From "UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN LAW SCHOOL WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN U.S. NEWS SURVEY," a statement from the dean, Dan Tokaji (at the Law School website).
Do you think Wisconsin is "unfairly hurt" by a methodology that mutes the effect of this unique privilege that our legislature has bestowed on our graduates?
Notice that there are 2 aspects of this argument against the U.S. News ranking. One is that we're not getting enough advantage from the diploma privilege. The other is that the privilege is especially beneficial to "people from less advantaged backgrounds and historically underrepresented groups," who, it is suggested, tend to have more of a problem passing the bar exam. The idea is that we have the privilege and it should boost our rank because it's helping the right students, the ones whom life has not otherwise privileged.
Do law professors at other schools agree that Wisconsin should get a great advantage in the rank because of the diploma privilege? Would they like their state to institute a diploma privilege?
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We’re seeing the consequences of the destruction of the meritocracy in every aspect of our lives. Making shitty ambulance chasers is one thing but yesterday my doctor was talking about the consequences for medicine. It’s getting ugly…
IF I can pass the bar exam, why is a law school degree even required? Doesn't such a requirement disadvantage lower-income historically marginalized people who can read law books and watch lectures for free at libraries, but who cannot afford the exorbitant and frankly monopolistic Ivy League law school entrance fees.
That's your privileged showing.
I'm looking forward to this thread. I hope all the lawyers here post their opinions - I have never attempted an examination as difficult as the bar and don't really have a sense of what it does, what it actually accomplishes, in indicating a law school graduate's preparation for the practice of law.
Will there be a sense of "I had to do it, the kids should have to do it" as there is among some doctors concerning those 24-plus-hour shifts during their intern and residency periods, whereas others say they don't accurately reflect future working conditions and should be moderated? Or is there real benefit to their eventual clients to passing a comprehensive culminating exam? I dunno, but you all do!
School should be graded twice. First, by ignoring the diploma privilege, which puts it on the same footing as other law schools as a comparison like this should work (those who do not plan to stay and practice on Wisconsin get no real benefit from the diploma privilege). Then figure an adjustment for the first ranking (upward, presumably) for those who plan to practice in Wisconsin.
School's rank on the overall list should be the first, with the second grade providing additional information for those looking at the school or Wisconsin options generally.
This policy has the same problem that bedevils all Affirmative Action attempts at creating a preferred outcome by shortcutting the crucible of merit that others have to endure. Who would want to be represented by an attorney who has a JD with an asterisk?
Graduates of the University of Mississippi School of Law had the benefit of the diploma privilege until 1985.
If I cared enough, I’d check on the WI disbarment rate for incompetent practitioners. Nothing enhances the profession like draining the bottom half of the class onto the unwitting public. Let’s do the same for MDs so that the historically underserved and disadvantaged can wield a scalpel.
- Krumhorn
I prefer the opposite approach: If you can pass the bar exam, you should be able to practice law whether or not you have attended a law school. Back in the day, this was the case with lawyers and accountants, before the schools became the (profitable) gatekeepers to the professions.
This sounds as if the "diploma" does not act as a filter or equalizer when it comes to the bar exam.
What does the bar exam require outside of legal knowledge and the ability to use it in problem solving that the less-advantaged lack even after having achieved the diploma.?
Occam would say the less-advantaged, being in the right level of victim hierarchy, get a break on the way to the diploma and are thus less equipped for the exam.
Something else? Verb agreement?
I was first admitted to the Illinois Bar in 1981. I decided to take a job in Florida in 1986, and learned I had to take the Florida Bar Exam, including retaking the Multistate (national) half of the exam.
I did not feel aggrieved. The Florida Bar and Supreme Court does not have reciprocity with other states because they want to keep out the snowbird competitors. OK, whatever.
When I took the Illinois Bar exam, I walked out knowing I had passed. I walked into the Florida Bar exam knowing I would pass.
If you enjoy watching mid-20s age people freaking out with anxiety, go to the first day morning of a state bar exam.
Wisconsin? Just another example of lowering standards. We all know the reason why.
It would appear that they have this exactly backwards.
