[HN Gopher] You can't take the Bar exam if your laptop is too mo...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       You can't take the Bar exam if your laptop is too modern
        
       Author : omnibrain
       Score  : 162 points
       Date   : 2022-07-13 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | more_corn wrote:
       | Missing part of headline "and your state bar uses Examsoft"
       | 
       | That is not the only option your state bar could have chosen.
        
       | drc500free wrote:
       | State Bars are so technically illiterate that they don't know the
       | basics of how to procure technology. California Bar has no CTO
       | and didn't know to require an SLA of ExamSoft. When ExamSoft
       | blames the users for their buggy software, the Bar actually
       | believes them.
        
         | rmbyrro wrote:
         | It's basic common sense that by July/2022, some people will
         | have acquired a laptop manufactured in 2022.
         | 
         | Especially when you deal with exam takers in the thousands.
         | 
         | It shouldn't require a CTO for that, IMHO.
        
         | convolvatron wrote:
         | maybe if we had actually dug into open standards instead of
         | this mushy cesspool of abandonware, not everyone in the world
         | would have to spend their time tracking technology trends
        
           | rattlesnakedave wrote:
           | Who is "we" here?
        
             | convolvatron wrote:
             | technologists. computer people. computer companies. the
             | people responsible for this mess.
        
               | nexuist wrote:
               | Or maybe blame the California Bar for partnering with
               | such amateur vendors when they had millions of competent
               | technology companies to pick from?
        
           | simonh wrote:
           | While I'm all for open standards, the fact is they're no
           | magic wand. It's just as possible for an open system to be
           | clunky, outdated and abandoned. Just because it's possible
           | for someone to work on it or fix issues, that's no guarantee
           | anyone will.
           | 
           | The problem here was poor consideration of requirements and
           | inadequate governance, and there's really no substitute for
           | just flat out doing a better job at those. After all, nobody
           | is stopping someone developing an open suite of exam
           | software, it's not against the law or anything. It's all very
           | well saying that's what we need, but somebody has to actually
           | buckle down and do it.
        
       | josephcsible wrote:
       | I hope someone in the community releases an unofficial patch to
       | make it work on 12th Gen CPUs, that just happens to make it work
       | on actual VMs too.
        
         | flatiron wrote:
         | I bet if you disable the e cores it would work. Worth a try
        
       | junar wrote:
       | I wonder if disabling the Alder Lake E-cores could work around
       | the problem. Certain games had DRM issues which could be resolved
       | this way.
       | 
       | https://www.notebookcheck.net/Gigabyte-releases-tool-to-disa...
        
         | bigp3t3 wrote:
         | Another stake in the DRM coffin. /I wish.
        
       | rcurry wrote:
       | My all time favorite was when I took the SAT (long time ago) and
       | the proctor confiscated my calculator.
       | 
       | At the end of the test there was a final question:
       | 
       | "Which of the following approved calculators did you use on this
       | test?"
       | 
       | My calculator was option B.
        
         | cronix wrote:
         | Was it a basic calculator or a graphing one that could store
         | data on it?
        
         | copperx wrote:
         | Did you complain? Sue?
        
           | account-5 wrote:
           | I genuinely thought you were calling the OP Sue, went
           | searching to see if Sue was the new Karen, couldn't find
           | anything, came back and realised you meant sue them... FML.
        
             | copperx wrote:
             | Wouldn't that be "Did you complain, Sue?"?
        
               | arcticbull wrote:
               | It's the same thing both ways! Chalk up another win for
               | English.
        
               | bryanrasmussen wrote:
               | But not Sue, did you complain?
        
               | sirsinsalot wrote:
               | Not quite the same:
               | 
               | "Didn't you complain, Sue?" - A question to Sue
               | 
               | "Didn't you compain? Sue?" - A question to Sue who is
               | inattentive
        
             | Orlan wrote:
             | _Surely_ you weren't the only one who read it that way.
        
         | pnemonic wrote:
         | I'd have been all over that proctor like shit on velcro
        
       | McNutty wrote:
       | Does anyone know if this same issue is present in the PearsonVue
       | software?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | charcircuit wrote:
       | You can't take a math exam if your calculator is too modern.
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | Not sure if modern is the right word here; I guess graphing
         | calculators from the 90s would also not be allowed. Unless you
         | mean something different?
        
       | bambax wrote:
       | What's wrong with pen and paper.
        
         | D13Fd wrote:
         | It's literally painful to do an essay exam on pen and paper.
         | 
         | Only part of the exam is an essay exam, but modern law is going
         | to be practiced on a computer, and it makes sense for the test
         | to be administered on a computer.
         | 
         | (if only they could get away from ExamSoft...)
        
