{UAH} Jack of All States: The Future Lawyer May Take an Entirely Different Bar Exam - Bloomberg Business
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This week a group of New York judges announced a decision that could radically change who becomes a lawyer.
For more than a century, anyone who wanted a law career was tested, at length and in essay form, on the minutia of their state's local laws. Now New York, one of the largest legal markets, will replace much of the local exam with a national exam that's already used by 15 other states and gaining in popularity.
Removing the demand for deep state-specific knowledge would profoundly alter how lawyers practice—for one thing, a universal test would enable them to work more easily in multiple states—but for some, even that change isn't drastic enough.
On Wednesday, New York's chief judge, Jonathan Lippman, said the state would eliminate the bulk of the New York-specific material on the bar exam in favor of a more standardized version of the test. Starting next summer, law grads will study for the Uniform Bar Examination, which has spread quickly since Missouri took it up in 2011.
"It is a watershed moment," says Erica Moeser, the president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, which created the UBE. "It opens up tremendous potential for casting a broader net and seeking a job." A UBE score is generally transferrable between states.
In a speech noting the change, Judge Lippman called New York's decision "a huge step toward a national, uniform bar exam for the entire country."
The implications of the change sound more thrilling than the specifics of it. Instead of spending their first day of the exam answering essays about New York State law, testees will now write essays concerning national law; two 90-minute skills tests, such as writing a legal memo, will replace multiple choice questions about local regulations. The state-law questions haven't disappeared: The new exam will require test takers to bone up on an online course and answer a separate multiple-choice section on New York law.
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