Jack of All States: The Future Lawyer May Take an Entirely Different Bar Exam
Law exams aren't what they used to be
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This week a group of New York judges announced a decision that could radically change who becomes a lawyer. For more than a century, anyone who wanted a law career was tested, at length and in essay form, on the minutia of their state’s local laws. Now New York, one of the largest legal markets, will replace much of the local exam with a national exam that's already used by 15 other states and gaining in popularity.
Removing the demand for deep state-specific knowledge would profoundly alter how lawyers practice—for one thing, a universal test would enable them to work more easily in multiple states—but for some, even that change isn't drastic enough.