This op-ed originally appeared in the July 16, 2020 edition of The Recorder. Read the entire published op-ed here.
By Professor Susan Smith Bakhshian
A fair bar exam cannot be administered today. The State Bar and the California Supreme Court have spent months unsuccessfully searching for a way to offer the bar exam. This must stop. When all of the options are carefully evaluated and no workable solutions exist, it is time to move into the modern age and chart a new path -- one without an exam. The focus on an exam to the exclusion of all other solutions has left California with no plan at all.
Law schools and their graduates have waited patiently hoping for an announcement that would be more thoughtful and workable than some of the jurisdictions who rushed their plans and later had to change course. But the delays continue and no plan emerges for California. Meanwhile, graduates do not have unlimited money to support themselves, or unlimited time to wait for their licensing process to be complete.
The lack of leadership by the California Supreme Court and the California State Bar is an embarrassment. To insist upon a licensing exam that has been under attack for years is indefensible as a pandemic rages on. No one has produced any data to support the notion that somehow a high stakes licensing exam leads to better attorneys. No one has suggested a way to offer an exam without serious health risks. Yet the State Bar and the Supreme Court remain steadfast in their commitment to an exam.
The bar exam is antiquated. The California Bar Exam has not been thoughtfully evaluated or assessed for decades. Yet much has changed for attorneys during that time. While the State Bar is currently analyzing survey data it collected from practicing lawyers, the middle of a pandemic is not the time for subtle changes. The bar exam needs major surgery, not a Band-Aid.
The bar exam promises much and delivers little. A licensing exam does nothing to ferret out the corrupt or impaired attorneys who cannot serve their clients. A robust moral character process, effective diversion programs, and a fair discipline system are better solutions for those problems.
