MinnLawyer Blog

I mentioned in a recent post the experience that New York has had with allowing graduates of non-ABA accredited law schools to take its bar exam. The post referred primarily to New York’s experience with grads of domestic non-ABA accredited schools. (In a recent administration of the New York bar exam, only two of the 11,500 exam takers fell into that category — and both were graduates of non-ABA-accredited law schools in neighboring Massachusetts.)  Obviously, with such a small number of domestic test takers from non-ABA acreditted law schools, it hasn’t been too onerous for New York to accommodate them.

However, New York has had an entirely different experience with graduates of foreign law schools. Many foreign law grads want the stamp of approval of taking and passing the New York bar. In a recent administration of the New York bar exam, nearly 3,000 of the 11,500 test takers (or about 25 percent) were foreign-educated law grads. New York bar exam officials have added two full-time and one part-time person to deal with the administrative issues created by the influx of foreign law grads.

Because Minnesota currently limits its bar exam to graduates of ABA-accredited schools, we don’t have any foreign law school grads sitting for our exam. One question for consideration is whether or not there will be an influx of grads from foreign law schools who apply to take the Minnesota exam if eligibility is opened up. Assuming — as has been proposed by some — we limit the right to take the exam to individuals already licensed in another jurisdiction — foreign law grads are unlikely to present any major issues here. Even putting aside the already-licensed-in-another-jurisdiction requirement, the New York experience with foreign law grads may not provide much guidance for what would happen here. A Minnesota law license probably wouldn’t have the same cache abroad as one from a financial center such as New York or California.

Board of Law Examiners Director Margaret Fuller Corneille was kind enough to provide this release from the New York Bar exam officials for anyone who want to drill down into the numbers further and see the pass rates, etc for foreign and domestic law school grads. (And click here to see a copy of the PowerPoint New York bar exam officials prepared for the Minnesota hearing.) 

Personally, the part I find truly shocking is that more than 11,500 people took the July 2009 New York bar exam. In just a couple of administrations of that exam, you could generate enough lawyers to replace the entire bar of Minnesota.