Page 11 - Pierce County Lawyer - May June 2024

Law School Experience Path—Law school graduates who have completed their degrees and who have completed 12 credits of qualifying skills credits and 500 hours of work as licensed legal interns under Rule 9 may opt out of the Bar Exam.5
Law Clerk Apprenticeship—The proposal requires some changes to the requirements for Rule 6, adding additional benchmarks and standardizing the materials. Further, the Clerk candidate must complete the same 500 hours required for law graduates under the Experience Path.
None of these methods will be immediately available. The court charged the WSBA with drafting rules and procedures to implement these recommendations.
The recommendations that the court adopted also included changes to the reciprocity rules (reducing the time required for reciprocity to one year) and the investigation and implementation of proactive measures to ensure continuing competence for lawyers throughout their careers.
5 The ABA currently requires 6 credits of skills courses for graduation and most law schools have intern, extern and clinical courses, where a large portion, if not all, of the 500 required hours could be accomplished.
In addition, the court ordered that the modified passing score for the UBE should continue until the NextGen Bar Examination is implemented. Further, the NextGen Bar Examination was adopted with its first administration to be in July 2026.6 The Task Force also made recommendations to Character and Fitness Review. The court’s order does not deal with those recommendations.
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 WSBA will form.
John Weaver is a retired professor of law from Seattle University School of Law. He began teaching at UPS School of Law in 1972. He is
a resident of Tacoma and serves as the Law School Liaison to the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association.
6 The Task Force had recommended adopting the NextGen Bar Exam in 2027, but the court chose to adopt the exam when it would be rolled out in 2026.
BY JOHN WEAVER
•wrongful death & catastrophic injury
•construction site accidents
•sexual harassment & abuse
•wrongful termination
•employment discrimination & retaliation •insurance coverage & bad faith
•breach of fiduciary duty •commercial litigation
P L
urpose Driven awyers
253.289.5104 | www.bcglawyers.com | se habla español
May/Junel 2024 | PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER 11