Do the vast majority of people from "underprivileged backgrounds" who need legal services benefit from having lawyers who don't know what they are doing (but are the right color and have a shiny diploma?).
Have there been any studies on legal errors or other measures of attorney performance for people who don't take and pass the bar exam?
If the purpose of the ranking is to determine the quality of the school, then at best, Wisconsin should be given a mean ranking in this category. It does not provide information on quality to let everyone pass. I think some states have harder bar exams than others. So the hard ones are reduced in the ranking anyway.
I think Wisconsin is asking for special privilege that is undeserved. I wonder what proportion of Wisconsin grads stay in the state? If you want to go to NewYork or LA for a job you will need to pass the exam anyway, so only Wisconsin gets the ones who can’t pass.
Come on Ann, you want us to think for ourselves, but this an area in which your expertise is unequaled.
We are supposed to believe that "people from less advantaged backgrounds and historically underrepresented groups" should get to be lawyers, but it sounds more like lowering the standards so less qualified people get to play.
I hadn't heard of 'diploma privilege'. As a high school teacher, it sounds like a student taking a class at a community college versus taking an AP test. Both yield college credit for high school students, but one is significantly more rigorous and objective.
>The other is that the privilege is especially beneficial to "people from less advantaged backgrounds and historically underrepresented groups,"<
At long last! -- someone has decided to stand up against the maltreatment of the LABAHUG Community!
I saw nothing specific to Wisconsin, but this study:
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/legal-ethics-journal/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2019/08/GT-GJLE190055.pdf
suggests that repeat takers of the bar exam, i.e. low scorers, have over a 3X rate of discipline compared to those who pass the first try.
Just last night I learned of a guy whose ambition in high school was to be accepted to Texas A&M. Unfortunately his grades were not good, and the only major that would accept him was poultry science. Once he got to the school, he was just too lazy to try to change majors, so he has done poultry science for 20 years now. He doesn't like it, he doesn't even like chickens, but it's what he can do.
This is in response to the commenter who was talking about how some states' bar exams are harder (or easier) than others. People will always try to game whatever system they're in!
Jamie, the 24+ hour shifts did more than teach physicians how to think clearly and treat patients when they (the physicians) had no sleep for a day and a half. The long work hours allowed residents to treat more patients while in training and supervised by an attending physician. They've reduced the hours per week that residents see patients (max is now 80) but they haven't lengthened the residency. New physicians have less experience when they finish residency. Whether the decrease in experience means less competent care is the question.
My wife would also say that the younger physicians also have much less of a work ethic, on average.
Law school Deans from around the country are withdrawing from the US News survey. It’s a conspiracy. They don’t want to be judged.
I got an email from the Creighton Law Dean about two weeks ago informing me of the same news. The reason? Jesuit values! It was Jesuit this and Jesuit that.
Creighton should have stayed in. Its rank would have skyrocketed.
"... if they take a required set of courses."
Simply "take" - or perform to some reasonable standard? In these days of "social promotion" without end, how can we know if a lawyer is actually qualified? Not that I'm a great fan of the bar exam; it seems designed (by the ABA?) precisely to limit the number of practicing lawyers. But the answer is to reform the exam, not eliminate it. (I am not a lawyer, but my brother and younger daughter are. She sailed through the California bar but thought it was just a hoop to jump through.)
Don't understand how graduating from law school, and being poor, effects a persons success at taking a test?
I took the Barbri bar preparatory course for my first bar exam in Illinois. It lasted about a month as I recall, and they had great insights on what areas will be covered on the exam.
Five years later, I ordered the Barbri books for the Florida Bar and Multistate exam months before the exam, studied them at night and on weekends and then flew down and took a weeklong cram course right before the exam in Tampa.
I recall at both locations the Barbri people claimed they had taken high school graduates, put them through their course, gave them sample bar exams and the kids all passed. I believe them.
If the graduates are not being asked to pass a bar exam, then the schools that are graduating them damn well better be passing an exam of commensurate rigor.
Only a few of the questions that instantly pop up.
Is one purpose of the ranking to allow people to choose a lawyer who has received a quality education? How does the ranking skew with and without the pass the bar w/exam numbers?