           | corrral wrote:
           | > It's literally painful to do an essay exam on pen and
           | paper.
           | 
           | Hahaha, flashbacks to "Blue Book" exams in college, which was
           | a long time ago but recently enough that I basically never
           | wrote anything by hand (all typing) except those tests. They
           | did indeed hurt.
           | 
           | [EDIT] To be clear, they hurt _because_ I rarely wrote
           | anything by hand.
        
           | kubik369 wrote:
           | It does not need to be painful. There are pens that require
           | far less friction to write than ballpoints or pencils, namely
           | fountain pens and rollerballs. Good technique helps too, e.g.
           | writing with your whole arm instead of your fingers and your
           | wrist only.
           | 
           | Unfortunately, most people in Europe seem to be done with
           | fountain pens after the first few years of elementary school.
           | I am not sure about the rest of the world, but I would guess
           | that it is similar.
           | 
           | // EDIT: Grammar
        
           | humanistbot wrote:
           | > It's literally painful to do an essay exam on pen and
           | paper.
           | 
           | It is taking everything in me not to make a full-on "kids
           | these days" rant.
        
             | keybored wrote:
             | I mean, it is wise of you to hold back. Writing by hand can
             | be painful without the proper technique. I have one book
             | that teaches you how to write properly by hand. It turns
             | out that you should use your shoulder a lot more; it's much
             | easier to cramp up if you use your fingers to drive the
             | pen/pencil, which is what I have always done. When was that
             | book released? Maybe in the 1910s sometime. They don't
             | teach people such things any more.
        
             | viraptor wrote:
             | It was painful for me decades ago. Not sure what it has to
             | do with kids these days.
        
             | mcculley wrote:
             | In order to make it fair, you would have to hobble every
             | test taker to use pen and paper.
             | 
             | I remember writing essay answers with pen and paper and
             | also with a typewriter and using Wite-Out. I would not want
             | to compete using those tools against someone who is able to
             | edit their answers before submitting them.
        
             | WastingMyTime89 wrote:
             | If it makes you feel better, in my modern western country,
             | all exams are still done with pen and paper. It pretty much
             | only has advantages: easier to proctor, less issue with
             | cheating, less technical problems, everyone is taking the
             | test in the same condition. The idea that you could just
             | come out of school and not be able to write a dozen pages
             | without feeling pain feels weird to me.
        
             | post_break wrote:
             | It's taking everything in me not to say "ok boomer" lol
        
           | postalrat wrote:
           | You are already fighting through the pain of taking a test.
           | Pen and paper is just a tiny bit more.
        
         | chaosharmonic wrote:
         | The century the test is being administered in?
        
           | shard wrote:
           | This might shock and amaze you, but I took many midterms and
           | finals for my CS and EE classes using pencil and paper in the
           | 21st century, and this was at a well-known Californian
           | private university.
        
             | endless1234 wrote:
             | Were everybody else also doing it on pen & paper, or were
             | you the only one?
        
               | csmcg wrote:
               | ? Every exam I ever took for my BS in EE was pen and
               | paper. 2015-2020.
        
               | shard wrote:
               | Good question :)
               | 
               | Yes, all students took the test together on paper and
               | pencil in the classroom; a digital version of the test
               | was not available.
               | 
               | I just went through my files to check, and indeed the
               | final exam for my artificial intelligence class was in-
               | class, 2 hours, pen only (no pencil).
        
           | walthamstow wrote:
           | I took pen and paper exams at school and university between
           | 2007 and 2012 and it was absolutely fine
           | 
           | I'm sure writing a comment like this means I'm getting old,
           | but nonetheless
        
             | KineticLensman wrote:
             | I took A-levels in 1980 (entirely pen and paper) and a comp
             | sci degree in 1983. The exams for the latter were entirely
             | paper-based.
        
           | gnulinux wrote:
           | I still regularly use pen and paper to take notes and design
           | things as a software engineer because in my opinion it's
           | simply the best tool for the job.
           | 
           | All my CS exams in UC Berkeley were pencil and paper and I
           | thought it was fine (preferrable to computer exams). I
           | understand that some people doesn't like it.
        
           | jcpst wrote:
           | I went to college in this century. I could probably count on
           | one hand the times where a test wasn't on paper.
        
