All practicing lawyers who went to law school missed the primary lesson which no student in Minnesota had internalized, and I’m right to conclude that the context of our laws and it’s purpose are not understood by Minnesota Law Students who pass Minnesota Bar Exam before practicing law.

If they did have an understanding, the fact that they collectively choose to first consider how any specific case would further personal gain by the signing of contract, is an abuse of the profession and it’s primary function. All citizens have the right to a fair trial.

You win some, and you lose some. The balance plays itself out, if an attorney is truly capable. The License to practice Minnesota Law is not a license to selectively choose clients based on the dollar value of the claim, the likelihood of winning, or the influence it will bring as a benefit.

To defy this committment is an abuse of your privelege that accompanies criminal consequence in terms of fraudulent practice.

It is your position as a Lawyer to know the facts specifically, to understand the law as it applies, and to provide a defense based on the truth and relative circumstance. Whether the facts are altered is for a third party judge or jury to decide.

I give the Minnesota Licensed Legal Profession an F – Failure, collectively. Not one attorney in the State of Minnesota passed my requirement test as a citizen who observed and graded you separately on these very basic fundamental principals.

It is deserved that each of you lose your license to practice, based on your priority to first gain most substantially, and in the face of neglect to those who are denied a fair and reasonable representation due to the financial setback a lesser claim may bring.

Intent is critical as it applies to the law.

This places Minnesota Lawyer Clients in a position that conflicts with the clients interest. The client has the right to pursue justice in accordance to a standard of professional dignity.

It is further noted that collusion to violate the fundamental principals in support of each other is the act repeated as a matrix through a code of silence. Simply stated, cover-up.

The crime of \Puffing,\ is third in this brief list of violations for which most of you attempt to seduce potential clients based on false pretense. Catch words that profess sincere concern and heartfelt pain for the victim are marked by words such as care, honor, trust, confidence, privelege, and so on…

Lawyers who genuinely care about people, are not people who cherry pick clients based on gain and influence. I dispute the claims.

It is not your right to tip the scale of justice in favor of your own self benefit, and I deem all Minnesota Practicing Attorneys liable for the abuse and misjustice you imposed as a profession obligated by rightful service.

I am a fortunate Minnesotan who was spared your influence, and thank you all for denying me the right to your variety of professional service, though I wasted six years of thwarted effort to fine one attorney that was willing.

Perhaps, I am now more prepared than you, should I choose to take the Minnesota Bar Exam.

Petition vs. Legislative Act?

I tend to get my feathers ruffled when I hear so much elitism coming from various other “young lawyers” (and here I mean experience-wise, not age-wise), when what we need is more supoort for each other in these challenging times.

In my practice, I have freely referred potential clients to my classmates, and have been blessed with referrals which help build my business. Together we lift each other.

And, believe it or not, I don’t ask them for their class rank before I do that.

I took the LSAT in 2004 after two practice tests, achieved a 165 (94th percentile at that time). For two years now I have taught LSAT prep classes, including tutoring, single weekend and multi-weekend courses which increase LSAT scores an average of 5 to 10 points.

I was also a National Merit Scholar, second in my high school class of approx. 550, and had a 3.8 GPA going into law school. I clearly could have been a UMN law student. I wasn’t, I went to Mitchell. Know why? Arrogant younger students and no diversity/maturity of the student mix. I suspect you are under 30. I was a returning student at the age of 37, after running a multi-million dollar business for more than a decade. I’d put the wisdom of my choice of school against your hype for the U any day.

If you think the LSAT is a good prediction of achievement in law school, I heartily disagree. it is A prediction of achievement, not very statistically aligned, instead it operates to provide a barrier to entry, and a method of alloting scholarships. That’s it.

Also, I don’t think the 5 to 7 percentile difference in bar passage for UMN students says as much as you think. Statistics can be interesting. That 5 to 7 percentage points is a 7% difference in passage rate. Not very significant.

UMN’s superior ranking isn’t due to “tax subsidies” – it’s due to the fact that UMN’s entering classes possess substantially higher GPAs and LSAT scores than any of the other three schools. The difference between a 165 median and a 156 median may sound like a mere 9 points, but that gap actually represents approximately 30-40 percentiles. We’re talking performers above the 90th percentile versus LSAT takers in the 50-60 percentile range. No contest here. And last I checked no one needs to prove “their right to exist.” What does that even mean?

He/She asserts righteously that there’s no gap in bar passage rates (Uhh – UMN’s passage rate is around 98% while the average in the jurisdiction hovers around 90%. What does that tell you?) and that there’s no “achievement gap” between UMN grads and the other schools. Let me know when Billy Mitchell starts placing grads as faculty members at Tier 1s or when Hamline starts getting SCOTUS clerkships. Or hell, even legal employment for the bottom half of the class at UST, WM, and Hamline would be a good start towards your claim that there’s “no achievement gap.”

