What's the bar exam like anyway? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW

Who speaks in this episode?

• Josh Clark (Host) · 29 min speaking
• Chuck Bryant (Host) · 21 min speaking
• Jerry (Guest) · 1 min speaking
• Dylan (Guest) · 2 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Stuff You Should Know, courtroom, Garandi, houseofworks.com
2. 5:00 – 10:00: National Conference of Bar Examiners, 16th century, American Association of Law Schools, apprentice
3. 10:00 – 15:00: gatekeeping, multiple choice, African-American, cut score
4. 15:00 – 20:00: 56 jurisdictions, apprentice, briefs, multiple choice
5. 20:00 – 25:00: 260 to 270, Bar Review Inc., Barbrey, Bay Area Review
6. 25:00 – 30:00: JFK Jr., Lionel Huts, New York State, Ontario
7. 30:00 – 35:00: accredited law school, black and Hispanic Americans, Hispanic students, National Conference of Bar Examiners
8. 35:00 – 40:00: Nevada, American education system, facial recognition, Hispanic students
9. 40:00 – 45:00: chat GPT, California State Bar, desert, director
10. 45:00 – 50:00: apprentice, 675 hours, briefs, civil procedure
11. 50:00 – 52:55: inland sea, listener mail, Caspian Sea, Hudson Bay

Notable quotes from "What's the bar exam like anyway? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"

• Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

  about Stuff You Should Know · at 0:01

• Because there were no law schools. If you wanted to work as a lawyer, you would apprentice or clerk for a practicing lawyer for, sometimes you would just do it, and donate your time to working for them. Sometimes you would do that and.

  about apprentice · at 5:42

• Committee and they said all right we need to develop a real system here. So they came together with the National Conference of Bar Examiners and at that time 1930s they were…

  about National Conference of Bar Examiners · at 9:11

• Were applying it to hypothet hypothetical situations but it was still multiple choice. So you could grade it much more easily.

  about multiple choice · at 10:30

• That were u vying to become attorneys were having a harder time and this is evidence really early on in 1912 they accidentally admitted three black attorneys into the ABA and…

  about Evidence · at 11:40

• To this a this agency that's associated with the highest court in the state, usually the state supreme court.

  about state supreme court · at 18:30

• Yeah. if you want to use a laptop, you want to type out your briefs and your memos and your essays rather than write them out because you get hand cramps like the old lawyers used to.

  about briefs · at 19:42

• So, let's break down the UB, the Uniform Bar Examination, which is the culmination of decades of the National Conference of Bar Examiners hard work, sweat blood tears joy pain.

  about Uniform Bar Examination · at 22:53

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Lionel Huts — Person · 2 mentions · first at 5:08
  Yeah, because you don't want to end up with a Lionel Huts, right?
• Garandi — Person · 1 mention · first at 1:34
  This came from listener Rowan. and I'm not sure how to pronounce this last name, but I'm gonna go with Garandi.
• JFK Jr. — Person · 1 mention · first at 29:30
  The first go, including Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton and I think JFK Yeah. bunch of DIM. JFK Jr. I think took two or three times to pass.
• Sophia Park — Person · 1 mention · first at 31:10
  The youngest person ever to pass the bar is Sophia Park.
• anonymous attorney friend — Person · 1 mention
• Bob Dylan — Person · 1 mention
• Dr. Peter Co — Person · 1 mention
• Little Chuck — Person · 1 mention
• Rowan — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• National Conference of Bar Examiners — Company · 5 mentions · first at 9:15
• Stuff You Should Know — Company · 3 mentions · first at 0:01
• iHeart Radio — Company · 2 mentions · first at 0:03
  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
• state supreme court — Company · 2 mentions · first at 18:34
• chat GPT — Company · 2 mentions · first at 40:27
  What about California with the chat GPT questions?
• Waffle House — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:48
  Yeah. if I It was always Waffle House if we were going to do something like that.
• houseofworks.com — Company · 1 mention · first at 3:34
  Yeah. Well, that's like when in the old days when we were writers for houseofworks.com and like a shining week is when I wrote a clever what do you call the thing under the picture?
• American Association of Law Schools — Company · 1 mention · first at 9:05
  Generally kind of fell in line behind the ABA and I think by 1931 another decade later the American Association of Law Schools got together with a committee and they said all…
• National Bar Association — Company · 1 mention · first at 12:46
  To that and they got together with actual black lawyers and they came up with the National Bar Association which is still around today as an alternative for black attorneys to…
• Fifth Circuit — Company · 1 mention · first at 13:59
  And designed to continue to keep black people from passing the bar exam and the fifth circuit court of Georgia said we don't really think that's true for some reason they said…
• Barbrey — Company · 1 mention · first at 21:20
  Courses. about 60% of the market share in the United States is a company called B A R I Barbrey. can be up to 6,000, maybe as low as 1,800 bucks.
• Wikipedia — Company · 1 mention · first at 21:37
  Barbary stand for? And I had a weirdly hard time finding out what it stood for until I sadly Wikipedia just turned it up. I should have gone to the most obvious place, but I think when they merged in 2021 or no, no, no, they merged in the '.
• Bay Area Review — Company · 1 mention · first at 21:51
  Or no, no, no, they merged in the ' 70s, I think. and it was just the names of two companies. I think Bay Area Review was BAR and the Bar Review Inc. was Bar and so they just squashed those together. So kind of a boring story.
• Bar Review Inc. — Company · 1 mention · first at 21:53
  70s, I think. and it was just the names of two companies. I think Bay Area Review was BAR and the Bar Review Inc. was Bar and so they just squashed those together. So kind of a boring story.
• Lyola University — Company · 1 mention · first at 40:20
  Yeah. If you want to know how tough Lyola University law students are, there you go.
• California State Bar — Company · 1 mention · first at 41:24
  And the California State Bar said, Wait what?
• University of New Hampshire Law School — Company · 1 mention · first at 45:27
  Hampshire has followed suit a little bit and if you graduate with honors from University of New Hampshire Law School and you participate in court simulations and have practical…
• state bar of California's board of trustees — Company · 1 mention · first at 46:55
  To become more like Oregon with those apprenticeship hours. even though the state bar of California's board of trustees said, We think this is a good idea. The state supreme…
• scientific community — Company · 1 mention · first at 51:17
  Remnants of larger oceans and have numerous islands, but of course the scientific community names these things and sometimes it can be rather confusing. the Caspian Sea, for…
• IHOP — Company · 1 mention
• SCOTUS — Company · 1 mention
• stuffpodcast.com — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

