Attorneys here…any thoughts on this?

[Catonahottinroof]

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/15/supreme-court-bar-exam-will-no-longer-be-required-/

[CitizenBBN]

Lastly, law clerks can become lawyers without enrolling in law school by completing standardized educational materials and benchmarks under the guidance of a mentoring attorney, along with the 500 hours of work as a licensed legal intern.

This sounds very much like a return to "reading the law", where one studied under a lawyer or judge and simply was an apprentice schooled by that person. This was when there were no law schools, or very few, and no bar exam as we know it.

I know Virginia at one time was the last state where you could take the bar exam without having gone to law school, by reading the law with a professional for some time. I actually looked into it, had a friend who was a lawyer in Virginia.

Sounds like more states are going back to some version of that now, and not even requiring passing the bar.

That's interesting. I'll leave it to the lawyers here to comment on whether the bar exam is a good test and a valid one for qualifying lawyers. I will say that I find the quality of the profession to vary pretty widely, but I don't know if it would have even more poor ones without having to pass the bar.

[bigsky]

I think United Airlines is doing something similar for pilots.