States take the lead on legal education reform

In March of 2013, the ISBA issued the Report of its Special Committee on the Impact of Law School Debt on the Delivery of Legal Services, which sounded an alarm about the detrimental impact of law school debt on the quality of legal services that the profession provides to the public, and the need to find practical ways to ensure that students are practice ready while limiting the cost of law school. Since that time, several other state bar associations have picked up the baton and taken other concrete steps to address the problem of law school debt and the need to train lawyers to be prepared to provide services to the public.

For example, in June 2013 the State Bar of California’s Task Force On Admissions Regulation Reform issued its Phase I Final Report, which examined whether California should change its requirements for admission to the bar to include some sort of pre-admission competency program. Echoing the concerns in the ISBA report, the California report noted the need to improve training for new lawyers coming out of law school. To advance this end, the report included three recommended changes to the state’s bar admissions requirements. Specifically, it suggested that applicants be required take 15 hours of practical skills training in law school, complete 50 hours of pro bono training by one year after admission, and complete 10 additional hours of CLE training in the first year of admission. More recently, in Phase II of its work the Task Force has proposed specific rules to implement these requirements.

Similarly, New York has implemented a new requirement for candidates seeking admission after January 1, 2015. Those candidates will be required to complete 50 hours of pro bono service prior to their bar admission. As Chief Judge Lippman explained when announcing the program, “the new pro bono service requirement for admission to the New York bar serves to address the state’s urgent access to justice gap, at the same time helping prospective attorneys build valuable skills and imbuing in them the ideal of working toward the greater good.”

In addition, New York has recently adopted a new “pro bono scholars program,” which grants students early bar admission if they will commit to spending their last semester of law school engaged in pro bono work on behalf of low income clients. These candidates will be able to take the bar exam in February of their third year of law school, and will spend from March until June in a pro bono placement. Upon completion of the program, students will be admitted to the bar and will have gained valuable legal skills that will assist in preparing them to practice.

Arizona has taken New York’s idea one step further, and has announced that, from 2013 to 2015 on an experimental basis, all students will be eligible to take the bar exam in February of their third year. To be eligible, students must leave no more than eight credit hours for their last semester, and must enroll in only two credit hours during the period preceding the bar examination. Again, the goal is to allow these students to be licensed by graduation or shortly thereafter, giving them a leg up in looking for jobs and potentially easing the transition to practice.

These various initiatives represent the best of American federalism: allowing different states to experiment with innovative ideas and allowing the best ideas to rise to the top. To be sure, such innovations are not without potential drawbacks. For one, law students who are likely to move to a new state at graduation will need to be aware of any unique admissions requirements that their state of practice may impose. Simply completing the requirements for the state in which the students’ law school is located may not be sufficient. Nonetheless, even with such challenges, these state-led initiatives represent needed attempts to improve our system of legal education. As the results of these attempts at reform become known, other states will be able to emulate the ideas which work best, creating a better system of legal education for all. ■