       | pram wrote:
       | I don't have a strong opinion personally, but my wife is a lawyer
       | and I remember her cramming all the BARBRI material in the weeks
       | before her Bar exam. She said she basically could have skipped
       | law school and done just that stuff (and saved hundreds of
       | thousands of $$$ lol)
        
         | iasay wrote:
         | That's how I did the AWS solution architect exams. Except it
         | was hours not weeks before :)
         | 
         | I spent the training course week on holiday.
        
           | MisterBastahrd wrote:
           | Not gonna lie... if I could switch from my dev role to an AWS
           | solution architect role just by passing some tests... I
           | probably would. Maybe I'm just getting crankier, but there's
           | a ton of obvious things that multiple levels of management
           | are not seeing until I bring it up, and I don't really want
           | to get an MBA.
        
         | mwint wrote:
         | What's the disadvantage to skipping law school (other than
         | resume issues, I assume)? Could one actually do this and come
         | out a "real" lawyer?
        
           | rayiner wrote:
           | Unfortunately, the primary value of law school is signaling,
           | but it's a big one. You could skip law school in California
           | and take the Baby Bar and become a "real lawyer" in the sense
           | you could legally do everything any other lawyer can do. But
           | even ordinary people (much less corporations) rely on law
           | school pedigree as a signal for competence and quality.
           | 
           | E.g. in the recent leaked conversation between Macron and
           | Putin: https://nypost.com/2022/07/06/leaked-call-reveals-
           | fiery-exch...
           | 
           | > Putin quickly turned the conversation to "our dear
           | colleague Mr. Zelensky," accusing the Ukrainian president of
           | "lying" to Macron about his intention to implement the Minsk
           | Accords, which had sought to end the war in the Donbas
           | region.
           | 
           | > Putin then took issue with Zelensky's apparent refusal to
           | negotiate with pro-Kremlin Ukrainian separatists, which
           | infuriated the French president and prompted him to exclaim
           | in audible frustration: "I don't know where your lawyer
           | learned law!"
        
             | 0x737368 wrote:
             | It's tangential but what a confusingly written article, it
             | could have very well been machine translated and I'd have
             | been none the wiser.
             | 
             | The jump from bringing up Zelensky not dealing with Donbass
             | situation as per agreement to Macron and him exclaiming
             | that he doesn't know where Putin's lawyer learned law is
             | comical in its absurdity too.
        
             | D13Fd wrote:
             | > But even ordinary people (much less corporations) rely on
             | law school pedigree as a signal for competence and quality.
             | 
             | This isn't that different from any other profession though.
             | A doctor, professor, or engineer from Harvard or Stanford
             | etc is going to get a lot more respect than the one had no
             | schooling at all (even absent licensing requirements).
        
               | david38 wrote:
               | Not in computer science. In the valley, Stanford and UCB
               | graduates are common. I know many self-taught ones that
               | get just as much respect.
        
               | Finnucane wrote:
               | "don't worry, I watched a bunch of youtube videos on
               | this."
        
               | RedShift1 wrote:
               | "I got my legal degree from Legal Eagle"
        
               | MisterBastahrd wrote:
               | Yeah, it's totally just like all of these no-degree
               | developers, except when there's a failure in your
               | lawyering, you might get sued, disbarred, and also get
               | jail time for being incompetent in addition to
               | potentially ruining someone else's life, or at least
               | wasting a lot of their time.
        
               | narrator wrote:
               | I also got the idea from law school that a lot of going
               | to law school is to show to the courts that you've shown
               | you're not going to waste the legal system's time by not
               | knowing how to follow all the procedure and how to write
               | legal documents you submit to the court. The rules of
               | civil litigation and how you must write documents are
               | hideously complicated due to having been built up over
               | centuries to strike a balance between unnecessary and
               | time wasting game playing by very crafty players and
               | giving parties a fair chance to prove their case.
               | 
               | For example, the clerk at the civil litigation court is
               | often like a compiler that will just ignore your document
               | if you didn't do it just right. It's like writing a nice
               | big long program and the compiler's only response is to
               | segmentation fault on you if you made any error in the
               | filing. I bet these court clerks receive lots and lots of
               | filings that are a big unprofessional mess that they just
               | throw in the trash.
        
               | jjoonathan wrote:
               | > built up over centuries to strike a balance between
               | unnecessary and time wasting game playing by very crafty
               | players and giving parties a fair chance
               | 
               | Did they strike a balance? Or did they just make it pay
               | to play?
        
               | ghaff wrote:
               | I'd say all three of those cases are a bit different from
               | each other and from law. Schools do make a difference for
               | doctors but you still have an MD (or whatever) and can
               | probably earn a pretty decent living in the US even if
               | you went to a lower-ranged US school and aren't a total
               | hack. Yes, academia is pretty status conscious.
               | Engineering (especially software) is more forgiving. The
               | common wisdom around law is that if you can't get into a
               | better school and ideally get a prestigious clerkship, it
               | may not be a great professional choice.
        
