Chicago Faucet, while true in some states, it is much more complicated than you make it out to be.
The practice is called “reading” for the exam. In California, pursuant to Rule VII of the RULES REGULATING ADMISSION TO PRACTICE LAW IN CALIFORNIA, one is required to spend almost 3500 hours over the course of four or more years studying law under the supervision of a member of the bar, or of a judge. In addition, such “students” of the law must take the “First Year Law Students’ Examination”, what we call the “Baby Bar.” Students at ABA accredited schools, and at California Bar Association accredited schools are exempt from that exam.
Ohio, as far as I can tell, doesn’t let you read for the exam; you have to go to an accredited school. See RULE I. ADMISSION TO THE PRACTICE OF LAW of the “Ohio Rules of Court - Rules for the Government of the Bar of Ohio”.
Both Ohio and California require that you have a Bachelors degree before you can become an admitted attorney.
For those not aware of what an attorney goes through, basically the thread is this: having graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, your whole goal becomes passage of the bar exam in the state in which you wish to practice. While all law schools will assert that their main goal is to train you to know the law and “think like a lawyer,” they are more concerned with their bar passage statistics than with any other single aspect measuring their effectiveness. This is for the simple reason that prospective attorneys are more likely to choose a school with a demonstrably higher passage rate, since failing the bar precludes acting as an attorney.
This gets circular, of course. At one point, Boalt Hall at University of California (Berkeley) undoubtedly had top-flight professors producing better trained students. However, once it becomes clear that Boalt graduates are doing better at passing the bar, then more prospective attorneys apply to Boalt. Boalt can choose the best candidates for eventual bar passage, ensuring that the statistic remains high. Students who have not done as well in college demonstrating their “worthiness” at eventual bar passage are forced to accept admission at schools with smaller passage rates (e.g. Hastings College of Law, University of California, San Francisco, a perfectly good school, and one for which it would be really hard to argue an inferiority to Boalt in the ability to properly train lawyers to be good lawyers). Assuming that the schools can adequately predict probably success in bar passage from such indicators as score on the LSAT, grade point average in college, etc., the stratification continues ad infinitum.
IF one assumes that the bar exam of a given state does an adequate job of seperating out people who will be poor attorneys from those who will be good attorneys, this is all well and good. milum is not the only person to hold the viewpoint that the bar exam (which usually lacks any true test of proficiency at the practice of law, i.e. the mechanics of the law) fails in this effort. Thus, the conclusion that the bar exam has some other purpose; in the opinion of many, the exclusion of people who want to be attorneys.
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