New New York Bar requirements? Forum

[HonestAdvice]

Honestly the whole exam is dumb. 80% of the shit you're tested on never comes up in real life, and you forget the day after. The legal industry has been evolving from most lawyers being general practitioners to most lawyers being specialized for 200-years, and one would expect the test to mold itself to the needs of the industry. It's kind of like if you show up to your law office wearing a red coat and white wig.

Everyone whose good at taking tests passes regardless of how little they study, and everyone bad at tests fails, which is fine except for the fact it has no bearing on reality. I personally found the test to be a joke, and if anything it's been a career detriment because it made me overconfident. The reality is practice isn't like texting - all you need to succeed is a (1) 70 IQ (2) no life (3) the ability to focus on completely arbitrary things continuously for days like Travis Bickle (4) cocaine in the morning and (5) downers at night. The MBE doesn't cover any of these 5 things. You would have expected the test to evolve as the market's evolved. A friend of mine has failed twice - not the sharpest tool in the shed, but a very good guy who works very hard. His career is stunted because he's not good at playing an arbitrary game, which the test is - like all standardized tests, it's a game.

The bar is particularly stupid, because it's fact based but based on fact patterns that never happen or have happened once in 500 years. It's like judging a pediatrician not on how she is at giving checkups to children, but on whether she could perform open heart surgery on an 87 year old human-duck hybrid. It should be practice group focused, and if people cross over from corporate to lit or from lit to domestic/juvenile issues then you make them take a new test. Regardless of whether or not they've prepped for the bar they're going to have to restudy those areas. This would be a much more efficient system - you'd have higher passage rates, lawyers more competent to practice out of the gate and better service for clients now and later. I'd say the bar is retarded, but that wouldn't be descriptive because mentally challenged people don't sit around trying to come up with the most illogical way of doing each thing.

[Magic Hat]

Isn't it great!


Seriously though, this profession all the way through seems to have an unnecessary obsession with every generation going through the hazing that they went through.

That's part of it but the NY bar exam to many is a rite of passage. Granted it's no CA (or even VA) but it's one thing we all have in common. At our practice group lunches nightmares from the bar exam still come up and it's something that can translate from the partners to the young associates. Now that's gone.

I won't hold it against or think lesser of younger attorneys because they have taken an easier test (more power to them!) but part of me will [racist language redacted] at the fact that they weren't held to as high of a standard.

That being said I have a close friend who did extremely well in school and has struggled to pass the NY bar and I am happy he probably will be able to now.

[bearsfan23]

Isn't it great!


Seriously though, this profession all the way through seems to have an unnecessary obsession with every generation going through the hazing that they went through.

That's part of it but the NY bar exam to many is a rite of passage. Granted it's no CA (or even VA) but it's one thing we all have in common. At our practice group lunches nightmares from the bar exam still come up and it's something that can translate from the partners to the young associates. Now that's gone.

I won't hold it against or think lesser of younger attorneys because they have taken an easier test (more power to them!) but part of me will [racist language redacted] at the fact that they weren't held to as high of a standard.

That being said I have a close friend who did extremely well in school and has struggled to pass the NY bar and I am happy he probably will be able to now.

You seem like a particularly terrible human being, so congrats on that. Sublime definitely has it right, you're one of the most passive aggressive cases of old man yells at cloud I've ever seen

What firm are you at and what practice group are you in? I want to know where I should never consider working

[Magic Hat]

Isn't it great!


Seriously though, this profession all the way through seems to have an unnecessary obsession with every generation going through the hazing that they went through.

That's part of it but the NY bar exam to many is a rite of passage. Granted it's no CA (or even VA) but it's one thing we all have in common. At our practice group lunches nightmares from the bar exam still come up and it's something that can translate from the partners to the young associates. Now that's gone.

I won't hold it against or think lesser of younger attorneys because they have taken an easier test (more power to them!) but part of me will [racist language redacted] at the fact that they weren't held to as high of a standard.

That being said I have a close friend who did extremely well in school and has struggled to pass the NY bar and I am happy he probably will be able to now.

You seem like a particularly terrible human being, so congrats on that. Sublime definitely has it right, you're one of the most passive aggressive cases of old man yells at cloud I've ever seen

What firm are you at and what practice group are you in? I want to know where I should never consider working

Ok pal. Go back to studying for the bar exam.

[JenDarby]

At our practice group lunches nightmares from the bar exam still come up and it's something that can translate from the partners to the young associates. Now that's gone.

Ok let's not get carried away. Unless you all literally shit your pants during the exam, I can't exam any bar exam "nightmares" being worth talking about down the road.

[elendinel]

It's a new skills requirement, but it will only apply to those starting law school this Fall (c/o 2019) and later. There are apparently 5 paths to satisfying it, but taking 15 credits of "skills" classes seems like it will be the most common.

See this memo: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/ctapps/ne ... 121615.pdf

The New York Bar Exam is rapidly turning into a joke. First the pro bono, then the UBE with a laughable low pass score and now this garbage.

What's wrong with requiring pro bono work and skills courses/internships?

Because law school is a joke, and this only encourages schools to raise tuition ten more grand a year so we can have the KYLIE JENNER SKILLS COURSE ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP at Northwest Texas A&M Tech School of Law.

Not a single one of these things will impact your future practice, particularly since they left it in the hands of the schools which courses will qualify.

Doesn't this open the path for NY to require specific courses for the requirement, though? Right now it's not a guarantee that people will actually learn skills, but once schools have adapted to requiring these kinds of courses in their curriculum, surely NY could then put restrictions or requirements on what counts as a skills course?

I mean, I get that law schools will try to scam the system as much as they can, and that no one can account for the lack of quality of many law schools, but for the decent schools, this sounds like a good way to start forcing them to train their students to actually have practical skills.

[A. Nony Mouse]

That's part of it but the NY bar exam to many is a rite of passage. Granted it's no CA (or even VA) but it's one thing we all have in common.

This is a really weird thing to care about, and also not specific to NY. Everyone admitted in my state went through that rite of passage with me. That had no effect on my professional life whatsoever. I now practice in a different state. Doesn't matter that I didn't take their state bar. If the point is that you all suffered through the same experience, wanting to make others suffer just because you went through it is kind of bogus.

[banjo]

The UBE isn't much different from the old New York bar exam. We still have one day devoted to the MBE (which now covers seven subjects instead of six). We still have essays on a dozen or more possible topics and an MPT portion. The passing score is 266/400, compared to 665/1000 on the old exam. The main difference is that state specific law is now tested on a separate open book exam. Yes, the UBE tests on less material, making it a bit easier, but it's not really a radical departure from the old test.