With the scrutiny being paid to our most-recent White House Press Secretary (who served less than half a Scaramucci), questions about state bars have crossed my mind.
Is the state bar a private organization or an agency of the government, like the DMV or the Department of Licensing and Regulation?
I understand that states have laws preventing people from practicing law without being members of that state’s bar association. When does “practicing” start? I am not a lawyer. If I tell my friend, “That’s against the law,” am I practicing law? What if I am a lawyer and I say the same thing? Suppose I, again, not a lawyer, go on TV to espouse on some legal topic of which I may know a lot, even without a law license?
If the bar is a private organization, how can the state have a law requiring a subset of professionals to pass an arbitrary test provided by a private organization? I hold a Commercial Drivers License and three teacher certificates. The testing for the drivers license was administered by employees of the State of Texas (and allows me to drive a certain class of vehicle in all fifty states). The testing for my teaching certification was proctored by private contractors who administered a test purchased and approved by the Texas Education Agency. It seems weird to me for the state to require a license issued by an entity that is not the state itself.
This may be true also of the licensing of medical doctors (the licensing body being a private entity but the States having rules about licensing and practicing written into their laws).
I’m seeing this online:
The essential overlap seems to occur in the laws of the state. These may require that people who are allowed to perform certain functions must have (basically) accreditation granted by the private entity “the state Bar Association.”
With the caveat that, this being the U.S., the answers are undoubtedly going to vary by state:
AIUI, state bars are usually, if not always, independent, private organizations.
You telling your friend, “that’s against the law” is probably just you stating your opinion. If you present yourself to someone as a lawyer, and give them legal advice under the pretense that you are an actual lawyer, then you are “practicing law.” (Hence, the frequent disclaimer you see here on the SDMB: “IANAL” (I am not a lawyer) )
Some states do not require bar membership to be a practicing lawyer (Illinois is one of them; membership in the Illinois State Bar Association is voluntary, and the state administers the bar exam); others do require a lawyer to be a member of the state’s bar association as one of the requirements in order to practice law in the state – the term for this appears to be “integrated bar.” This is usually enshrined by state law, or (at least in the case of Wisconsin) by a ruling by the state’s Supreme Court.
Wisconsin also uniquely allows all graduates of its two ABA-accredited law schools (University of Wisconsin and Marquette University) to be admitted to the state bar without first taking the bar exam.
How hard is the bar exam, typically? Considering one prominent person in the news acknowledged failing her bar exam. Is it something almost everyone passes if they finish law school and pass? Or is it sufficiently strict that a significant proportion will tend to fail? (Obviously different for different states).
I also recall reading that some states do not require a law degree degree to take the bar exam?
It appears to depend, in part, on how well-prepared and smart the school’s students are; more well-regarded law schools generally have higher percentages of their graduates who pass the bar on the first try, and pass it eventually (i.e., on their second, third, etc. try).
That said, it appears that bar exams are not “easy.” Even for graduates of Yale Law, 2% to 4% of them don’t pass the bar exam on the first try.
Somewhat famously at the time, John F. Kennedy Jr. failed the New York bar twice before passing it. According to this article, well-known lawyers/politicians who failed a bar exam at least once include FDR, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jerry Brown, and Pete Wilson.
Bar exam pass rates are typically reported in 2 ways:
Overall pass rate (all test-takers)
1st-time pass rate (1st-time test-takers only)
First-time pass rates are generally higher, since repeat test-takers often face additional challenges. Recent results show that pass rates can vary significantly by jurisdiction and exam administration.
For example, February exam administrations tend to have lower pass rates than July exams, reflecting differences in the test-taking population and timing. The table below includes the most recently reported results.
It’s hard. You do have to prepare. For reasons that are not clear to me. much of what’s on the exam is not taught in law school. And, some people are just better test takers. JFK,Jr. famously failed the first time. Many very good lawyers didn’tt pass on their first try, but did on the second.
There will be a good chunk that fail the first time. It looks like first time bar passage rates in most states are between 65% and 85% or so according to this site whose reliability I can’t gauge but which sounds roughly right to me. Since passing law school is a requirement for taking the bar in most states, and even in the states where it’s not technically required, it’s still the overwhelming majority of cases, you can assume that pretty closely reflects the first time bar passage rate for law school graduates.
California is an outlier because you don’t need to pass law school to sit for the bar. As a consequence, the exam is tougher to make sure people who pass are qualified, and there are more unqualified people taking the exam who would have been doomed to pass any bar.
Just an anecdote, but a past friend of mine received her law degree in Texas and had passed the bar there, but then moved to CA for a job that required her to pass the CA bar eventually. This was a very smart, capable woman who had already passed one bar exam and she was sweating as she prepared part-time for months. She passed first time and was both immensely relieved and fairly proud having done so. The pass rate for the exam she took? 40% out of thousands of test-takers. Granted anyone can take the CA bar without a law degree so that may inflate the numbers of less-qualified applicants taking a shot, but nonetheless that is abysmally low for a certification exam that is not cheap to take.
Here in Minnesota, to become a Veterinary Technician working on animals, you had to pass a test* administered by the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Association. That is a private non-profit association, not part of State government, but it controlled this legal requirement for this profession.
And I think that many of the building trades (electricians, plumbers, etc.) have private union groups that are involved in getting the required licenses for these occupations.
* Also other requirements, like actual experience working under a licensed Vet, and letters of recommendation, etc.
(Recently, the state has taken this over, with the official state Board of Veterinary Medicine now doing this: identifying required training, work experience, and administering the test. But the people who were previously tested by the MVM Association are ‘grandfathered in’, with their current license continued until renewal time, and they can bypass some requirements.)