Page 10 - Pierce County Lawyer - May June 2024

MAY/JUNE EDITORIAL
FThe Times They Are A-Changing 1
or years the Bar Exam has been the last hurdle to becoming a Within recent memory, the Washington Bar Exam was lawyer2. It has varied in form from oral examinations to written a two and a half day set of essay questions written and essays to multiple choice exams and these have been more or graded by practicing attorneys. More recently it has
less formalized over the years. Sometimes the examinations were oral, become the Multi-state Bar Exam, then the Uniform
sometimes written.
On March 15 of this year our Washington Supreme Court entered two orders addressing the recommendations of the Washington
Bar Licensure Task Force.3 Three of these recommendations created alternatives to the Bar Exam for admission to practice law. There were other recommendations which will also be discussed, but it was those three which provoked the most discussion. Before examining those and the other recommendations a brief review of what it takes to become a lawyer in Washington is in order.
1 Bob Dylan 1964
2 In Wisconsin, graduates of instate law schools (Marquette and the University of
Wisconsin) are admitted without taking the Bar. Wisconsin is the last state with diploma privilege as a normal process, although, as we recall, Washington, three other states and the District of Columbia allowed it in 2020 because of the Covid Epidemic.
3 The Task Force was created in November 2020 by another court order. The court’s latest orders and the accompanying recommendations can be found at courts.wa.gov (click the
tab for courts then supreme court, then orders)
All lawyers should look
at the full report and the recommendations and if you have opinions (as I am sure you will) voice them to the committee that the W SBA will form.
Bar Exam with essay, multiple-choice questions and performance portions. In 2026 the NextGen Bar Exam will be rolled out—again with essays, multiple-choice and performance parts.
You can take the Bar Exam in Washington if you:
o Are a graduate of an ABA law school with a JD or an LLM (for some graduates of foreign law schools or non-accredited US law schools), or
o Are a graduate of a common law system law school with practice experience, or
o Have completed the Rule 64 Law Clerk Program, a four year program that requires full-time employment in a law office, legal department or a court, under the supervision of a lawyer-tutor.
In addition to the UBE a candidate must pass the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam and have the requisite good character and fitness to practice law. After passing, before being sworn in, the candidate must take and pass the Washington Law Component, an on-line test, and complete a four-hour course developed by the WSBA on the practice of law.
The Task Force reviewed the current state of knowledge with respect to licensing practices nationwide and noted that several other states were in the process of creating new methods of licensure. They then made seven recommendations that dealt with the
existing Bar Examination, reciprocity and new methods of assessing the readiness of candidates to practice law.
The Bar Exam will be retained as one method of assessment. But three new methods of qualification
will be available to candidates. Briefly, these are described below:
Law Graduate Apprenticeship—Law school graduates would follow some of the process of Rule 9 as to their supervisors and would engage in supervised practice for six months and would complete 6 months of the course work prescribed by Rule 6.4
4 Rule 6 is a rule of the court dealing with Admission to Practice, as is Rule 9 mentioned later.
10 PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER | May/June 2024