• tampons — Product · 1 mention · first at 20:12
  Tight and are so hawkish about preventing cheating that they actually provide tampons to people who need them because you're not allowed to bring in your own tampon.
• Bree cheese — Product · 1 mention · first at 22:07
  And Brie, meaning the makers of Bree cheese around the world.
• luxury vacations — Product · 1 mention · first at 49:53
  Said, I know it sounds silly or overly cautious when there are Scotas justices who can accept luxury vacations with impunity, but I'm supposed to be impartial here, so ragging on the bar might not be a good look.
• iHeart Radio app — Product · 1 mention · first at 52:38
  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
• wig — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• apprentice — Concept · 4 mentions · first at 5:46
• multiple choice — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 10:34
• gatekeeping — Concept · 3 mentions · first at 11:14
  Clear during this period that like hey, what we got here is a gatekeeping service essentially. ostensibly the reason was like you said is like we want to keep only like you…
• Evidence — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 11:45
• briefs — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 19:45
• Uniform Bar Examination — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 22:55
• civil procedure — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 23:33
  Sure. civil procedure, contracts, of course.
• Hispanic students — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 34:24
  Passed on their first try at the bar exam at a rate 24% higher than black students, 13% higher than Hispanic students, and 15% higher than Native Americans. So those are really…
• listener mail — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 50:15
  If you want to learn more about the bar exam, go take the bar exam. and in the meantime, it's time for listener mail.
• inland sea — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 50:55
  The Salt and Sea episode. in college, I took an ocean geography class and learned about inland seas. An inland sea, cuz remember we sort of wondered difference between seas and lakes.
• colonial days — Concept · 1 mention · first at 5:27
  Guess we should go back in time and talk about a little bit of the history because if you go back to colonial days, pre-states in the United States, or not in the United…
• 16th century — Concept · 1 mention · first at 6:32
  Which had some sort of exam or another for people to become attorneys as far back as the 16th century. But so America wasn't that far behind, a couple hundred years. Apparently the first one was Delaware in 1783.
• black letter law — Concept · 1 mention · first at 9:25
  Time 1930s they were really like the testing that they were concerned about was what they call black letter law.
• African-American — Concept · 1 mention · first at 12:16
  Essentially what they did. So from 1912 all the way to 1943, if you checked African-American or God knows what they had down for you to check back then, you were just not allowed to take the bar exam. Sorry.
• Tyler versus Vickery — Concept · 1 mention · first at 13:28
  A well just basically a good example of the lawsuits that came around at this time was Tyler versus Vickery or Tyler victory if you're a lawyer.
• cut score — Concept · 1 mention · first at 13:39
  It was a class action suit that alleged that Georgia's bar examinations cut score, which is the minimum score you have to pass, had been adjusted with the introduction of the multi-state bar exam. remember the multiple choice test that they.
• Multistate Essay Examination — Concept · 1 mention · first at 15:57
  And the NCBE, has added the multistate essay examination at this point.
• 56 jurisdictions — Concept · 1 mention · first at 17:57
  So, Chuck, it turns out there's 56 jurisdictions in the United States. 50 I didn't 50 states plus some territories. You got some overseas possessions. You got a you know.
• contracts — Concept · 1 mention · first at 23:33
  Sure. civil procedure, contracts, of course.
• constitutional law — Concept · 1 mention · first at 23:38
• criminal law — Concept · 1 mention · first at 23:40
  Criminal law and procedure. That is evidence, which is its own category.
• real property — Concept · 1 mention · first at 23:47
  And real property. Kaching and that is 50% of the UBE score. Then the other two are the multi-state essay once again which is 30% and then the two multi-state performance test.
• 260 to 270 — Concept · 1 mention · first at 24:52
  It's graded on a 400point scale. depends on the state on what they consider passing. U generally 260 to 270. I said state, of course, jurisdiction.
• accredited law school — Concept · 1 mention · first at 32:12
  Teach it because the ABA requires that law schools, if you want to be an accredited law school, a certain percentage of your graduates have to pass the bar within two years, otherwise your accreditation goes away.
• black and Hispanic Americans — Concept · 1 mention · first at 33:31
  Know, banning people of color from even taking the test for a long time. but black and Hispanic Americans are still very underrepresented in the field of law. And you know…
• Native American — Concept · 1 mention · first at 34:27
  Exam at a rate 24% higher than black students, 13% higher than Hispanic students, and 15% higher than Native Americans. So those are really substantial disparities in passing…
• systemic racial disparities — Concept · 1 mention · first at 35:05
  The bar exam alone. And by the way, their interpretation is that this is an example of longstanding systemic racial disparities in the American education system, right? That…
• American education system — Concept · 1 mention · first at 35:09
  Their interpretation is that this is an example of longstanding systemic racial disparities in the American education system, right? That start way back long before the…
• standardized test — Concept · 1 mention · first at 36:48
  Alone explains a lot of it because the bar exam is essentially like it's a standardized test that where you memorize essentially year one law school stuff.
• Nevada performance test — Concept · 1 mention · first at 37:45
  It was minimally predictive of career success and negligibly related. the Nevada performance test was negligibly related to success.
• legal competence — Concept · 1 mention · first at 38:30
  And people say, Well, how are you testing for legal competence?
• remote exams — Concept · 1 mention · first at 39:38
  Years, very public ones in terms of the bar. during COVID, they offered remote exams and it was just sort of a joke in a lot of cases. there were a lot of computer problems…
• facial recognition — Concept · 1 mention · first at 39:46
  Joke in a lot of cases. there were a lot of computer problems like programs crashing. they had facial recognition issues and that sometimes they failed to identify dark skinned test takers. So that's that's bad right off the bat.
• paramedics — Concept · 1 mention · first at 42:23
  Yeah. Like they had to keep taking their tests while the paramedics were saving this person's life like next to them essentially. That was what they were forced to do. That's how I don't know, you choose your own word they are.
• TV commercial — Concept · 1 mention · first at 42:39
  About assigning these tests or carrying out these tests. I work I was working a TV commercial one time as a PA years ago out in the desert and in California and a crew member…
• director — Concept · 1 mention · first at 42:46
  Years ago out in the desert and in California and a crew member had a cardiac arrest and the director told them to move a big fake rock in front of and they were tending to the…
• diploma privilege — Concept · 1 mention · first at 45:18
  Think you have to graduate from one of the states two law schools there and they call it diploma privilege. I think in the past couple of decades, New Hampshire has followed…
• court simulations — Concept · 1 mention · first at 45:29
  And if you graduate with honors from University of New Hampshire Law School and you participate in court simulations and have practical experience, then you can be admitted to practice law without the bar.
• 675 hours — Concept · 1 mention · first at 46:08
  You can become a lawyer without the bar exam. If you apprentice for I think 675 hours over four weeks in supervised work, you will basically become a lawyer after that.
• NextGen bar exam — Concept · 1 mention · first at 47:02
  Idea. The state supreme court said, No, no, no. but coming around the corner now, we have the NextGen bar exam right?