Anyhow. Not sure that the original poster was the one who didn’t know what was going on. WM/Hamline/UST are the ones that should feel ashamed of their willingness to take $100000 and turn it into a degree with little to no employment prospects. And worthless “law schools” in California with 3% bar passage rates are a bad deal at any price. Don’t encourage attendance by allowing their graduates to sit for the bar here.

“There are enough lawyers in this state as it is. If anything, we should shut down Hamline and maybe Mitchell, and definitely make it harder for out-of-staters to be admitted to the bar. Lets keep the profession selective. Enough with the tier 4 graduates and non-accredited lawyers as members of the bar. It is too easy to become a lawyer as it is in Minn.”

Let me help. SOME U of M law students think themselves to be part of an elite club. They are not. They confuse their tax-subsidized standing in U.S. News Report as proof of their right to exist. It is not. All of us have met a U of M student (and Harvard/Yale students for that matter) who did not live up to their own hype. There is no significant gap in the bar passage rates between any of the law schools, no achievement gap between the U of M students and those law students who attend the other schools. U of M law is a good school. But it is not alone in MN. Stop reading your own press.

I agree that the Twin Cities market is oversaturated with lawyers, especially with the recent addition of St. Thomas School of Law. If you advocate for shutting down Hamline and William Mitchell, would you also advocate for the U of M and St. Thomas to include part-time law programs? Currently, if an individual wants to attend law school and also work full-time Hamline and William Mitchell are the only options in the Twin Cities. Hence, students could be “good enough” to get into the U but if they have a full time career and do not want to put it on hold while obtaining a law degree, they are limited to what U.S. News selects as Tier 3 and Tier 4 schools.

You state that one who can’t “meet the minimum in analyzing a legal problem” can be “fairly denied a license to practice law.” There are two big flaws in that assertion. First, it assumes that the skills required to pass the bar exam somehow are strongly related to the skills required to practice law. No one has to my knowledge shown a link between one and the other. Second, what of those who fail the exam, then pass it by better honing the skills needed to pass? How exactly were these people not competent to practice law before they passed but competent after they passed?

Let’s consider what skills one must bring to the practice of law. Some of them one is required to develop in law school, including critical, analytical reading, and writing. The Socratic Method arguably develops the ability to think and respond in an informed fashion to direct, unexpected and challenging questions. But let’s think about what working lawyers spend most of their time doing. They meet with clients. They meet with opposing counsel to negotiate. They read statues and rules. They meet with judges. They supervise support staff and take supervision from senior attorneys. They look for case law that supports their client’s position. They write pleadings, contracts, and letters. And some of them try cases in court. I don’t recall a single REQUIRED class in law school (Hamline, if anyone cares) that developed the skills needed to do those things well. For example, why is the only serious legal pleading one must complete in law school an appellate brief? How many appellate briefs does the average attorney file each year? A 1L spends a YEAR studying federal civil procedure. How many attorneys (as a percentage of all attorneys) work on a federal civil lawsuit each year?

I recall realizing with chagrin while studying for the bar exam that Bar/Bri was, with respect to the essay portion of the test, emphasizing not so much what the law is, but how to write an answer that would be easy for the grader to read and pronounce acceptable. It was then that I came to better understand why my Civ Pro professor seemed puzzled as he said to me in our meeting about my first semester grade, (B-, if anyone cares) “but you do so well in class…” It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the law – the problem was that I hadn’t yet learned how to write a “pleasing” exam answer. Please explain to me the link between that and the skills required to effectively advocate for a client. And I’m still waiting for the first multiple-choice-exam part of a legal proceeding.

I don’t think of the people who run the law schools as Montgomery Burns on “the Simpsons,” rubbing their hands together and plotting new ways to steal money from would-be attorneys. I merely suggest that life is much easier for them if the licensure system stays the way it is, so I don’t think we should expect them to lead the charge to radically change the system.

You’re right in that I haven’t clearly suggested whether the licensure system should be changed or abandoned. I think lawyers should be licensed. But law schools are trying to have it both ways. They want to be scholarly graduate schools (full of scholarly professors) and nuts-and-bolts training facilities (full of expert lawyers who are also expert teachers) at the same time. For that reason they do neither well. There should be academic graduate schools of law (where the student’s goal is not licensure) and lawyer-training schools (where the goal is licensure). Lawyer-training schools’ curriculum would reflect an understanding that the tools needed to practice law well are the tools not of the scholar (or the law exam or bar exam test-passer) but of the advisor, the risk manager, the negotiator, the storyteller, the leader.

And the bar exam should be euthanized.