A Law Unto Herself
Author Elizabeth Wurtzel, who failed the bar her first time out, has written a short piece on why we don't need the test. Hey, fine with me. While you're at it, get rid of law school--let people go out and practice and the public can decide how much they're worth.
She gives the impression, though, the bar is arbitrary. I doubt it. It's made tough enough that talented people (maybe with the wrong attitude) can fail, but I have to believe those who pass are generally more knowledgeable about the law that those who aren't.
She writes:
The common denominator among the bar-failers in my class at Yale Law School—and there were a few—was a complete inability to comply with senseless rules; they weren’t the best students, but they were the tartest and the sharpest people—and the least likely to accept the constraints of Big Law...
Sounds like she's claiming the bar catches ornery people in its web. It's tough enough to practice law even when you know the rules--if you want to ignore them, you should at least prove you once understood them.
The best part of her essay is the list of people who failed the bar: Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jerry Brown, Kathleen Sullivan, Pete Wilson, Benjamin Cardozo, Harold Ford Jr., Antonio Villaraigosa. Don't stop, give me more.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:01 AM
8 Comments:
The common denominator among the road-test-failers in my driver's ed class at Archbishop Molloy HS—and there were a few—was a complete inability to comply with senseless rules. I had been driving illegally since I was 12 or 13, so this Kabuki-theater version of how you actually drive in NYC was maddening. On the second attempt I wised up and said "it's 15 minutes of your life; just get it over with." She should too.
Thus do we all conform.
Well being a practicing lawyer is about manipulating the rules to achieve a desired result so there is an argument that the inability to conform even (especially) to the most ridiculous rules and procedures, should keep an applicant from practicing (I didn't say it was a good argument).
I wonder how many of the bar-failers listed were inveterate non-linear rule-breakers and how many were just smartypants who couldn't be bothered to study for something they assumed they'd easily ace. - If I fail, there must be something wrong with the process, because God knows I'm a genius.
This reminds me (bear with me) of a study of high school valedictorians that showed their success in life was usually within large bureaucracies or corporate structures where achieving definable measurable clear cut goals and steps to achievement. Success on the bar exam and in school and most academic assessment seems to measure the ability of the test taker to master the rules/game the system.\NEG
A friend of mine was a Harvard Law with Michelle Obama. He didn;t know her well, but said his most lasting impression of her was that she never missed her soaps. I wonder if that's still the case in the White House? (Of course they didn't have DVRs then).
I once had one of those take-home exams, where instead of three hours, you had all day to take it, and I took a break to watch TV during the exam.
Not to date myself, but a good majority of my Cornell 1L class was hooked on Melrose Place (version 1.0).
Wurtzel was wrong in listing Cardozo as having failed the bar exam. This pernicious canard has been posted and reposted many times in the past few years. The truth is contained in Andrew Kaufman’s biography, Cardozo, at p. 54: young Benjamin applied for admission to the New York on June 26, 1891, as soon as he turned 21. He was duly examined and was admitted on October 26 of that year. Now it IS true that Cardozo dropped out of Columbia law school without earning a law degree, but that’s another story (told at p.49).
Thanks for your comment, Stockman. Ironic we should have a new comment on a very old post the same day I stop writing for this blog.
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