           | Tangurena4 wrote:
           | Once upon a long time ago, when I lived in Florida, I was
           | interested in running for election as a county judge. There
           | were provisions in the statutes for small counties (under 40k
           | population). There was a special program only offered at UF
           | in Gainesville that was 3 years long and only for people who
           | wanted to run for County Judge. I believe even though it was
           | the same length as a regular JD, that if you passed this
           | course you could not sit for the bar exam.
           | 
           | https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/34.021
        
           | rowanG077 wrote:
           | The disadvantage is obviously that you need the stuff you
           | learn in law school to pass the bar. If you can independently
           | learn it then you can come out as a "real" lawyer. But it
           | seems it's not all states you can just do the bar and be a
           | lawyer, some do require law shool.
        
             | mhb wrote:
             | Essentially all require law school.
        
               | zippergz wrote:
               | Specific details here, if anyone is actually curious:
               | https://barprephero.com/learn/take-the-bar-exam-without-
               | law-...
        
               | notahacker wrote:
               | Which also includes the important detail that the people
               | who go to law school are 3x as likely to pass than the
               | people who didn't (but had multi-year apprentices at a
               | law firm).
               | 
               | That suggests the value of the actual teaching isn't
               | insignificant.
        
           | watwut wrote:
           | From what I recall, majority of people who tried failed. The
           | pass rates for people who did not went through school were
           | abysmal.
        
             | mulmen wrote:
             | Was it more than zero? Did they pay to take the test?
        
           | pram wrote:
           | I'd like to add to the rest of the discussions: you can get a
           | JD from a law school and still end up not being able to
           | practice law if you fail the Bar. Yes, you need a JD to take
           | the Bar exam in most places, but the 'credential' that gives
           | any actual value is just the exam.
        
             | donatj wrote:
             | Have a friend who had to take it a couple times over the
             | course of I think 5 years before he finally passed. Worked
             | IT until he finally passed.
        
               | hobobaggins wrote:
               | Was your friend Joe Pesci?
               | 
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBarc_-Eoek
        
           | hitpointdrew wrote:
           | The disadvantage is that the vast majority of states no
           | longer let anyone just sign up and take the bar, you need a
           | degree, or at least some sort of sponsorship to even register
           | to take the exam. The days of just taking the bar "Catch me
           | if you can" style are long since past.
           | 
           | Source: Years ago I looked into "just taking the bar" only to
           | come across ridiculous hoops and requirements.
        
       | D13Fd wrote:
       | Examsoft sucks. They are a horrible pain to deal with, they are
       | entrenched in their market, and they have no fear of imposing
       | ridiculous requirements on their users (e.g. bar exam takers)
       | because their users aren't their customers. Their customers are
       | the jurisdictions that administer the bar.
       | 
       | So yeah. I agree it sucks but there is not much to do about it as
       | an exam taker.
        
         | wollsmoth wrote:
         | I'm so glad I'm out of school and I don't have to worry about
         | this kind of stuff. I feel for students today.
        
       | borissk wrote:
       | Just buy a Ryzen laptop. Intel's 12th Gen has had a number of
       | issues - hardware acceleration in browsers not working, problems
       | with thread scheduling under any OS except from Windows 11,
       | excessive power consumption and overheating in benchmarks. On top
       | of that Intel has done a lot of illegal stuff to protect their
       | market positions.
        
         | kotaKat wrote:
         | Meanwhile, as a Ryzen user, half of my virtual machines won't
         | work and crash, USB is flakier than a biscuit in the Sahara,
         | and my OEM refuses to release AGESA updates and I can't update
         | the AGESA myself to fix literally dozens of problems on Ryzen.
         | 
         | "Just!" buying new hardware isn't a solution.
        
           | borissk wrote:
           | What is the OEM?
        
         | twawaaay wrote:
         | I think you miss the whole point of why this landed on HN.
         | 
         | Why would somebody need to buy another laptop just to be able
         | to attend the exam?
        
           | borissk wrote:
           | Because buying a laptop running a drastically new
           | architecture increases the chances you'll run into software
           | issues. This exam app is not the only thing Intel has broken.
        
             | reiichiroh wrote:
             | "Why doesn't this work on my Linux laptop?"
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | matt321 wrote:
       | Abolish the bar? Wut? Why? Because its hard?
        
