A radical new proposal was made recently by the New York State Board of Law
Examiners.
This group is responsible for producing more angst among law students than their
first year contracts exam, where half the class agonizes over whether the offer
had been accepted while the remaining half questioned whether an offer had even
been made.
The board, as its name implies, is responsible for drafting the questions which
appear on the bar exam. However, it is the proposal to rethink the board’s
other function which has caused the current debate: what constitutes a passing
grade?
Until now, if you were taking the bar exam you were required to garner 660
points out of a possible 1,000 to pass. I know some friends who can realize this
is 66 percent while leaving their calculator in the desk drawer. So being
incorrect one third of the time is all that is required be a lawyer. Many of the
legal system’s observers would argue that a lawyer being wrong one third of
the time this is no surprise, unless you work for the IRS free information
hotline where studies have shown incorrect tax advice is given to callers about
50 percent of the time, (in true IRS logic you must still file the 1040
correctly).
The proposal causing quite a debate is that someone subjecting himself to the
bar exam achieves 675 of the possible 1,000 points in order to pass. This is a
mere 15 points over the requirement for the last 20 years. Nevertheless, the
Committee on Legal Education of the City Bar Association (why do New Yorkers
assume everyone knows that “the City” means New York and not Little Rock?)
issued a report calling in question the wisdom of the 15 additional points.
Lawrence Grosberg, chair of the Committee, is quoted as saying, “It’s a race
to the top to make the exam harder because other states are.” This sounds like
testosterone is driving the board to be the meanest and hardest bar exam in the
country. I am a little unclear why a state would seek to win such a race. Then
again, I never knew there was a race.
Fifteen law school deans in New York agree the additional 15 points are a bad
idea. What is clear to me is that this increase may reduce the pass rate from
New York’s law schools. If this occurs then this may have the same effect on
tuition charged incoming law school classes.
Other states have apparently decided to join the race. Florida, for example,
recently raised the requirements to pass the bar.
Other states have decided to
sit this race out. Minnesota bagged its proposal to raise the minimum to pass,
apparently believing Minnesotans do not need lawyers who are right more than two
thirds of the time.
There seems to be some logic exhibited by Minnesota. After all, why should the
standard for getting the right answer on a test to become a lawyer be higher
than the standard for giving the right advice to a client?
Every practicing lawyer knows that for any given question or problem for a
client your advice has a 50 percent chance of being correct. Either the tax code
allows the artwork and Jacuzzi spa as a business deduction or the IRS impounds
your client’s bank account. Either the jury agrees with you and your client or
it chooses to side with the opposition (in which case you either win the appeal
or don’t). Either your client’s spouse will accept the divorce settlement or
she knows about the girlfriend. And so it goes in the practice of law.
Why should taking the test to become a lawyer be more difficult than actual
practice? Flipping a coin gives you a 50-50 shot at the right answer. Heads
means the offer was accepted and tails means it was rejected, unless of course
there was no offer in the first place.
For New York Bar Exam information: www.NYBarReview.com