Places & events

• Washington State — Place · 2 mentions · first at 18:57
  Will still let you take the bar. if you are in Washington state, Virginia, Vermont, or California, they allow a legal apprentice ship to swap out law school, which I think is super kind of cool.
• Nevada — Place · 2 mentions · first at 37:16
  You may be, right? there was a study in 2024 from Nevada that compared scores on the MBE and other components of their test of I think a little more than 500 new attorneys and how they were basically.
• courtroom — Place · 1 mention · first at 2:48
  They the word bar is there because I think it's named after the literal bar railing in a courtroom that divides the public from, the business end.
• Delaware — Place · 1 mention · first at 6:40
  So America wasn't that far behind, a couple hundred years. Apparently the first one was Delaware in 1783.
• Suffolk County — Place · 1 mention · first at 8:03
  Massachusetts and then it became a requirement about 20 years later in Suffolk County where Boston was and by 1920 written exams were like the way to go and because now it…
• Ontario — Place · 1 mention · first at 28:34
  Nigeria Singapore Korea, Japan, Ontario, Canada. Canada.
• New York State — Place · 1 mention · first at 28:37
  New York State. All like New York State's bar exam is so difficult. It's like as hard as the entire nations of Singapore's. so there are it definitely varies by jurisdiction and by.
• desert — Place · 1 mention · first at 42:41
  Carrying out these tests. I work I was working a TV commercial one time as a PA years ago out in the desert and in California and a crew member had a cardiac arrest and the…
• Caspian Sea — Place · 1 mention · first at 51:21
  Scientific community names these things and sometimes it can be rather confusing. the Caspian Sea, for example, is classified as a lake despite being known as the largest…
• Hudson Bay — Place · 1 mention · first at 51:27
  Example, is classified as a lake despite being known as the largest inland sea in the world. And the Hudson Bay is an island sea or which is Did you know that an island sea or inland sea?
• Laapentine Sea — Place · 1 mention · first at 51:51
  Or Dylan's favorite sea is the Larapentine Sea or the Laapentine Sea. It's an ancient sea that split Australia in half during the Cambrian explosion. being a longtime listener and learning about new.
• hotel — Place · 1 mention
• Korea — Place · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And this is one of those good oldfashioned root tootin root fruity uh episodes of stuff you should know.

0:23 Rudy Tutti, fresh and fruity. That's right. I forgot the rest of it, but yes, you knew what I was laying down. Uh, can I shock you right off the bat?

0:31 Yes. I don't think I have ever been in an IHOP restaurant in Eden. Um, I don't think so.

0:41 See, this is normally where I'd be like, "What?" Yeah. But I don't think you're missing enough to warrant a what?

0:48 Yeah. I mean, if I It was always Waffle House if we were going to do something like that.

0:53 Mhm. So, yeah. Never been in an IHOP. The two are actually not really that comparable to tell you the truth. I mean, they're you if you went to a Waffle House and then went to an IHOP, you wouldn't be like been to one, been to the other. They're their menus are different enough. The vibe's different enough.

1:09 Is IHOP more relatable to like a Denny's? Yes. Okay. I've been to Denny's, but not much.

1:15 Then you don't need to go to IHOP. Uh, can we thank um the listener who suggested this uh episode?

1:23 Yeah. I remember their email, but I don't remember their name. Yeah, because I finally actually wrote it down and we're not doing it um weeks later, but this came from listener Rowan. Uh and I'm not sure how to pronounce this last name, but I'm gonna go with uh Garandi.

1:38 That's a great name. Garand Daisy. I like Garand Daisy more because of the Daisy part.

1:44 Yeah. But Rowan wrote in and I was like, you know what? Uh, I think someone in Rowan's life had taken the bar and uh, I think they realized that they didn't know much about it and I was like, you know, I've never really thought much about the bar exam and I don't know anything about it.

1:56 Well, didn't they also send a like a little clip or an anecdote about how crazy it gets during the test? Like how nuts people will will or what nut lengths they'll go to to finish.

2:07 Yeah. Yeah, I think I do remember that actually. Well, save it. Save it. Let's talk about the bar exam. Chuck, for those people who aren't aware, and from what I can understand, essentially every country in the world that has lawyers has a bar exam, but it's the test that um you have to take in most places to become a practicing attorney, to become licensed as an attorney. And that's it. There's bar exam, everybody. Goodbye.

2:38 Yeah. Uh exactly. And you know, they they the the word bar is there because I think it's named after the literal bar railing in a courtroom that divides uh the public from, you know, the the business end.

2:55 Right. Where they Yeah. where you're not really supposed to go past or else a baiff will jump on you.

3:00 Yeah. Exactly. I remember there was a local news story once about a judge who'd been drinking like during work.

3:07 Uhhuh. And like they followed him like on his lunch hour and followed him into like a a place where he was drinking.

3:13 Uhhuh. They were like teeing up the story and they said this judge not only passed the bar, he went in and drank at it.

3:21 And that I mean like I saw that 15 years ago and it stuck with me ever since. That's so lazy.

3:27 It is. But I mean I thought it was pretty good to tell you the truth. Yeah. Well, that's like when uh in the old days when we were writers for houseofworks.com

3:35 and like a a shining week is when I wrote a clever uh uh what do you call the thing under the picture?

3:42 Caption. Caption. Now I can't even remember caption with the word caption. That's how

3:49 do you remember any good ones? No. No, but I was like, "Hey, Emily, check this out. I wrote a clever caption." It was my first professional writing job, so I was uh you know, showing pride.

3:58 No, I remember that. We used to tell one another our great clever captions. Look at this one.

4:02 Music lyrics we'd fit in to to articles that we just thought we were so sly about.

4:07 Yeah. And now we just say dumb things with our mouths. Right. Well, I feel like we've shaken off all of the curious lawyers who don't normally listen to us. So, we can get started, everybody. Um, one of the things about the bar exam I never understood and I would guess also that most people out there who aren't attorneys or aspiring attorneys wouldn't really get, but there's a lot of criticism about the bar exam. It's just not it's not just some test that lawyers have to take to get licensed, which on its face sounds great because like with any professional licensing that protects the public from incompetent lawyers, they have to show that they understand a minimum standard of how to practice law that will prevent them from being such a dipstick that their clients are going to get electrocuted because they represented them so poorly. It's way way more intricate than that. Yeah.

5:01 Socially speaking, culturally speaking, socioulturally speaking. Yeah, because you don't want to end up with a Lionel Huts, right?

5:10 No, he almost certainly did not pass the bar. Well, well, we'll get to it, but you don't have necessarily have to pass the bar in every uh state in the United States to practice law. But sit on it, everybody, because that's coming. Um, I guess we should go back in time and talk about a little bit of the history because if you go back to colonial days, uh, pre-states in the United States, or not in the United States, but you know, what will one day be the United States

5:37 and my rest of the curious lawyers. Exactly. There there were no bar exams because there were no law schools. If you wanted to work as a lawyer, uh, you would apprentice or or clerk for a practicing lawyer for, you know, sometimes you would just do it, uh, and and donate your time to working for them. Sometimes you would do that and actually pay them,

5:58 right? Uh, which, you know, it seems like a pretty good system and and we'll talk more about apprenticing later because for my money, I think that's a pretty good way to do things.

6:06 Yeah. Uh but by 1750, which is pretty early on, all of the colonies um got on board basically and said, "All right, we need we need standards for people to do this job and we need to kind of all agree on what that's going to be."

6:22 Yeah. And like a lot of stuff or most things with American law, they were following in the tradition of England, which had had some sort of exam or another for people to become attorneys as far back as the 16th century. But um so America wasn't that far behind, you know, a couple hundred years. Apparently the first one was Delaware in 1783. And um it was essentially just you would go and hang out with a judge and they would quiz you on some legal stuff.

6:50 Yeah. And if you got it right, you were you were accepted to the bar. You were an attorney from that point on. It was okay for you to practice. It was also supposedly looked on as very easy, too.

7:03 Yeah. Uh, I imagine a lot of that depended on the judge that you got and like maybe how even much they liked you

7:09 uh in those early days. It was really sort of the wild wild west, right? Uh, there Libby helped us with this and she dug up a pretty fun story about Abraham Lincoln who was a bar examiner for the state of Illinois in the 1850s and was apparently just like at a hotel chatting with a lawyer in a room and the lawyer answered a few questions and Lincoln was like, "Congratulations, you're an attorney. So great, man.