         | t_mann wrote:
         | Requirements like the bar exam exist also to protect the
         | insiders who also happen to make the rules. In economics it's
         | called an insider-outsider problem. Not saying we should
         | actually abolish the bar, just hinting at a possible reasonable
         | argument.
        
           | ImPostingOnHN wrote:
           | also called regulatory capture
        
         | xtracto wrote:
         | What should be abolished is those crappy proctoring
         | applications. Either implement remote-friendly tests or do as
         | TOEFL has done since decades and apply tests at controlled
         | locations.
        
         | srndsnd wrote:
         | I am not a lawyer nor do I have a JD, but the argument I've
         | heard from friends who have recently passed the bar amounts to
         | the idea that the inordinate amounts of memorization required
         | to pass the bar are a poor measure of someone's ability to
         | actually practice law.
         | 
         | Worse than that, if a lawyer were to attempt to give advice
         | without consulting any outside resources and not doing any
         | research, that could be construed as malpractice. As a result,
         | you could argue it even encourages that kind of behavior. Yet,
         | that is what the bar exam asks.
         | 
         | I've seen countless takedowns on HN of programming interviews
         | on whiteboards as a poor way to evaluate someone's ability to
         | write code. Same concept, different domain. Similarly to those
         | programming interviews, it can also be seen as a "best of the
         | worst" situation.
        
           | Maultasche wrote:
           | I don't know much about the bar exam myself, but I had a
           | professor in college who was also a practicing lawyer.
           | 
           | He was of the opinion that in order to pass the bar, you
           | mainly needed to really know the legal fundamentals and be
           | good at making a legal argument in the bar exam, and that
           | knowledge of specific laws is less important, because those
           | are always available in reference books.
           | 
           | He told us a story of passing the Massachusetts bar exam
           | (just to see if he could) without knowing anything about the
           | state laws in Massachusetts, and won a bet he had made with
           | his friend, who didn't think it was possible.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | gamblor956 wrote:
           | The bar exam is nothing like a whiteboard. It tests knowledge
           | (law is a knowledge-based profession), and skill (the writing
           | portions test an applicant's ability to write legal
           | documents).
           | 
           | As a lawyer, I've found that anyone who could not pass the
           | bar was simply unsuited to providing legal advice, and are
           | generally even unsuited to doing any legal-related task for
           | pay.
           | 
           | The bar exam sets a minimum threshold for a person's ability
           | to research, and remember, large quantities of rules,
           | applications, and theories, and be able to apply or
           | regurgitate all of that within a short time frame. This is
           | similar to real world demands, such as a trial, or contract
           | negotiations, where the lawyer will not have time to go back-
           | and-forth researching every new thing that pops up during the
           | event and must go into it fully prepared ahead of time.
        
             | ksdale wrote:
             | As a lawyer, there is so much more that falls under the
             | umbrella of "practicing law" that is nowhere _near_ as
             | demanding as a trial or contract negotiations. I personally
             | think the credentials that lawyers have are completely
             | unnecessary for a large portion of the tasks that only
             | lawyers are allowed to perform.
             | 
             | I think the bar exam is more like, sufficient but not
             | necessary, anyone who can pass the bar is easily capable of
             | being a lawyer, but I don't think the bar is necessary at
             | all to prove that someone is capable.
        
               | D13Fd wrote:
               | What kind of law do you practice? In my view every
               | litigator has to be ready to go to trial.
               | 
               | I guess if you are going to be a contract document review
               | attorney or something then maybe the bar is overkill in
               | some ways. But I would argue that the only value added by
               | someone like a document review attorney is the fact that
               | they passed the bar (demonstrating a broad base of
               | knowledge).
        
               | HWR_14 wrote:
               | I am not a lawyer, but I would guess there is a position
               | for "slightly more than Legal Zoom". I want to create a
               | will (and don't need to worry about estate taxes.) I want
               | to create an LLC. My counterparty and I agree on the
               | terms and we need someone to draft or modify a contract
               | that specifies what we say.
        
               | [deleted]
        
             | HWR_14 wrote:
             | As a lawyer, how do you feel about the need to have
             | graduated from a 3-year law school (in almost all states,
             | with the exception for some that have a longer
             | apprenticeship program) to even take the bar? It seems like
             | if the bar is a sufficient screen it would be unnecessary.
        
