Yes, that is how medical school is organized. What I was wondering is what practical difficulties there would be in organizing law school in the same way. From what I gather from the responses in this thread, it’s because the legal profession doesn’t have the equivalent of large teaching hospitals with interns, residents, and attendings whose job it is to teach the students while practicing medicine.
Law and Medicine are ancient professions whose admission practices have developed over centuries. It would be impossible to overcome the inertia.
I’m very good at test taking, but I’m thinking I’d get totally wiped out. I’m thinking that because even people who have studied law and graduated with a degree have to really work at passing the bar exam.
I knew two people who were very smart, and had good grades in law school, who failed the bar exam on their first try. Sometimes people are just very unlucky, or choke or something. For me, I had little doubt that I would pass, and I did, but it was a grueling multiday process that literally took a physical toll.
I was in one of the last groups to not be allowed to use a computer to type the exam. The first day was essay questions and the practical exam (basically another essay). I developed severe tendonitis in my thumb from the hours of pressured writing. I had to hold my pencil a different way the next day for the multistate. It actually took years for it to completely go away. I couldn’t even sign my name for like a month.
It’s also because we don’t spécialisé the way med students do.
I think many people miss how important it is to be good at taking standardized tests. Just like any other test, the bar has a set of rules that the examiners follow. If you can learn the rules, and focus studying the materials based on the rules it is not so overwhelming. There are subject areas that tested thoroughly on every exam. When I took the bar exams, I was focused on learning 90% of the material that was going to make up 70% of the questions on every exam. I barely looked at material if it hadn’t been on at least 3 out of 4 of the last tests. Someone with above average intelligence who never went to law school (but studied those areas extensively) likely could do well enough to pass even while missing 100% of the material that is rarely tested.
This is largely true. Medical students change their minds quite a lot. General practitioners are not limited to what they practice in theory. However, they are held to the same standard as a specialist - which is usually significant given their long years of training. So they tend to stick to general areas, or easier things (e.g. low skill aesthetics like Botox injections), although their are some exceptions. It used to be easier to get “grandfathered” than it is now.
Still, not uncommon to see family doctors do emergency medicine, anaesthesia, hospitalist, psychotherapy, surgical assisting and some other areas.
I remember taking an extended vocabulary test where they delved deeper and deeper into the unabridged dictionary and words I had never even seen before appeared. I scored lights out on it and was literally asked how a college student could have such an extensive vocabulary. The answer was that I really didn’t! Many of our words have Latin and Greek origins, and I used my knowledge of Latin and Greek vocabulary to infer the correct meaning of the English words in the multiple choice context in which the test was given.