7:35 Yeah. Um, yeah, I love that story, too. I mean, I can just see Lincoln busting it out so casually.

7:42 Yeah. I think the takeaway is the guy didn't even know the test had begun, essentially.

7:46 No, he had no idea. Exactly. I'm glad you added that part. Sure. Um so the actual first written bar exam kind of like they are today that popped up around 1855 I think in Massachusetts and then it became a requirement uh about 20 years later in Suffolk County where Boston was and by 1920 written exams were like the the way to go and because now it wasn't just getting quizzed with the judge um law school started popping up and developing um to kind of train you to prepare for that written exam. am at the very least.

8:22 And they actually became an alternative to apprenticing, which as you'll see later on is kind of um inverted these days. But that was something you could do if like say all of the lawyers in your town were jerks.

8:36 Yeah. You could go to a law school instead of apprenticing when you graduated law school, then you could take your bar exam. Those were your two ways, your two paths to the bar exam back then.

8:47 Yeah. Uh by 1921 the American Bar Association was around and they said you know we really prefer a written exam uh to license. They I don't think they mandated at that point. Yeah.

8:58 Um but they you know the states generally kind of fell in line behind the ABA and I think by 1931 another decade later uh the American Association of Law Schools got together uh with a committee and they said all right we need to develop a real system here. So they came together with the National Conference of Bar Examiners and at that time 1930s they were really like the testing that they were concerned about was what they call black letter law. Just sort of really unambiguous black and white yes or no answers to things

9:32 on like you know how things are are literally legally defined and not a lot of like uh

9:38 you know hypotheticals being bandied about which you're going to get stuff. Yeah. Exactly. which you're going to get more these days in the bar exam.

9:45 Yeah. But one of the problems with taking a test like that is that your hand can get cramped. They didn't want prospective lawyers hands cramping. So in 1972, the National Conference of Bar Examiners came up with the multi-state bar examination. Um and that created a multiplechoice test.

10:05 Yeah. Um it also really kind of dug into like your knowledge but at the same time you can also say like this is where it became a little more standardized and less loosey goosey. But in that sense it also became a little more um scientific minded um by creating a test that you could say this is right, this is wrong. And it wasn't just legal terms. They were applying it to hypothet hypothetical situations but it was still multiple choice. So you could grade it much more easily.

10:37 Yeah. I don't know how I feel about multiple choice in a test like this. I Anytime you can sort of guess,

10:44 right? I don't think you can necessarily guess your way to success, but I don't know.

10:49 Uh I think you just came up with a t-shirt. Guess your way to success. Yeah, totally.

10:54 And then on the back just a ABCD and just a check mark next to the C. All of the above.

11:00 All of the above. Uh go ahead. You go ahead. No. Well, as this is sort of developing over the decades, uh I think we're at the 70s here, but it kind of became clear um during this period that like hey, what what we got here is a gatekeeping service essentially. Um ostensibly the reason was uh like you said is like we want to keep only like you know really knowledgeable people that know what they're doing uh in these jobs to protect people that hire them for lots and lots of money. Um but as this was happening it became even more clear that there was a side effect of that which was um you know uh immigrants uh black people other people of color that were u vying to become attorneys were having a harder time and this is evidence really early on in 1912 they um accidentally admitted three black attorneys um into the ABA and because they didn't have you know like check here for race and then they were like oh

11:58 goodness we accidentally They let in three black attorneys, so we need to start screening basically for race.

12:04 Yeah. They said we need to add a check here for race thing on the application to take the bar exam. And that's essentially what they did. So from 1912 all the way to 1943, um if you checked uh African-American or God knows what they had down for you to check back then, um you were just not allowed to take the bar exam. Sorry.

12:27 Yeah. like this is it was an actual like you said a gatekeeping mechanism to prevent black people from becoming lawyers in the United States. And so in 1925 uh prospective black lawyers said nuts to that and they got together um with actual black lawyers and they came up with the National Bar Association which is still around today as an alternative for black um attorneys to basically become attorneys rather than have to go through the ABA. Yeah. And you know, since then, especially in like the 1970s, there there seemed to be like a series of lawsuits from uh black lawyers and different states that were suing over various uh what they thought were, you know, discriminatory policies uh within the test. Um I don't think many of those were successful though, were they?

13:17 No. Um the one that sticks out the most that I've heard the most um described as um a well just basically a good example of the lawsuits that came around at this time was Tyler versus Vickery or Tyler victory if you're a lawyer.

13:33 Yeah. Um it was a a class action suit that alleged that Georgia's bar examinations cut score, which is the minimum score you have to have to pass, had been adjusted with the introduction of the multi-state bar exam. um remember the uh multiple choice test that they introduced

13:51 that they had basically been introduced and and designed to continue to keep black people from passing the bar exam

13:59 and the fifth circuit court of Georgia said we don't really think that's true for some reason they said we don't see any intent to discriminate which is neither here nor there under title seven of the civil rights act which prevents employment discrimination

14:15 but they also said here's the thing. The bar um the American Bar Association is not an employer. They're not a a labor organization. They're not an employment agency. So therefore, Title 7 doesn't really apply to them. And the court said ABA continued to discriminate through the bar exam as you see fit.

14:33 Yeah, that I'm not I don't know much about lawyer stuff. Uh in my I don't know spit about lawyering

14:41 in my no spit in my civilian mind. Uh, I see that as kind of a punt um, legally speaking and maybe that was that maybe that's you know a lot of times you decide something on on precedent and whether or not you feel it's right or not that's just the precedent. But

14:57 um, I don't know that felt like a punt to me by saying like well they're not an employer or an agency or labor organization so we're just sort of not going to hear this one.

15:05 Yeah. And this this reveals to me something that I just find fascinating is when lawyers sue other lawyers or bodies of lawyers or judges rule on the test that it takes to create lawyers and therefore judges.

15:19 It's it just seems so fraught uh with basically opinion because they're so like it's not like the judge is learning about this for the first time. They're coming at it from fresh eyes. like this is like part of their fabric is as um having been a law student and becoming a lawyer and then becoming a judge, you know. I just I I just find it fascinating.

15:38 Yeah, totally. Um should we wrap up sort of the the testing stuff and then take a break?

15:43 Uh yeah, let's get back into um the evolution of the test again. Yeah. So, now we're in the late 80s, 1988. I'm a junior in high school, uh, still seeking that first kiss.

15:54 And the NCBE, uh, has added the multistate essay examination at this point. So now you're back to essaying, uh, which is how it previously had been until that multiple choice test,

16:06 right? And in 97 it um handed over the multi-state performance test or the MPT which says, "Hey, let's um sort of do like do some practice stuff like write write up a brief for me or write out a memo or draft a memo and let's see how you do on that." And then finally in 2011 uh the uniform bar exam or the UB was adopted by most states uh where all three of those tests kind of make that one up as one big test.

16:35 Yeah. which is, you know, if you're a state and you don't feel like going to the trouble of coming up with your entire your own bar exam, now you can just use the UB. Yeah. And it's it's

16:46 proven um like it's it's there's all sorts of great questions in there. You sacrificed um state law,

16:53 but a lot of people say like, well, like law students don't need to sit around and memorize state law. That's a waste of time. uh in in favor of the UBE, which is pretty rich because a lot of people argue that the UBE itself is a waste of time because you have to memorize general law rather than state law, which we'll talk more about that. I just I'm chomping at the bit right now.

