The West Virginia Law Examiners gave a bar candidate three days and a private room to complete a two-day bar exam. After he failed the exam by 17 points, he sued the examiners because they didn’t give him four days.

In this video, I don’t pretend to be able to judge the validity of the candidate’s claim, but it’s not hard to see that the authorities in West Virginia might have some problems in court.

See some coverage of this issue here here here and here.

This situation is a nice technical illustration of how bad the American legal education system really is. Of course, I offer a practical solution. Get rid of law school altogether. Make law an undergraduate degree, and let anybody who earns a diploma sit for the bar exam and practice law.

Here’s how the ABA Journal covered Resolution 112B.

UCLA Law Professor Richard Sander is an important scholar on affirmative action. This is a topic I care about. For a number of years, I have argued that class-based affirmative action is desirable.  The US Supreme Court is hostile to race-based affirmative action – but see Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Court held that states have a compelling interest in racial diversity in law schools.

A class-based approach is race-neutral, although it could have an effect of promoting racial minorities.

Professor Sander wrote a fascinating paper on class-based affirmative action at UCLA Law School. Read it for yourself. He concludes that class-based affirmative action can be done, although the formula is more complicated than what is required for race-based programs. He also documents that the student population became less racially diverse, even as it became more economically diverse. This finding strongly supports those who argue that race-based affirmative action is essential to ethnic diversity on campus.

What about affirmative action in law firms? Minority graduates of fancy law schools get hired by better firms than white students with the same grades, but these new young lawyers don’t succeed in these jobs at the same rate as their white colleagues. Is this because of racism, or because the minority lawyers are not as talented? Professor Sander has done some work on this topic, too. Read this reply to his law firm work. His critics agree that his work is important, even if they have significantly different views about how to interpret his findings. For a taste of the media coverage, look here and here.

Now the professor wants to examine the consequences of race-based affirmative action in law school admissions. Is it possible that minority students at elite law schools would have been more successful if they had gone to less-elite schools? Professor Sander wants access to data from the State Bar of California about the academic backgrounds and bar exam scores of people who have taken the California Bar Examination. The State Bar won’t give it to him, and the result is a trip to court.

I support racial and class diversity in school. Professor Sander’s critics appear to see his work as a calculated attack on affirmative action. I am not personally acquainted with this scholar, but it seems to me that he is asking important questions. As a lawyer who spends a lot of time working with people who are preparing for the California Bar Examination, I’m always eager to get a look at the inner working of the State Bar, an institution that invites comparison to infamous totalitarian bureaucracies.

The professor doesn’t require any information that would identify a single bar candidate.  In the past, the State Bar has cooperated with more than one study that has asked for and received personal information that included the identity of individuals. It’s obvious to me that the State Bar doesn’t want anybody looking at the real-world consequences of their practices.

Professor Sander should get the data he seeks. The profession will be better off as a result.

OK friends, guess where this case took place. If you live on one of the coasts, you probably guessed Texas or somewhere in the Old South. In point of fact, however, this case comes from the Bay Area of California. You can read more about this case here and here.

The ABA House of Delegates has just approved a measure to link ABA accreditation to bar exam pass rates. This means a less diverse law school student body.

The US Department of Education threatened to take away the ABA’s authority to accredit law schools, if the ABA failed to link law school accreditation to bar exam pass statistics.

As recently as 2003, the US Supreme Court ruled that there is a compelling interest in maintaining a diverse law school student body. The case was Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306.

The Board of Law Examiners sued, claiming a copyright in the essay questions and demanding a permanent injunction and an award of actual damages or $150,000 for each act of “willful infringement.” The publishing company defended the action by arguing that the plaintiffs, as a state agency, lacked legislative authority to register and enforce copyrights in the bar exam essay questions.

I have been a big critic of the corporate bar review industry for many years, despite the fact that I owe much of my business to their incompetence. This time around, I think the bar review people had the better argument.