The Observer headline this week told the sad story. “Last class of Charlotte School of Law faces bleak reality after bar exam results.” The dreaded envelopes had arrived from the N.C. Board of Law Examiners and once again the numbers were terrible. Of 11 first-time takers, all had failed to pass and of 73 repeat takers, only eight had passed.
The Charlotte School of Law, closed and in disrepute, faced another barrage of accusations of lower admission standards leading to graduates who should never have even gotten in the door — much less allowed to invest three years and thousands of dollars in a legal education. I take exception to this “knee-jerk” conclusion and would suggest that fault lies not so much with the school or the graduates but with how the bar exam is used to determine who’s qualified to practice law in our state.
The report submitted by the N.C. Board of Law Examiners tells a much more troubling story than just the Charlotte School of Law’s problems. In February, out of 315 law school graduates from N.C. schools, 223 failed, including over half of first-time takers of the bar exam. Absorb those numbers. Two out of every three graduates of accredited law schools in this state, having invested huge amounts of time and money in their quest to become licensed attorneys, were deemed “unqualified” as a result of a two-day exam.
These numbers reflect an alarming trend over the past several years of a staggering number of graduates failing the bar exam and thus, denied a law license. For those rejected it is a devastating blow — personally, professionally and financially. And we’re talking about graduates from law schools including UNC, N.C. Central, Wake Forest, Duke, Campbell and Elon — not just the benighted graduates of Charlotte School of Law.
According to the legal profession, the problem is a declining number of applicants resulting in a lower academic quality of students who graduate but are unqualified to practice law. This theory is simply untenable and unsupportable to anyone looking at the backgrounds of the students admitted, graduated and sitting for the bar exam. I’ve taught for almost 30 years as an adjunct professor at three area law schools, including the last 15 years at UNC School of Law. As a judge I interviewed countless students for job opportunities as research assistants for the court. I’m telling you, the law students of today are smarter, more disciplined and more talented than many who have gone before (including yours truly) but who passed the Bar and have engaged in long, productive careers as lawyers in our state.
Cynics would offer a second theory: that the phenomenon is driven more by the exam and how it's used than by the quality of the students. The 2008 economic crunch devastated the legal profession, ultimately resulting in too many lawyers chasing too few clients. And the best way to adjust the supply/demand issue is to tighten the admission requirements to the profession through tougher bar exam standards. Add to that an inclination by some in the legal profession against for-profit law schools like Charlotte and the cynic’s theory on why we have lower Bar passage rates gains traction.
Regardless of the theories offered for the cause of these abysmal passage rates, the use of a two-day test as the gateway hurdle for admission to the practice of law is outmoded and unfair. There are other approaches, such as the continuous testing medical students do. Three years of classroom lectures, exams, research papers, clinical experience and interaction with bright law professors, fellow students and members of the legal profession produces a comprehensive legal education. Graduates of our law schools — public, private or for-profit — are already intellectually qualified to become lawyers. They don’t need a one-shot exam to prove that. There doesn’t have to be a bar exam. It’s just that we’ve done it that way for years. The legislative mandate is to determine whether a person seeking admission to the Bar is “qualified”. There are far better ways to answer that question.
This story was originally published April 19, 2018 3:46 PM.