ABA's legal education council signals support for bar exam alternatives
Signage is seen outside of the American Bar Association (ABA) in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 10, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly Purchase Licensing Rights
(Reuters) - The American Bar Association will consider revising its accreditation standards to ensure those rules aren't a roadblock for states considering attorney licensing programs that bypass the bar exam.
The ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar on Friday directed a committee to review the existing bar passage standard, which requires that at least 75% of a law school’s graduates pass the bar exam within two years in order to maintain accreditation.
While incremental, that review represents a significant departure in the ABA’s approach to the test, which it has long positioned as the cornerstone of attorney licensure and a key measure of a law school’s performance.
But the bar exam has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, with critics alleging that it relies too heavily on the memorization of law and does not test the practical skills new attorneys need to be successful.
Some also claim the exam is biased, pointing to significant pass rate gaps between white and minority test takers.
The National Conference of Bar Examiners, which designs the national components of the licensing exam, is developing a new version that aims to better replicate how law is practiced. It could roll out as early as 2026.
Both Wisconsin and New Hampshire have long maintained programs that allow graduates of ABA-accredited law schools to become licensed without taking the bar exam, and Oregon is moving forward with a proposal to add two alternative attorney licensing pathways.
The Clinical Legal Education Association, a group representing professors that teach law school clinics, requested the reexamination of the bar passage standards in a letter to the ABA Council, writing that the rule, “implicitly discourages law schools from exploring other ways to gauge success of their legal education programs postgraduation.”
A spokesperson for the National Conference of Bar Examiners said Friday that the group is ready to assist the ABA with data on the bar exam and to help it in assessing the "validity, reliability and fairness," of alternative licensing pathways.
The ABA is poised to decide later this year whether it will drop its longstanding requirement that schools use the Law School Admission Test to evaluate applicants.
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