17:14 Yeah. But it did make it like more easy to transfer from state to state and stuff like that. Uh and we'll get into those specifics, too. But let's take that break,

17:22 okay? And we'll get into the basics of the bar right after this. So, Chuck, it turns out there's 56 jurisdictions in the United States. Uh 50 I didn't 50 50 states plus some territories. You got some overseas possessions. You got a um you know

18:10 what else? Uh so there's 56 and each jurisdiction is has its own like highest agency that basically says these are the standards to become a lawyer in the state. And again, a lot of them just said you have to pass the uniform bar exam. That's the standard. Um but they also can kind of mess with it here or there. And it's up to uh this a this agency that's associated with the highest court in the state, usually the state supreme court.

18:36 Yeah, exactly. Um in most jurisdictions, if you just to take the bar exam, you have to have graduated from an accredited uh law school from the American Bar Association,

18:47 uh which usually means a three-year program. Um some states though are like, "Hey, uh if you're not if you didn't go to an accredited school, that's fine. will still let you take the bar. Uh if you are in Washington state, uh Virginia, Vermont, or California, they allow a legal apprentice uh ship to swap out um law school, which I think is super kind of cool.

19:09 Yeah. Um and Maine and New York let you sub out like a year or two of that law school for an apprenticeship.

19:14 Yeah, for sure. Which is pretty neat. Um it's it's old school. It's a throwback kind of thing.

19:19 Yeah. Uh if you want to take the um bar exam, most of the time it's given in February and July. Those are your two options. Uh and then you're going to pay some money for it. And there's a lot of ways you're going to pay money for it just to to register to take it,

19:35 the bar exam itself. It can be a few hundred dollars. It can be more than $1,000 depending on your state and how greedy they are.

19:42 Yeah. Um, if you want to use a laptop, you want to type out your briefs and your memos and your essays rather than um write them out because you get hand cramps like the old lawyers used to.

19:54 Yeah. Um, you're going to have to pay a fee for that. And the reason why is because there is no chance you are going to be allowed to bring your own laptop. No. because they keep the the the place so tight and and are so hawkish about preventing cheating that they actually provide tampons to people who need them because you're not allowed to bring in your own tampon.

20:20 Wow. Really? Yeah, that's happened. And apparently it's not just an isolated thing that they have a bowl of tampons and you grab one if you need it and you hope that they don't run out if you really need it. So yeah, it's it's um it's that like there's no way you're bringing your own laptop in.

20:37 Yeah. Or tampon. Exactly. So, wow. I never knew that. That's a nice little tidbit.

20:43 Thanks. I thought that was pretty great, too. Um so, uh you have to have money to register, like you said. You have to have money um to, you know, a lot of times people take off work for several months. Um, so you have to have a a life that can do that, you know, which uh indicates a certain amount of at least either privilege or maybe hard work and saving if that's how you did it, which uh is great. And then almost assuredly you have paid um several thousand, maybe as much as $6,000 to take uh preparatory courses. Um about 60% of the market share in the United States is a company called uh B A R I Barbrey. um can be up to 6,000, maybe as low as 1,800 bucks.

21:28 And they have been around since the 1950s. And I was I was like, what does Barbary stand for? And I had a a weirdly hard time finding out uh what it stood for until I sadly Wikipedia just turned it up. I should have gone to the most obvious place, but

21:43 uh I think when they merged in 2021 uh or no, no, no, they merged in the ' 70s, I think. Uh and it was just the the names of uh two companies. I think Bay Area Review was BAR and the Bar Review Inc. was Bar and so they just squashed those together. So kind of a boring story.

22:02 I had seen um that it was a merger of Barbazison Modeling School. And Brie, meaning the makers of Bree cheese around the world.

22:10 Wow. That's a that's a mashup I could enjoy. Right. And the $6,000 one that you can pay for like the premium uh test prep, they actually have somebody take the test for you. And they even provide the person with a wig that matches your hair, so it looks a lot like you, too.

22:28 I did see though they have a guarantee if you do not uh if you pay that money to them and you don't pass the bar, uh you I think you get to take the course again for free one more time if you're taking the exam again.

22:42 Okay, that's not So you don't get your money back, but you get to retake the course at no charge.

22:46 No, Barbon Modeling has long had a motto, you don't get your money back. Right. Yeah, exactly.

22:53 So, uh, let's break down the UB, the Uniform Bar Examination, which is the culmination of decades of the National Conference of Bar Examiners hard work, sweat blood tears joy pain.

23:06 Yeah. And again, it's you can break it down into three parts that kind of came along separately. The first, remember, was that um multiplechoice test, the multi-state bar examination.

23:17 Yeah. Uh there's 200 multiplechoice questions. I've seen 175. I guess it depends on I don't know your jurisdiction and how much how valuable they find. 25 questions.

23:28 Yeah, maybe. But it covers seven different areas of the law. You want to take them.

23:33 Sure. Uh civil procedure, contracts, of course. Nice. Uh tors. Oo. Uh constitutional law.

23:40 Uh criminal law, the sexiest law. Careful. Uh criminal law and procedure. That is um evidence, which is its own category. And real property. Kaching

23:50 and that is 50% of the UBE score. Then the uh the other two are the multi-state essay once again which is 30% and then the two multi-state performance test tasks and that is 20%.

24:04 Yeah. Uh so you're like okay I could take that no problem. Sure you might be able to take it. You probably wouldn't pass and you'd uh give up 12 hours plus of your life. 12 hours just of the test. Uh it's spread out over three days technically, but the UB takes up two of those days.

24:23 Um 12 hours divided by two days divided by four sessions. So 3 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon,

24:30 go to your hotel room, can't sleep, toss and turn, come back the next morning, 3 in the morning, 3 in the afternoon.

24:36 Yeah. Oh, well, we should mention, too, that's another reason you might be paying some extra money if you don't live near a testing site, like travel and room and board and all that stuff.

24:44 Good point. and scotch at the end of the day. Of course, that's right. Uh it's graded on a 400point scale. Uh depends on the state on what they consider passing. U generally 260 to 270. Um I said state, of course, jurisdiction.

24:59 Um and then uh apparently it's like it's not like acing the bar gets you anything more than passing the bar. uh you you pass it and that's great, but um I I have some inside info from attorney friends uh which I'll kind of dabble in here and there, but I I think it's sort of unourred to you don't go in and be like ace the bar.

25:19 Yeah, I saw a Reddit post where somebody posted like I got a score of 330 and I mean is that high? I don't mean to make anybody who's got lower than that feel bad, but I'm just curious like what do you guys think? And it was like

25:33 you you disgust us. like that is just sad. So yeah, um it's not really cool to to flex on people over your bar score.

25:43 And you pass, that's all that matters. That's right. And then if you do pass, there's always a um a gaggle of attorneys, usually quite experienced, seasoned attorneys who um just are waiting for you to finish. And when you finish, they embrace you. Um and that's how you know that you've passed the bar exam. Uh we did mention that those UBE scores are portable. You can uh it's not like um the old days when you had to pass that state's bar. Um you know, I think that's how it used to be kind of across the board,

26:15 right? Uh they're transferable for 2 to 5 years after taking the exam. It depends on the jurisdiction, of course. Uh and then uh if they if you're in a jurisdiction that doesn't utilize that UB test, um most of them still have the MBE as a a big part of their exam. um usually with their own specific like state law stuff if they do that. Uh, and there's usually also a third day, which you were talking about earlier, that third test, um, which is like a 60 question ethics test,

26:45 right? Um, it's called the multi-state professional responsibility examination, the MP.

