Page 11 - Pierce County Lawyer - January February 2024

If you have thoughts on how to improve this proposal please reach out.
mandatory Bar Exam in every state didn’t begin until 1914 when the ABA accidentally admitted three Black lawyers. After kicking them out, the ABA convened a meeting on how to keep the profession 'pure.' In 1950, when advocating for a mandatory Bar Exam right as the first set of Black students were set to graduate law school, one state senator said on
the senate floor that it was necessary to prevent “negroes and undesirable whites” from entering the profession. The resolution passed.
I suspect that some of you may be thinking “how can a test that everyone has to take be racist?” And that’s a fair question. The answer is too multifaceted to be adequately addressed here, but the data and history bear it out. For those who question how a test can be biased, remember it is a fact that people of color are substantially less likely to pass the Bar Exam than white men. So either you have to believe that something about the test plays into systemic inequalities or you believe... what? And
we can’t forget that an influential standardized test, the SAT, was designed by a leader in the American Eugenics Society who explicitly created the precursor to the SAT as a way of
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discouraging interracial relationships in America. There is no such thing as an objective test.
This proposal from the WBLTF is not going to solve all the problems in our licensing system, but it is a huge step forward and one that is based on reliable data and will allow us to adjust and assess over time as we see the results. If you have thoughts on how to improve this proposal please reach out.
Jordan L. Couch is a partner at Palace Law practicing plaintiff ’s workers’ comp. and PI litigation. He’s been called a legal futurist for the work he does both in and out of the office seeking out new ways to build a more modern, client-centric law practice. Contact him at jordan@palacelaw.com or on social media @jordanlcouch.
BY JORDAN COUCH
January/February 2024 | PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER 11