               | richardfontana wrote:
               | Incidentally, in the US, the transformation during the
               | early to mid 20th century of the basic law degree
               | (originally typically LLB [Bachelor of Laws]) into a
               | postgraduate JD (Juris Doctor) with a 4-year
               | undergraduate degree prerequisite, and the
               | standardization of the LLB/JD program at three years
               | (from earlier instances that were one or two years) was
               | done by the legal profession in a failed attempt to erect
               | barriers to entry to members of immigrant/ethnic minority
               | communities. When I was in law school I wrote a paper for
               | an ethics class on this topic. (Ethics BTW came to be a
               | required class in ABA-accredited law schools in the wake
               | of Watergate.) Outside the US I believe the basic
               | university law degree is typically an undergraduate,
               | bachelor-level program.
        
               | coding123 wrote:
               | As a customer of a lawyer It seems like an absolute
               | requirement for me.
               | 
               | Why is everyone trying to erode society down to like,
               | nothingness?
               | 
               | Burger flipper to 400k/year lawyer anyone?
        
               | barneygale wrote:
               | Could you /imagine/ a world without lawyers? _shudders_
        
               | HWR_14 wrote:
               | > Could you /imagine/ a world without lawyers?
               | 
               | Yes, I can. And, frankly, it sucks.
               | 
               | I don't do my own roofing. The idea that I would have to
               | argue my own case in court sounds horrible. I don't know
               | how. And then the people who right now are (or become)
               | lawyers would just use their superior system knowledge to
               | extort others. Far better that the responses available to
               | a claim of some tort are "I guess I should call a lawyer"
               | and not "I guess I should pay $5,000 for this to go away
               | or spend the next 2 years learning the law to fight it on
               | my own."
        
               | HWR_14 wrote:
               | I'm not trying to erode society down to nothingness. I
               | dislike academic credentialism.
               | 
               | I just want there to be many paths to learning. Formal
               | schooling. Apprenticeship. Private mentoring. Hell, you
               | could probably get a series of YouTube channels (with a
               | very low success rate) or something closer to a MOOC.
               | 
               | Obviously, you need to demonstrate you _learned_ from
               | those paths. And I wondered if the bar exam was
               | sufficient to show that. So I asked someone who claimed
               | to be a lawyer on the internet as _I don 't know_ how
               | sufficient the bar is as a measure.
        
               | spoiler wrote:
               | I think they're pointing out the ridiculous costs of law
               | school and the wealth barrier of entry that creates.
               | 
               | Someone who could pass the bar exam, and could end up
               | being a great lawyer isn't even given the chance, because
               | they can't afford to attend law school (which is
               | necessary to take the exam, from what I gather, but IANAL
               | & I'm not from the US).
        
               | abduhl wrote:
               | Financial aid is readily available at all top tier law
               | schools for anyone that could plausibly end up a "great"
               | lawyer. As much as I dislike the hierarchical nature of
               | post secondary school, there is no doubt in my mind that
               | the hypothetical person who has not distinguished
               | themselves to the point where a top tier law school would
               | notice them and offer financial aid by the time they've
               | completed an undergraduate degree and taken the LSAT does
               | not exist or, if they do, they are so rare as to not
               | exist.
               | 
               | Now, are people who could pass the bar exam and be merely
               | a "good" or "acceptable" lawyer being frozen out by the
               | wealth barrier? Absolutely. But actually probably not:
               | these people can go to a lower tier and cheaper school.
        
               | spoiler wrote:
               | I don't know enough about the system in the US and I
               | might be talking out of my ass here, since most of my
               | impression are formed by reading online discussions, but
               | here goes... I was always under the impression that you
               | can just buy into most unis in the US? There's the
               | scholarship programs, but I was also under the impression
               | they're often through sports rather than grades (and to
               | me it's obvious that there's not necessarily a
               | correlation between someone good at American Football and
               | law).
        
               | HWR_14 wrote:
               | > . I was always under the impression that you can just
               | buy into most unis in the US?
               | 
               | This is true at the richest levels. If you are willing to
               | write a multi-million dollar check as a donation (name a
               | building/room after your family), you will probably be
               | admitted. In 1999, apparently a $2.5 million donation
               | secured Jared Kushner's admittance into Harvard. This has
               | to be adjusted not just by regular admission but also by
               | the increased competition (it is more than twice as
               | competitive). So I would expect we might be getting
               | closer to a $10 million donation. Although schools would
               | probably cap it/auction it off if they got too many
               | donations.
               | 
               | This is by far the minority of admissions.
               | 
               | Other cases where people "pay to get in" are literally
               | bribes, and people can and have gone to jail.
               | 
               | > There's the scholarship programs, but I was also under
               | the impression they're often through sports rather than
               | grades
               | 
               | There are a lot of scholarship types: academic, need-
               | based, interest based (an engineering may spend money to
               | help aspiring engineers), corporate (we'll pay your
               | tuition if you work here for 2 years after), and
               | athletic. Not all schools offer all types, and some (like
               | interest based scholarships) are unaffiliated with any
               | school (although athletic scholarships are).
               | 
               | Also, athletic scholarships are limited to your
               | undergraduate (pre-law or pre-med or your BA/BS in X).
               | 
               | In all cases, the scholarships help you pay for school,
               | but tend to be different from the actual admittance
               | process. So the correlation would be between someone good
               | at Football and someone who can _afford_ school. Which,
               | if you think about it as a job (they make the school a
               | ton of money) is fair in a way.
        
