Now that Washington has authorized a diploma privilege admissions regime for the current class of bar applicants, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for its closest neighbor to buck the trend.
Oregon is still presently locked into a bar exam, with the Oregon Board of Board Examiners determining last month that it lacked the independent authority to nix the exam. But the Oregon Supreme Court possesses the inherent authority to regulate the profession that could be invoked to set up a diploma privilege process for admissions.
Marcilynn Burke, Brian Gallini, and Jennifer Johnson, the deans of Oregon’s three law schools, sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday requesting the change to allow those looking to practice in the state to move forward with their careers while freeing up more space for the eventual administration of the UBE exam for those who need portability.
The letter also takes aim at one of the least useful half-measures that states have floated to address COVID concerns:
Importantly, allowing our graduates to engage in limited supervised practice is an insufficient substitute. In addition to delaying the exam, many of our graduates will be unable to secure work until licensed. Even those who could secure work would be tasked with studying for a postponed examination while actively representing clients.
It still confuses me how supervised practice ever rose to the level of credible substitute. Graduates with employers could already perform most legal tasks under attorney supervision and attorneys without employers weren’t going to magically find them during an economic collapse. It amounts to a flimsy repacking of the status quo with a “Mission Accomplished” banner.
While the deans made their argument, a letter signed by a growing number of bar applicants outlined the real struggle of preparing for an exam amidst all of this:
At this point, applicants are nearly halfway through traditional bar prep programs and still have limited assurance that a July or alternative fall bar exam is even feasible. We have been unable to use many university facilities and resources in preparation for the bar examination; and have been continually forced to adjust working conditions to accommodate the growing changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, including children at home, lost financial resources, and caring for the health of ourselves and our family members. The last thing we want is to risk our lives or the health of our families in an effort to acquire admission to the livelihood we have worked so hard to attain. We should not have to choose between sitting for the bar exam or caring for our families and communities during an unprecedented public health crisis.
Either law schools are held to a high enough standard to be trusted to graduate students with subject-matter competency or they aren’t. It’s a busted model to take hundreds of thousands of dollars from students and then ask them to take another test because their degree wasn’t good enough. But even if there’s no appetite for long-term change, we should all be able to agree that this class of applicants is being asked to do the impossible to study for a test that bar examiners are finding near-impossible to administer.
Just grant the diploma privilege.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.