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.

I don’t disagree with you in that passing the bar exam does not mean you will be a good lawyer, but my comment did not suggest that it did. Regardless, that a passing score on the bar does not automatically make one a “good” lawyer is not inconsistent with my point that it should be harder to pass.

I disagree, in part, with your comment that the bar exam fails to weed out people unfit to practice. The bar is pass-fail, and is not graded on a curve. If you meet the minimum in analyzing a legal problem, then you pass. If an individual cannot apply “passing” legal analysis to the problems, for whatever reason, that to me is a fair reason to exclude someone from a license to practice. Does it ensure “good” practitioners? Of course not, but I don’t think you can convince me that those who cannot pass the Minnesota bar should be allowed to practice law before they earn a passing score. In that sense, the bar exam does succeed in a fair, objective weeding out of individuals.

I am also not sure if you are arguing that the barriers to entry should be eliminated entirely or just redefined or shifted to another point in the process of legal education. A apprenticeship model, like you suggest, is a great concept, but I don’t think that would eliminate the issues associated with barriers to entry. Wouldn’t it have to be like becoming a doctor? (Med School, internship, residency, etc.). In that case, the barriers to entry occur at the front end. The number of students allowed to enroll in medical school is controlled by the AMA. Wouldn’t we also want to control the number of people that participate in the law version of such a program for both practical reasons and to ensure the best candidates get an opportunity? How would we accomplish those decisions? Bar exam score? Law school grades? Law school rank? LSATs? Other? would that still unfairly exclude some deserving people from getting a chance? would bad practitioners still get through?

I also think, in general, law schools are not as tone-deaf or nefarious regarding the preparation their students as you suggest. I think many schools realize that the model of legal education needs to change and they are pumping resources into things like law clinics, etc. They want satisfied grads who feel that the law school educated them well.