudder to think how an academic medical center would work if I couldn’t.
Massinsanity notes the fairness issue. That’s also exactly correct. A good friend from residency days, one who went on to chair a department, was black and absolutely brilliant, and bitterly resented the whole AA process as demeaning to him. I think he was right.
He was right. The left truly sees black people as inferior in every possible way and think that the only way they can advance is through unfair policies that are little more than the soft racism of low expectations. We see this ALL the time when it comes to black conservatives, how many times do we see lefties moan about Clarence Thomas and how he should be grateful to Democrats for Affirmative Action, which they insist is the only possible way a black man could achieve his level of success. They truly believe that. It’s sickening.
Until really quite recently, with the adoption of these overtly racist condescending wokeist ideas like black people can’t possibly comprehend basic maths, learn/speak standard English, . . . or pass the bar, Affirmative Action was a relatively bipartisan attempt to level the playing field within accepted norms. Those norms are being tossed out the window now in favor of an absolutely suicidal lowering of standards that will lead only to disaster; engineers who don’t know maths, but are super aware of how important it is to lower emissions and go “green”; physicians who don’t only not know maths but who can’t do medicine–and what they can manage, they refuse to do for whites because CRT; lawyers who can’t pass the bar and don’t know even the basics about the law but are raring to advance all the regressive justices (i.e. not actual justice); teachers who don’t know their supposed subject matter but have superficial knowledge of CRT and other anti-American ideologies; the list goes on. There will be no competent “professionals” in a dozen-to-twenty years, at least none available to normal Americans. The elite will continue ensuring their progeny and those who serve their needs are more than adequately trained.
The left, of course, imagines that the “professional class” will retain its status, wealth, and privilege. But then, they are always blissfully unaware of what happens next and are stunned by the “unintended consequences” we all saw writ large at the outset.
We see it in grade school, too. Black kids knew they could misbehave multiple times before any discipline. Same for passing classes. That’s the kind of systemic racism I believe occurs.
It does, and the only people harmed by this are the black children permitted such leniency on their behavior because they learn that they are special and can behave as abominably as they like with little or no consequence. It affirms and encourages bad behavior and substandard outcomes for black students (the number who graduate high school but are functionally illiterate is a shocking disgrace in this country and in the last and into this century).
This is leftist policy, though, and it is literally ensuring the societal and economic failure of black students caught in their insidious web of underachievement and despair, the two things the Democrats need to continually exploit to keep black people voting for their “change” which never ever happens, and when it does, disproportionately harms–or explicitly doesn’t help–black people (see Obama policies as but one of many examples of how Democrats craft dire circumstances intentionally to keep people angry and dependent).
Gotta love the not-so-soft bigotry of low expectations.
I think you’ve managed to mischarachterise just about every position on the left
You seem very certain about the terrible outcomes caused by affirmative action. Could you point to research that points to that?
Sure.
Courtesy of The Atlantic, a hotbed of Trumpism. And it was written back when affirmatived students who couldn’t cut the mustard were less likely to get social promotions. Now they do, and can’t wait to serve YOU.
Well, you’re here, a marxist idiot, so there is that proof.
People with money are not going to AA Lawyers nor will they be seeing AA Drs.
Consigner service is very hot with the rich… Top Drs for top prices.
The rest of us can go to Nurse Practitioners and like it…
I assume your spellcheck cratered “concierge.”
Most likely but it was fun to imagine putting my attorney out ‘on consignment’ for a few minutes.
Enough ‘stupid’. No more indulging these clowns.
I participated in an experiment at South Texas College of Law when I was studying for the bar. That school hosted a couple of different student-paid bar review courses. I took Bar-Bri. Another local school, predominately black, had a lower pass rate, so students from that school were allowed to attend the bar review classes for free. I had to pay.
They showed up in force the first day, and by the end of the week, they were nearly all gone. Me, I showed up every single day, and did every last thing they told me to, on schedule, because I wanted my license, and I was not going to let anybody deprive me of it.
I passed, as did the usual percentage from my school, and the pass rate of the other law school was unaffected. This was no surprise, because the students failed to take advantage of the bar review courses, so they could get no benefit from them.
The results of this experiment tell me that there was already something deeply wrong with that other school back in the 80s.
The solution to what was wrong with that other school is not to get rid of the bar exam in Texas.
A worthwhile study would be to check the Bar Exam pass rate for those law school grads who were admitted with lower undergraduate academic performance and lower LSATs vs those who were at or above the typical entrance requirements.
I suspect there will be strong correlation between those admitted under an AA standard and Bar Exam failure rate.
Where all this ends up is with a lot of underperforming professionals. The SJW will argue “we have to admit XYZ minority group to our school because they are under-represented due to racism”, then when said group underperforms in school it becomes “we have to pass XYZ minority group because they can’t keep up due to racism” and then “we have to allow XYZ minority group members to become doctors, lawyers, professional engineers, etc. even though they can meet the standards because of… racism.”
Those data are publicly available. You can review the admission GPA, LSAT scores, graduation rates, bar exam passage rates, and so on by school and by aggregate groups (individual data not available, of course).
You forgot the ultimate – we have to force people to go to these doctors/ lawyers because their decision not use their services is racist (never realizing that the decision to avoid them is because they are sub-par).