26:52 Yes. And they ask you questions. It's it's scored separately, but they have questions like, you know, attorney Lionel Huts brought in a bag of pot to one of his one of his clients into prison. is uh attorney Hut's guilty of loving too much,

27:07 right? Was that a real Simpsons thing? No. Oh, okay. Cuz I could see that. I They only really talked about pot like on a couple of really great episodes, but you know.

27:19 No, that wasn't their bag. Not normally. That wasn't their bag of pot. Oh, yeah. That wasn't their sack.

27:26 Don't use that word. Yeah, sack's kind of gross, isn't it? Moist. Oh, boy. Uh what was the other one?

27:34 Moist sack. Oh, or Go look that up in the transcript. Don't don't do it. Uh let's talk about pass rates because it really obviously depends on the state. They can vary pretty wildly actually from looking at some of these stats. Uh I think for first timers uh from July of this year's testing of 2025 first- timer pass rates there was a range like uh from 66% in Connecticut to almost 90% in Utah. So go Utah.

28:05 Uh if you look at overall rates not necessarily just first- timers uh 2025 50 only 54% in the state of Alabama uh once again compared to 86 in Utah. So I don't know what's in the water out there in Utah but those attorneys are sipping it up. Oh, it's widely considered a really easy state to pass the bar.

28:23 Oh, is it really? Yeah. Oh, interesting. Okay. Um, some very hard places to take the bar around the world actually that I saw Nigeria Singapore

28:32 Korea, Japan, Ontario, Canada. Canada. Okay. New York State. All like New York State's bar exam is so difficult. It's like as hard as the entire nations of Singapore's. Um, so there are it definitely varies by jurisdiction and by country just how hard it can be.

28:52 Wow, that's interesting. Uh, I do know that of the 2022 graduates, this is just another sort of stat for you, um, over 90% of graduates from accredited schools uh, pass within a couple of years. But there's from what I see there's really no shame to for it to take a crack or two um, to pass the bar. I don't think I don't know if it's something you're going to like run around the office telling people on your first day,

29:16 but I don't think it's like a mark of shame. There have been plenty of very successful attorneys uh very famous attorneys that didn't pass the bar on the first go, including Michelle Obama

29:26 and uh Hillary Clinton and uh I think JFK Yeah. bunch of DIM. Uh JFK Jr. I think took two or three times to pass.

29:36 I saw that. And uh old Kim Kardashian uh took a time or two. Yeah, I think three.

29:44 Three. And there's actually limits on how many times you can take it depending on your state, your jurisdiction, your territory.

29:51 Oh, well, they just say, "Sorry, why don't you It sounds like you should try another line of work."

29:56 There are some places that say that. I don't know if they actually say that. the gaggle of of attorneys tells you that when you fail the sixth time, but there are um other places that have discretionary rules where after you reach a certain number, like say I think six is the highest I've seen. Uh you can apply to take it again, you can basically go to the state bar and be like "Please yeah

30:19 I want to be a lawyer so bad. I'm just really terrible at this." Yeah. I mean, it is a test and some people aren't great test takers. We we'll kind of talk about that in a little bit, but also uh I imagine there's plenty of things you can do with the law degree if you haven't passed a bar right?

30:36 Uh yeah. I mean, it's like you see somebody referred to like, oh, this is a lawyer or something, but they have like they're in some field that has nothing to do with law.

30:44 Yeah. You're just like they very frequently are advisors. Um like just they know how how far you can bend the law.

30:53 Okay. There's a lot of stuff you can do with it. All right. Yeah, you could always teach, I imagine.

30:58 Oh, yeah, that, too. Um, I have a little cute little um addition addendum to this this part.

31:04 Let's go. The youngest person ever to pass the bar is Sophia Park. Okay. She passed the bar in 2024 at age 17. 17 years, eight months.

31:19 And was that after law school even? Yeah, she started law school at 13. Oh, she's one of those. says she beat the previous record by three months. The previous record had been set um at age I guess 18 years in one month by her brother Peter.

31:34 Man, isn't that nuts? It's a smart family. It is. They really wanted to be lawyers.

31:41 Yeah. Or or you know, are they practicing law or are they just like I just wanted to show off?

31:46 Oh, I I believe they're both practicing law. Yeah, I guess so. Um well, should we take another break, Chuck? I I guess we should

31:55 Well, the one more little tidbit here at the end. Um, you know, we we said that it's it's a bar exam is basically to say, hey, you can practice law. Uh, the one other thing that it does is it it helps determine uh what schools can teach it because the ABA requires that law schools, uh, if you want to be an accredited law accredited law school, a certain percentage of your graduates have to pass the bar within two years, otherwise your accreditation goes away. Yeah, I saw 75% of your um graduates have to pass.

32:25 All right. Or they're like, "Sorry, I guess you're not teaching well enough." Exactly. Um I wanted my tidbit to be last, so I'm just going to repeat it now. Okay. I had on second thought, we'll just go to break. How about that?

32:37 All right. We'll be right back. All right, so we're back with more critiques and problems on the bar because uh if you start to do a little digging, it turns out there's been a lot of uh a lot of that over the years um for a lot of different reasons. Um you know, we've mentioned some of the stuff while it was developing basically um you know, banning people of color from even taking the test for a long time. Um but black and Hispanic Americans are still very underrepresented in the field of uh law. And uh you know that's a problem because when you're a practicing attorney like a lot of um opinion you know that's why they call them opinions and judgment goes into it and sure it's based on precedent but your perspective is important and having diverse perspectives is also important

33:55 right. Yeah, for sure. It's um it's a white male profession essentially statistically speaking that is far and away the largest population represented in the legal profession in the United States. Uh and there's statistics and figures that kind of show the disparity here. Um there's um some data from 2021 from the American Bar Association that showed that white law school graduates passed on their first try at the bar exam at a rate 24% higher than black students, 13% higher than Hispanic students, and 15% higher than Native Americans. So those are really substantial disparities in passing the bar the first time. And so being in the hot seat, the um National Conference of Bar Examiners is like, "Hey, hey, hey, everybody mellow out here." This is a this is this tracks with other scoring of um racial disparities uh like like law school grades, LSAT grades, like this is in line with them. Just leave

34:58 the bar exam alone. And by the way, their interpretation is that this is an example of longstanding systemic racial disparities in the American education system, right? That start way back long before the the somebody gets to law school and goes to take the bar. And that the bar exam is just showing this. It's just reflecting this problem elsewhere. So again, stop looking at the bar is essentially what the NCBE says. It also kind of sounds like we're just a part of uh the grand history of of systemic discrimination throughout our country.

35:38 Well, that's a critique of him, too. People are like, "That's your answer? Like, you're we're just perpetuating an already existing racial disparity." Like, that's essentially what they're saying in that argument.

