1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910813805403321

Autore

Howarth Joan W.

Titolo

Shaping the bar : the future of attorney licensing / / Joan W. Howarth

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Stanford, California : , : Stanford University Press, , [2023]

©2023

ISBN

9781503633698

1503633691

9781503613560

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 226 pages)

Disciplina

344.730176134

Soggetti

Admission to the bar - United States

Bar examinations - United States

Law - Study and teaching - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

The crisis in attorney licensing -- Becoming a lawyer in the young nation -- Shaping the bar in the twentieth century -- The 1970s legacy of activism, psychometrics, and good faith -- Pressure points in contemporary licensing -- Decades lost without research -- Doubling down on the errors of legal education -- Finally, research on minimum competence -- Who fits? -- Fixing character & fitness -- Twelve guiding principles -- Clinical residencies -- Asking more of law schools -- Escaping the conceptual traps of today's bar exams -- Bar exams : better, best, and other fixes.

Sommario/riassunto

"Joan Howarth describes how the twin gatekeepers of the legal profession -- law schools and licensers -- are failing the public with devastating consequences. Attorney licensing should be laser-focused on readiness to practice law with the minimum competence of a new attorney. According to Howarth, requirements today are both too difficult and too easy. Amid the crisis in unmet legal services, record numbers of law school graduates, disproportionately people of color, are failing bar exams that are not meaningful tests of competence to practice. At the same time, after seven years of higher education, hundreds of thousands of dollars of law school debt, two months of



cramming legal rules, and success on a bar exam, a candidate can be licensed to practice law without having been in a law office or even seen a lawyer with a client. Howarth makes the case that the licensing rituals familiar to generations of lawyers -- unfocused law degrees and obsolete bar exams -- are protecting members of the profession more than the public. Beyond explaining the failures of the current system, this book presents the latest research on competent lawyering and examples of better approaches. This book presents the path forward by means of licensing changes to protect the public while building an inclusive, diverse, competent, ethical profession"--Publisher's description.