               | lief79 wrote:
               | Minor clarification. Sports scholarships are limited by
               | duration, and often apply to BS and MS for 5 years max,
               | with 4 years of playing time.
               | 
               | Generally switching schools requires a year off, but
               | there are some loop holes by applying to a grad major
               | that is not present in the original school. Basketball
               | and football players seem to use these often. You can
               | google for more information, and I believe it still
               | wouldn't work for law/doctor programs, but I haven't
               | looked into this.
        
               | abduhl wrote:
               | Post-baccalaureate study scholarships are unrelated to
               | sports scholarships. Law is a post bachelor degree.
               | "Buying" your way into a top law school is possible but
               | basically entails buying your way through an
               | undergraduate degree as well which means that you might
               | have "bought" your way in but you're still ultimately
               | incredibly well prepared. And these people who buy their
               | way in subsidize the exact people you're concerned about
               | being kept out: poor but well qualified candidates who
               | can become "great" lawyers.
        
               | yellowapple wrote:
               | > Burger flipper to 400k/year lawyer anyone?
               | 
               | Are you saying that a "burger flipper" should always be
               | one and never aspire to eventually be a lawyer?
        
               | devteambravo wrote:
               | Chamath Palihapitiya would be mad if all he made was
               | 400k/yr, and Burger King was his place a choice as a
               | young man looking to flip burgers.
        
               | gamblor956 wrote:
               | The same way I feel about requiring doctors to go to
               | medical school before they can do a residency.
               | 
               | The bar exam and law school have different purposes. A
               | law school teaches the laws of the _entire country_. A
               | bar exam tests the law of the _specific state._ While
               | many laws are _similar,_ they 're not the same, and the
               | differences matter a great deal.
               | 
               | And secondly, a great many people can eek their way
               | through law school who have no business actually
               | practicing law, and the bar exam is essentially the last
               | filter keeping those incompetents away from the practice
               | of law before they can harm clients. (The law provides
               | recourse to clients when a lawyer's actions deliberately
               | harms clients, however, there is little to no recourse
               | for clients if their lawyer makes a mistake.)
        
               | dtmmax33 wrote:
               | They should do it like medicine. You go to school, then a
               | residency then pass your boards. It would be better if
               | you went to law school, did x number of hours under a
               | lawyer, then take the bar exam.
        
               | WastingMyTime89 wrote:
               | Cost-wise the thing I find extremely strange as a
               | foreigner is the US insistence that people should do a
               | full year BS before studying law and medicine. It doesn't
               | make a lot of sense to me. Here you just study the field
               | you want to practice from the start.
               | 
               | The costs by themselves are also shocking to be fair.
               | Here the full four years of a law degree allowing you to
               | pass the bar would only set you back 753EUR to which you
               | would probably have to add a year of preparation and the
               | cost of the exam itself which probably bring you to
               | somewhere between 2000EUR and 4000EUR for the academic
               | part of actually becoming a lawyer.
        
               | D13Fd wrote:
               | > The bar exam and law school have different purposes. A
               | law school teaches the laws of the entire country. A bar
               | exam tests the law of the specific state. While many laws
               | are similar, they're not the same, and the differences
               | matter a great deal.
               | 
               | This was true 10 years ago. Now the majority of states
               | use the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE), often without a
               | jurisdiction-specific component. It's unfortunate.
               | 
               | I agree with the rest of your comment though.
        
           | edmcnulty101 wrote:
           | I would personally not want to go to a lawyer that is not
           | able to pass the bar exam.
           | 
           | Even if it's just an IQ check, I would want my lawyer to have
           | a high IQ, social Darwinism or not.
           | 
           | I wish law had more certification tests like medicine has
           | with its specialties.
           | 
           | I also think law school should be optional like it is in
           | California or not costing $50,000 a year... that's just gate
           | keeping and puts lawyers in massive financial debt or only
           | selects for the rich.
        