35:48 Yeah, it's a it's definitely a strange argument. Um other people say that uh you know just part of that disparity is you know the cost associated with law school and to be a successful candidate and like we said the privilege that it takes to uh maybe be able to to pay for that and then take off month's work and and pay for the the very best u preparatory courses you know that's it's just sort of all in the big soup of privilege you know

36:15 right I saw that black and Hispanic students who take the bar exam are 50% % likelier to work during their bar prep period.

36:24 Yeah. Than a white student. Like it's just logistically speaking, racially speaking, it's just much likelier that a white test taker is going to be able to not work and just dedicate their time to prepping for the bar. And I mean that alone explains a lot of it because the bar exam is essentially um like it's a standardized test that where you memorize essentially year one law school stuff.

36:55 Yeah. I mean, that's one of the other critiques is that uh you know, it's a memorization test and um it it there have been plenty of studies that show that it doesn't necessarily isn't a marker toward your future performance as an attorney or like your how successful you may be,

37:13 right? Uh there was a study in 2024 um from Nevada that uh compared scores on the MBE uh MBE and other components of their test of uh I think a little more than 500 new attorneys and how they were basically rated how affected they were by their peers and their supervisors and judges. And they they did find a small positive relationship between some of the ratings, some parts of the bar, but at the end of the day, overall, they said it was minimally predictive of career success uh and negligibly related. Uh the Nevada performance test was negligibly related to success.

37:49 Yeah, th those low correlations were as low as 1 to 4%. Yeah, I think 4% was the highest as far as um the actual whole bar exam um relating to these ratings of how effective these lawyers were by their peers. They said we can only account for that with 12% of the bar exam. The other the rest of the distinctions or the differences in in effectiveness

38:14 has nothing to do with their score on the bar exam. And so people say like, well, what the heck is the bar exam doing? And again, the National Conference of Bar Examiners are like, "We're testing for lawyer competence to protect the public, dummy."

38:29 And people say, "Well, how are you testing for legal competence?" Yeah. Like what what's what is legal competence? And this is where the National Conference of Board Examiners like pull their shirt away from their necks and you can see like some sweat breaking out on their forehead because they've never given a definition of competence. And if you don't have a definition of competence, how can you in a standardized way test people for whether they meet that definition or not?

38:56 Yeah. So people say like the bar exam under that that um description is by definition invalid. It is not it's not a valid test, meaning that it doesn't test the thing it purports to test because we just have no idea what it is testing.

39:15 You know what you just sounded like? What? an attorney. It sounds like you just dropped the mic in court and then sat down and and I was to your just sat down on your left and I put my hand on your shoulder and was like, "Hell yeah, man."

39:28 Got him. Uh there have also been a lot of just sort of disasters in recent years, very public ones in terms of the bar. Uh during COVID, uh they offered remote exams and it was just sort of a joke in a lot of cases. there were a lot of computer problems like programs crashing. Uh they had facial recognition issues and that sometimes they failed to identify dark skinned test takers. So that's that's bad right off the bat.

39:56 Um you also again, you know, it was remote so you had to keep your eyes on the screen at all times or they would think you're cheating if you're looking around or looking into your lap or something. So people were

40:06 like literally urinating themselves in their seat because they couldn't move. And one woman went into labor and went through the test and gave birth and then came home and finished the second day.

40:19 Yeah. If you want to know how tough Lyola University law students are, there you go.

40:25 What about uh California with the the chat GPT questions? This one it's got a lot of shod and fre around it, but California said, "Nuts to the UB. We can do a better program ourselves and save money." So they designed their own bar exam like just completely issued the uni um the uniform bar examination right and it just the roll out was horrible. Um there were people who were taking the test they would get error messages the program would crash during the test. It wouldn't save their essays. Can you imagine finishing an essay and clicking to save it and they're like nope sorry do it again.

41:03 That's every student's nightmare. Yeah. And remember this is timed. Like you have three hours per segment, right? Like if you don't finish in time, sorry. Like you you have to stop.

41:13 So that's a huge part of it. And then also like you said, chat GPT it turned out was involved because some students were like there like are misspellings and typos in some of these multiplechoice questions.

41:24 And the California State Bar said, "Wait what?" Yeah. Uh turns out that some of those questions were chatb um written by Chat GPT. They weren't even reviewed by a lawyer um or copy edited by the state agency that oversaw the test because uh you know I don't know money I guess.

41:45 And this was another case of lawyers suing lawyers and lawyers suing their state bar and all that. Um and it like California has just lost so much money on it. Remember this is a money-saving thing too. So

41:58 right again there's like a a little bit of shot in Florida too. Yeah. Yeah, there was one incident in uh New York where uh someone went into cardiac arrest while taking the test. That was this year in the July test

42:09 and you know people are like you know we should help here right and the test proctors were like no everyone be quiet and like uh you know just keep taking your test and and we'll deal with this uh in the next lunch break.

42:21 Yeah. Like they had to keep taking their tests while the paramedics were saving this this person's life like next to them essentially. That was what they were forced to do. That's how um I don't know, you choose your own word they are about um assigning these tests or or carrying out these tests. I work I was working a TV commercial one time as a PA years ago out in the desert and uh in California and a crew member had a cardiac arrest and the director told them to move a big fake rock in front of uh and they were tending to the guy

42:53 but they were like we need to keep shooting like go move that big fake rock in front of the the paramedic so we can keep shooting.

42:59 I guess it's better than the director being like take that fake rock and finish him off with it.

43:04 Yeah. Yeah. And then drag him out of the way. Uh, one thing I wondered because I always kind of wonder like how would we do if we took the SAT now, like you know, at this stage in life or something.

43:14 Um, I wondered about like a really experienced attorney years later if they took the bar again. And Livia dug into that and found a study from 2021. Uh, 16 like successful, experienced practicing attorneys from Oklahoma retook uh the bar essentially with no prep. Uh, it was just like, you know, their prep was their career. uh on the theory that hey if it's it's if it's measuring ability then this should bear out in the in the grades and none of them passed. They got uh scores ranging from 26 to 52%. Um so nobody would have passed that bar and and the lawyers who have been practicing longest did the worst out of all of them. Mhm. And then one general criticism of the bar exam too um in addition to everything else we've just talked about is that it doesn't in any real way um kind of jive with what these lawyers are going to do in the legal profession,

44:10 right? It's general questions about law generally in the United States. Again, it's essentially the stuff you learn in your first year at law school because the next two years you start to get into your specialization. Um, and it's a lot of memory and memorization and a lot of um, lawyering after you graduate and go through the bar and become an attorney is open book research to figure out what law applies.

44:37 Exactly. The bar exam is closed book rapidfire testing. So they're like, "This is not like it even putting away everything else, all the other arguments, at its base, it's kind of a flawed test to start with."

44:51 Yeah, for sure. And because of that, there are a lot of jurisdictions that uh have long had workarounds and alternatives uh and there are changes on the horizon for the bar itself. Uh Wisconsin, it's the only state uh I guess only jurisdiction that never stopped saying, "Hey, you went to law school and you can practice law in this state." Yeah. You don't have to take the bar here. Um which is pretty cool. Uh I think you have to graduate from one of the states two law schools there

45:18 and they call it diploma privilege. Uh I think in the past couple of decades, New Hampshire has followed suit a little bit and if you graduate with honors from University of New Hampshire Law School uh and you participate in court simulations and have practical experience, then you can be admitted to practice law without the bar.