Is a purpose of the exam to weed out those not fully prepared to practice law? If not, what is the value of the exam? If so, who do you think will be harmed by representation by unprepared lawyers?
What is the pass/fail rate of these golden ticket courses? Are some required? What is the make up of the courses compared to the general population of the law school.
What is the magic ingredient in these courses that render the bar exam irrelevant?
I heard that the real reason the ranking dropped was because one of the school’s most accomplished professors retired…
Auditing is tantamount to diversitism... critical diversitism, because "people of color" and other color blocs, of minority leverage, are held to lowered expectations.
Diversity: Be careful what you wish for.
This brings to mind Democrats who send in Scorpions to remove, relieve "burdens", perhaps lawyers lobbing Molotov cocktails in a nationwide insurrection and neighborhood invasion. Lowered expectations with progressive ("forward-looking") returns. Social justice anywhere is injustice everywhere.
It seems to me that the key to this argument is whether or not standards are being slipped lower to accommodate less qualified people, allowing them to claim competencies they might not have. Why would this be considered, much less encouraged?
Passing the bar exam is probably hard, but is it the only thing that qualifies a lawyer as competent, or is it so difficult that passing it guarantees that the individual is fully qualified in all aspects of the law? Of course it doesn't. It's a milestone that indicates achievement and knowledge, but not necessarily competence.
Which brain surgeon would you want to remove your tumor? The one who has more difficulty passing the brain tumor surgery qualification exam, or the one that took a couple of extra credit courses at the right school and oozed past the more difficult test requirement? (diversity quotas aside)
As always, it's a case of Buyer Beware.
'...historically underrepresented groups.'
Maybe there's a reason some groups are underrepresented.
Asian men are historically underrepresented in the NBA.
What are we going to do about it?
Nothing?
If ChatGPT can pass the bar exam (and it has), so should any LABAHUG. No need for any more LABAHUG privileges.
There are essentially two tiers of lawyers and law schools. There are the big law firms and major federal agencies that work on big-money corporate deals and litigation, and there's everyone else.
The big-money tier draws from the law schools at the top of the USNWR ratings. Those schools expect to send their students to various big cities for a national practice. They teach lots of theory, very little practice, and almost no state law. They do nothing to prepare their students for any state's bar exam. To get ready for the bar exam, students take a wholly separate, intensive review course in the summer. The material on the bar exam tends to have little relevance to their future practice.
Everyone else goes to law schools that tend to have a more a regional or single-state focus. Those schools tend to be significantly more oriented toward preparing their students for the bar exam in that state. There is more overlap between the state's bar exam and the student's future practice. Students come out from these schools with an education that is more practical but credentials that are more local.
Pass the damn bar exam, or I don't trust you. It isn't that hard.
Tom T., interesting comment.
When I went to a second-tier law school in Illinois from 78 to 81, there was no emphasis on Illinois state law, in fact I can't recall a single mention of it in school. I suspect there were intermittent references to Illinois law, but more as a passing mention.
Our law school faculty and administration was probably a 70-30 split - 70% alumni from lower tier law schools and 30% from upper, including most of the administration.
I wouldn't have hired a single one of the upper tier group to represent me in a contentious legal matter.
Given the trend to admitting students with lower qualifications in line with diversity, inclusion and equity, the pressure to pass classes and ensure graduation rates, it will be increasingly likely some of those graduated (soon many?) will be of lower quality and likely to not serve their clients well. Some minimum standard via an objective evaluation is required.
HOWEVER, a person is entitled to representation and if that person selects someone to represent them who hasn't even been to law school or pass the bar, that should be their choice. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that many judges will treat such a representative fairly and objectively, because they are members of a closed shop.
"LABAHUG" - love it!
The more ornate and unwieldy the acronyms become, the closer we get to the point where even the woke will admit how absurd their language has become.
In the meantime, use LABAHUG at every opportunity.
The rating is/was designed to assess the quality of the graduates of a law school, and certainly the biggest metric should be the ability of the graduates to pass a difficult fucking test that does more than check to see if you are breathing. So, yes- the rating board should have long been taking UW's 100% "passing the bar" and weighted it appropriately, by, let's say, ignoring those "passing the bar" in WI, and taking some other state's test.