             | grumple wrote:
             | I would do law school online, but guess what? It still
             | costs $70k a year to do a JD that's almost entirely online.
             | The cost is really absurd. I feel that way about all higher
             | education, but especially about JDs. Cheaper learning
             | platforms are the future.
        
               | Ekaros wrote:
               | I really don't understand logic behind that price other
               | than we can just charge that much. Material doesn't
               | change that much, I doubt the ratio of staff to students
               | need to be very low either... No special or expensive
               | equipment is needed either...
        
               | edmcnulty101 wrote:
               | It's because this profession is regulated by the
               | government. So the prices skyrocket. This happens with
               | any thing regulated by the government. A liquor license
               | in CA can run up to $300,000 dollars. Health insurance is
               | insanely expensive. The more automobile regulation, the
               | more the price goes up.
               | 
               | Regulation is a double edge sword.
               | 
               | They make a thing safer but then the increased cost
               | excludes a lot of people from using the thing until
               | typically only the rich are able to enjoy a thing.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | > Even if it's just an IQ check, I would want my lawyer to
             | have a high IQ, social Darwinism or not.
             | 
             | You can have a high IQ and be terrible and memorizing and
             | regurgitating a bunch of facts and figures. I've seen
             | people who were literal geniuses fail tests that others who
             | were... lets say, 'very much not geniuses' passed without a
             | problem because they were skilled in cramming for a few
             | weeks to get their certification even while never having a
             | real deep understanding of the subject and pretty much
             | immediately forgetting everything they "learned".
             | 
             | IQ (for what it's worth) is more about being able to figure
             | out what's in front of you than it is having a great memory
             | for numbers, trivia, dates, or laws and past legal cases.
        
               | watwut wrote:
               | If you are terrible at memorizing, you won't be good
               | layer. They do actually need to remember a lot and
               | quickly. And they don't have time to look up everything
               | either.
        
               | edmcnulty101 wrote:
               | Well I think there's different aspects to IQ.
               | 
               | Retention is one as well as problem solving.
               | 
               | I think both play an important part in a lot of
               | situations.
        
           | coding123 wrote:
           | I get that a whiteboard code test at Google would be probably
           | very hard. A whiteboard (err, screen share) code test at my
           | company would be fucking bubble sort. Yes there's a 100k/year
           | difference in pay more at Google.
        
           | D13Fd wrote:
           | What you have to do to pass the bar, even now, is extremely
           | basic by lawyer standards. It's the floor.
           | 
           | It is not like a programming whiteboard interview. It's a
           | test that you study for, learning basic legal concepts, and
           | knowing exactly the range of topics that are going to be on
           | the test. I know many disagree, but in my opinion you _need_
           | those basic legal concepts to practice law well.
           | 
           | Everyone likes to say "well what if I just want to do family
           | law?" No. You should still have to know the basics of law,
           | because many of these issues _will_ come up in your time as a
           | lawyer, regardless of your area of practice. This is not
           | advanced stuff, and it is not at all unfair to say that every
           | lawyer should have a basic understanding of it.
           | 
           | Bad lawyers make _everyone 's_ job harder, and make every
           | case more expensive for clients on both sides. If you think
           | legal cases are expensive now, just wait until they relax the
           | licensing requirements.
        
         | rhino369 wrote:
         | The bar exam weeds people out at the wrong point--after they've
         | racked up 300k in loans. They should just set a minimum LSAT
         | score to achieve the same purpose.
         | 
         | Or better yet, make a JD a Bachelor of Law degree without
         | weeding out.
        
           | fallingknife wrote:
           | But then how do you weed people out?
        
             | rhino369 wrote:
             | Let the market decide. Nobody is going to hire someone with
             | shit grades from a lowly ranked school. But instead of
             | having 300k in debt, those unemployable Bachelor of Law
             | grads will be no worse off than if they had a BA in an
             | unmarketable field like sociology or poli-sci.
             | 
             | Right now, they have to go get the the BA in anything (most
             | do stuff like poli-sci) AND then they have to go spend 3
             | years and 300k dollars on a professional degree.
             | 
             | The glut of lawyers isn't really a problem without all that
             | wasted time and debt.
        
         | Karsteski wrote:
         | Something something gatekeeping by old people
        
         | riskable wrote:
         | To be fair, the Bar exists because lawyers themselves felt
         | there were too many lawyers.
        
       | golemotron wrote:
       | To be fair, if lawyers use and become familiar with up-to-date
       | technology, the whole system breaks down. Our economy depends
       | upon a lag between technological development and regulation.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-07-13 23:01 UTC)