Beyond substantive law, the bar exam tests the ability to make coherent written statements under time pressure, which is a requisite of much of the practice of law. Many AA law students lack the ability to write at the level once expected of a high school graduate. That can’t be taught In law school.
Hell why not eliminate law school as well? I’m sure someone, somewhere wants to be an attorney but doesn’t want to ‘waste’ time with three years of legal education.
The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart fIoat free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.
What good can come of bringing them into the open? America’s most precious ideal is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.
Charles Murray – “Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America”
@Vlad the imp
The bell curve has long been debunked so that doesn’t help with relative intelligence, and none of your narrative addresses why an ethnic group might have higher crime rates (assuming that even true).
Bullshit. I’m not required to explain WHY data shows something before I can cite data that shows something.
Among his many negatives, the marxist is incapable of mathematics.
Size-ism keeps me from being a jockey.
Don’t give yourself short shrift. I have a short story around here somewhere that will cheer you up. I’ll look for it shortly. It won’t be long.
Reading your short post really cheered me up. What is lacks in length is made up mirth.
Astronaut!
Frankly, not even a private pilot.
I was. Can’t afford it now.
Hey, flying is not cheap. Find a sailplane club if you can. Most have reasonable costs.
Keep the bar and eliminate the degree requirement. That would be much better.
Failing that, eliminate both and let the consumer decide who will represent them.
Many will wind up in the public defenders office because people will not take a chance on an incompetent attorney which will be the presumption if they are black.
“I am no legal scholar, but instead of doing away with the Bar Exam, wouldn’t it make more sense to focus on getting better instruction and additional help to those who need it to pass?”
Maybe those who need more than a modicum of help ideally should not pass.
The cultural issue *could* be fixed, but D’s perpetual incitement of racial hatred and violence is actually making it worse.
The genetic issue can only improve through intermarriage, or several centuries of selective breeding.
Intelligence is an inherited trait. No amount of education can make anyone any smarter.
US Hispanics have, on average, IQ’s one standard deviation below that of US whites. US blacks have IQ, on average, two standard deviations below.
This is the most thoroughly documented fact on the planet. Pretty much everyone takes the same IQ test, every generation, for over a century.
would seem the ultimate intent of all this is the undermining of the “legal profession” as a whole–if it’s no longer necessary to “qualify” to be admitted to law school and no longer necessary to “qualify”to graduate and receive a jd and no longer necessary to “qualify” to be admitted to the bar then how does the “public” determine who(if anyone)is truly “qualified”to practice law?–while fraught with dangerous ramifications enough, imagine the same process gaining traction in the medical profession where mastering the intricacies of the more demanding disciplines(or not) can literally result in genuine matters of life and death–lord
by eliminating/curving/padding,whatever all these, entrance exams, graduate(completion)examinations, professional qualifications exams(bar exam, med board exams) aren’t we also lowering the standards of performance/service delivery of these rather critical professions to literally third-world performance/competency levels for EVERYONE?
why on earth would a sensible people consent to such a thing? we ARE a major component of the first-world in medicine, in law, in engineering, in the sciences and many other fields–why should we tolerate a surrender of our hard-won and expensive(both in effort and in blood) accomplishments/status/standard of living to placate a bunch of arrogant, irresponsible, woke fools?
excuse me–did not really state my thoughts clearly–there IS no valid/practical/sensible reason for such a measure–period
t
“would seem the ultimate intent of all this is the undermining of the “legal profession” as a whole”
I’m sorry, but that’s like chartering a Committee to Defame Used Car Salesmen.
LOL, and true.
Would the said professor use one of the “new requirement” graduates for his feloney trial???
Professional “standards” — who needs them? So quaint. Merit is so yesterday — let’s just let every person who desires to become a surgeon, an airline pilot, an attorney, an engineer or an electrician, do so. This is “equity,” Dhimmi-crat-style.
Actually, many of those “Standards” have nothing or very little to do with competency.
Hair dressers are so important that the state thinks they must be certified…
I was writing in general terms about the Left’s broad opposition to merit-based achievement and any type of professional standard that is deemed to violate their idiotic notions of race-based “equity.” You’re referring more narrowly to government licensing and oversight, which obviously can reach absurd levels, per the example you cited.
My comment invokes industry-administered/overseen professional licensing standards, such as those that apply to engineering, architectural, medical and legal fields; to name but a few. Those industry-promulgated and industry-maintained professional standards and licenses are absolutely relevant to professional competency.
It is really pretty simple to solve. If the goal is to bring the percentage of blacks in line with the percentage of other ethnic groups, then just don’t admit the bottom 20% who probably shouldn’t be in law school in the first place. Win Win Win 1) ups % 2) saves a lot of money on tuition grants. 3) keeps qualified blacks from having others assume they were an AA product and therefore of suspect quality.
First prosecuting attorney: “Hey, do you know anything about the defense counsel in our upcoming trial?
2nd prosecuting attorney: “Yeah, I hear he didn’t take the bar exam. He was recognized by an ‘alternative measure of professional competence..'”
First attorney: “Is that right? Okay, order a case of great champagne to celebrate, because that guy is already road-kill.'”