'Shaping the Bar' author says bar exam protects legal profession, not public
The goal of the bar exam is to be a gatekeeper for the legal profession and protect the public. But the current system, dominated by the Uniform Bar Examination, gets a failing grade from Joan Howarth, an academic, an attorney and the author of Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing.
In her book, Howarth, a visiting professor at the University of Nevada’s William S. Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas and a chair of Nevada’s Working Group on Core Subject Requirements and Performance Test Implementation, offers insights on how the bar got to where it is, along with where it should go.
It comes as the National Conference of Bar Examiners revamps the bar exam. Currently, 20 jurisdictions are poised to adopt the NextGen exam, which is more focused on determining whether a candidate is practice ready instead of rewarding those who spend months memorizing legal rules.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Howarth, also the dean emerita of the Michigan State University College of Law, discusses with the ABA Journal’s Julianne Hill how the bar’s history of creating a method to test minimum competency is outdated and discriminatory.
The philosophy of Christopher Columbus Langdell, Harvard’s first law school dean who pushed for law professors who had not been tainted by practicing law, still lingers, and Howarth says it taints the educational system and influences the bar exam.
Howarth supports apprenticeships like then-President Abraham Lincoln had before becoming an attorney. She discusses the need to change the path to licensure to mandate that bar candidates have experience with dealing with clients, much like medical students have residencies. The book offers 12 suggestions for shifting the bar.
Targeting academics, attorneys and the general public, the book grew out of her passion for preparing students for the bar and the many scholarly articles that she’d written on the topic over the course of her career. She discusses how writing will change for law students as the bar exam shifts and offers advice to attorneys who want to write books.
In This Podcast:
Joan Howarth. (Photo by Carmen Estrada)
Joan Howarth is a visiting professor at the University of Nevada’s William S. Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas and a chair of Nevada’s Working Group on Core Subject Requirements and Performance Test Implementation. Previously, she was the dean of the Michigan State University College of Law. Her academic work focuses on attorney licensing and LGBT legal history.