45:36 Yeah. And we had said um earlier that the the law school was originally created as an alternative to appren apprenticeship. Some states have gone the other way now where the apprenticeships are alternatives to law school. Like it's a pass to the bar. I like it too. Um Vermont and Virginia, they allow apprenticeships instead of um actually instead of the bar exams themselves.

45:57 Uh Oregon offers apprenticeships uh where if you're a law school graduate, um you can you can become a lawyer without the bar exam. If you apprentice for I think 675 hours over four weeks

46:12 uh in supervised work, you will basically become a lawyer after that. Four weeks? Four months?

46:19 No, four weeks. Four years. No, I I was joking. There's only 675 hours in four weeks. So I

46:27 Oh, okay. So just be doing 24 hours a day for a month as an apprentice, which seems hardcore.

46:34 I'll assume your math checks out. It does. I even used um a calculator. Oh, great. Uh I think Washington state has a plan coming in 2026. So, more states are kind of getting on board with this.

46:46 Um California last year actually rejected a proposal um to become more like Oregon with those apprenticeship hours. Uh even though the state bar of California's board of trustees said, "We think this is a good idea." The state supreme court said, "No, no, no." Um but coming around the corner now, we have the NextGen bar exam right? Yeah, the NCBE is like, "Everybody settle down." So, starting in 2018, they're like, "We're going to change this a little bit. The test's going to be shorter. Um, we're going to make it so it's possible to take it remotely if need be." Um, and then it's it's just going to be a little different where I think it's a little more essay heavy than the original test, but they're also carving out some stuff that they're not going to test on like family law and that kind of thing. Um, so it's a little leaner, meaner kind of bar exam that they're coming up with.

47:38 All right. Um, two things that I saw that are worth mentioning real quick. Uh, if you do away with the bar exam, there's a couple of benefits to that. One is that it puts the onus on law schools themselves to graduate competent lawyers. Um, right now there are some law schools that are considered diploma mills because as long as 75% of your graduates um pass the bar within two years, like you stay accredited and you can make a lot of money off that other 25%. That's one um thing that would happen. Another one is that legal fees would probably come down because one of the functions of gatekeeping that the bar exam does is it artificially keeps the supply of lawyers low which artificially inflates the fees associated with lawyers too.

48:29 Uhhuh. Pretty neat. Think about that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh I spoke to my friend I I think I know a few attorneys here and there but only like one good friend who's a lawyer uh who is electing to remain anonymous in this case.

48:42 Okay. But I did text him kind of about all this and he said uh I would say it's only useful in that it shows how you can collect and synthesize a lot of information under time pressure but that's not really much different than most standardized tests. Uh but as far as being an indicator of how you'll be as a practitioner yeah not so much. He says, for example, the bar will test you to some extent on the rules of civil procedure, but passing the bar doesn't mean you can walk into a deposition the day after you pass and know how to do that. Um, as someone who's taken hundreds of depositions, you learn by watching, listening to more experienced attorneys do it, uh, and then by trial and error, no pun intended, uh, doing it yourself. Uh, he is in favor of the apprenticeships.

49:23 He said it's probably a lot more helpful as long as your mentor, you know, knew what they were doing,

49:26 right? uh and then said one thing he would like to see change is like um I think more um emphasis on writing. Uh he said I see so many briefs written by someone who allegedly passed a bar that are just horrible. Uh he said that's probably just a criticism of the legal education more than the bar. Um and then he said he wanted to remain anonymous. and he said, "Uh, I know it sounds silly or overly cautious when there are Scotas justices who can accept luxury vacations with impunity, but I'm supposed to be impartial here, so uh, ragging on the bar might not be a good look."

50:00 I think that's smart. Yeah. Uh, you got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, thanks for tapping your anonymous friend. That was good info.

50:09 Sure. Uh, if you want to learn more about the bar exam, go take the bar exam. Uh, and in the meantime, it's time for listener mail. It'd be kind of fun. I mean, if it was free, I would take the bar exam just to like with zero knowledge of anything just to see like how poorly I would do.

50:29 Yeah, I would too. I'd be right next to you peeing in my seat and and going into labor and having a heart attack.

50:35 Wouldn't that be funny though if we got like I don't know, even like a 20% or something?

50:40 Or if we passed and we just automatically became lawyers. Yeah, let's do it. All right.

50:45 Uh All right. This is about the salt and sea. Uh, you called for listener mail, right?

50:49 All right. Hey guys, I was listening to the Salt and Sea episode. Uh, in college, I took an ocean geography class and learned about inland seas. An inland sea, cuz remember we sort of wondered difference between seas and lakes.

51:01 He said, "An inland sea can either be entirely landlocked or have a single river connected to the ocean. Inland seas are larger than lakes and have a salinity uh between a lake and an ocean."

51:11 So, I think you mentioned something about salinity. Uh they're typically remnants of larger oceans and have numerous islands, but of course the scientific community names these things and sometimes it can be rather confusing. Uh the Caspian Sea, for example, is classified as a lake despite being known as the largest inland sea in the world. And the Hudson Bay uh is an island sea or which is Did you know that

51:34 an island sea or inland sea? He says island, but uh probably meant inland. Okay. I didn't know. I had no idea whether it's an island sea or an inland sea. I had no idea.

51:47 Or Dylan's favorite sea is the uh Larapentine Sea or the Laapentine Sea. It's an ancient sea that split Australia in half during the Cambrian explosion. Uh being a longtime listener and learning about new things is the best part of my commute, guys. That is from Dylan.

52:05 Thanks a lot, Dylan. That was great info. I still like your interpretation, Chuck, which I if I remember correctly, you were saying that a an inland a lake would be landlocked, I think.

52:17 Yeah. I mean, it sounds like there's no true definition. I don't know. Well, then let's keep going with yours.

52:23 Great. Nice try, Dylan. Uh, if you want to be like Dylan and send us a great email, you can send it off to stuffodcast.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "What's the bar exam like anyway? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

Josh Clark (Host), Chuck Bryant (Host), Jerry (Guest), Dylan (Guest).

What is discussed in "What's the bar exam like anyway? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

In order: 0:00 Stuff You Should Know, courtroom, Garandi, houseofworks.com; 5:00 National Conference of Bar Examiners, 16th century, American Association of Law Schools, apprentice; 10:00 gatekeeping, multiple choice, African-American, cut score; 15:00 56 jurisdictions, apprentice, briefs, multiple choice; 20:00 260 to 270, Bar Review Inc., Barbrey, Bay Area Review; 25:00 JFK Jr., Lionel Huts, New York State, Ontario; 30:00 accredited law school, black and Hispanic Americans, Hispanic students, National Conference of Bar Examiners; 35:00 Nevada, American education system, facial recognition, Hispanic students; 40:00 chat GPT, California State Bar, desert, director; 45:00 apprentice, 675 hours, briefs, civil procedure; 50:00 inland sea, listener mail, Caspian Sea, Hudson Bay.

What is mentioned in this Stuff You Should Know episode?

133 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including National Conference of Bar Examiners, apprentice, Stuff You Should Know, multiple choice, gatekeeping, iHeart Radio. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "What's the bar exam like anyway? | STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW"?

The episode runs 53 min; the transcript is about 9,766 words in 197 timestamped sections.

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