Seriously, this like a HS that just awards diplomas to everyone who stayed in school whether they learned anything or not. It isn't enough to depend on UW's claim that the students actually did work and passed the required classes- there is no verification of the rigor of these internal UW ratings, which is what the bar exams are supposed to answer. How do we know that this automatic bar admission doesn't draw a surplus of morons to UW's law school?
As a law professor and former corporate lawyer, I don’t object to Wisconsin’s diploma privilege. Wisconsin should extend it to the graduates of every law school in the US. And the bar exam should be open to anyone who wants to take it, regardless of their education or lack thereof. My guess is that very smart college graduates could take a six-month bar review course and learn enough law to pass the bar exam. Would I hire them over someone who graduated from a good law school with good grades? No. Caveat emptor.
Maybe the diploma privilege is a bad idea. I mean, strange as it may seem, legislatures are not all-wise and sometimes even careless in dispensing their largesse. As always, the benefits of the largesse are tightly focused in a cadre of beneficiaries (who are naturally fervent in its defense) while the costs of the largesse are widely diffused across an unsuspecting public (who are victimized by incompetent law diplomats).
The sanctimonious talk from UW is great fun, thanks.
Montana had diploma privilege until 1984. Oh the sniveling when that went away! Lol Like the sniveling about the Accounting prereq until it was dropped (I took it anyway) and then the sniveling about having to take Tax and Commercial Law etc..
Anyway, our bar review was great, lots of state focus, and I felt like I never knew so much law as I did right after that.
In response to the last question, other states are looking at the Wisconsin diploma privilege as a possible model.
In Minnesota, for example, bar admissions are currently undergoing a searching process right now, with a goal toward liberalizing the requirements, and the Wisconsin diploma privilege has been mentioned numerous times as one possible change.
The original post suggested that the Wisconsin diploma privilege was a legislative enactment. I questioned that because that would raise significant separation of powers issues, at least it would under Minnesota law. I now see that the Wisconsin diploma privilege derives from a court rule, not a legislative enactment.
UW's ranking has plummeted (now tied for 43, https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/university-of-wisconsin-madison-03170). So my conceded speculation is that the dean finds diploma privilege a convenient excuse to argue an unfair rankings tilt.
If a bar exam is unfair to students from 'less advantaged backgrounds' (i.e., poor), wouldn't the same logic apply to a law degree itself?
Why require a diploma?
It seems like something more like a business license would do. You have to get vetted for being real, but after that, let the market, and occasionally the police, sort out the good from the not-so-good.
Mr. Levene: the subject is not whether people who do not attend law school but do pass the bar should be able to practice. The caveat emptor at hand is matriculation from law school and proving you learned enough there with an objective measure of your ability, graded anonymously, to avoid bias by professors who might be tempted or pressured to practice it. But surely you know that.
I asked my niece about this, as she's in her last semester as a 3L at Wisconsin. She was ambivalent, as she says that the rankings were at least an attempt to normalize data regarding law schools, and many of her student friends used the rankings as a guide in some fashion in choosing which law schools to apply for.
She's already accepted a job offer at a firm in Chicago starting in early June. She suggested that there be some way to take into consideration graduates who do take jobs outside Wisconsin and consider that when calculating the rankings, but it sounds like USN&WR have not made a decision regarding ways to appropriately factor in the diploma privilege.
To become a minister, I had to pass five ordination exams:
1. Bible Content
2. Biblical Exegesis
3. Theology
4. Worship and Sacraments
5. Church Polity
Afterward I wondered if the exams were necessary. Why wasn't a degree from an accredited theological school sufficient? But passing the exams did verify that I had knowledge in those areas of study, knowledge I'd need to practice my vocation.
So if there are no licensing exams for a vocation, like law or medicine, how do we verify that a person has the necessary knowledge? I'm wondering because I see a push to eliminate these sorts of tests (along with gas stoves!).
“The other is that the privilege is especially beneficial to "people from less advantaged backgrounds and historically underrepresented groups," who, it is suggested, tend to have more of a problem passing the bar exam.”
Yeah...that’s why sane people tend to hire lawyers from overrepresented groups.
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