The New Bar Exam Puts DEI over Lawyer Competence
wsj.com
wsj.com
https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/135222/why-does-...
There's also quite a few articles, all with hard repblican bent, that are saying the same thing. I wonder why? /sarcasm
https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/20/justice-mitchell-alabam...
Basically, do your own research, rather than listen to these conspiratorial rags. Or at least acknowledge their obvious bias.
The only thing that wreaks of bias is you.
At least acknowledge how dismissive you are to this.
Both have significant ethical problems in smearing "just the facts" with terrible propaganda op-ed's disguised as "news", like this article.
Can somebody explain to me how watering down tests, to lower the competence bar, could possibly address differences in group outcomes? Obviously these different groups don't have different levels or distributions of competence, so how is one meant to relate to the other?
> On top of all that, an American Civil Liberties Union representative provided conference attendees with a lecture on criminal-justice reform in which he argued that states should minimize or overlook would-be lawyers’ convictions for various criminal offenses in deciding whether to admit them to the bar.
This part I get. Cops are biased and arrest some groups at a higher rate than others. A prior criminal conviction for smoking dope shouldn't have any bearing on the quality of a lawyer, when the competition also smoked dope and simply didn't get caught. This all makes sense. But watering down the tests? What the hell...
All it says is that they've made the test easier, and...
> perhaps the biggest concern is the NCBE’s use of the NextGen exam to advance its “diversity, fairness and inclusion” agenda. Two of the organization’s stated aims are to “work toward greater equity” by “eliminat[ing] any aspects of our exams that could contribute to performance disparities” and to “promote greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.” The NCBE reinforces this message by touting its “organization-wide efforts to ensure that diversity, fairness, and inclusion pervade its test products and services.”
> What does all this mean—and how does it have any relation to the law? Based on the diversity workshop at the NCBE conference, it means putting considerable emphasis on examinees’ race, sex, gender identity, nationality and other identity-based characteristics. The idea seems to be that any differences in group outcomes must be eliminated—even if the only way to achieve this goal is to water down the test. On top of all that, an American Civil Liberties Union representative provided conference attendees with a lecture on criminal-justice reform in which he argued that states should minimize or overlook would-be lawyers’ convictions for various criminal offenses in deciding whether to admit them to the bar.
...That's a lot of chaff, not much wheat. Basically, the ACLU hopes that it might become easier for people with prior convictions to join the bar.
There's nothing that says, e.g., that any ethnic group is prioritized, or that there are quotas.
So it seems like a bunch of hand-wringing. "Oh no, our regulatory moat is being eroded!"
That aside, there are two points that might be worth consideration:
1. Any changes won't kick in until 2026, and Chat-GPT is already such an outstanding lawyer that the field might be (and hopefully will be) irreversibly changed by then.
2. There has been a tremendous amount of lawyer overproduction in recent decades, so arguably the test should be made harder -- or, preferably, legal services should be democratized, as is already the case in small claims court, and all men should have standing to represent themselves and others in court. When every man is a lawyer, no man is a lawyer. (Rome, Greece, etc. were very much like this. "Lawyer" wasn't a profession; it was a temporary role or a form of community service.) Arizona has been making baby steps in this direction, if I'm not mistaken.
ChatGPT cannot tell fact from fiction.
Anyone who would trust the current versions to replace their doctors or lawyers is foolish.
The custom trained LLM models based on the proof of concept that ChatGPT was absolutely will augment them however. If used correctly you’re going to have a single human knowledge worker with the output of a dozen similarly trained peers with higher accuracy.
The "written" component of lawyering, which is effectively everything that cannot be done face to face, is right in Chat-GPT's wheelhouse.
It's not perfect. It lacks in research capabilities, so it needs its hand held from time to time. And it isn't great at thinking up "creative" strategies -- but this is arguably a feature, not a bug. Creative lawyering, like creative accounting, tends to be a net societal harm.
There is a ton of boilerplate in motions, complaints, responses, etc. They make really bad documents -- they're hard to read, and it's easy to make mistakes.
The law isn't a programming language; it can't be and shouldn't be. Still, there's an awful lot of the law that is badly verbose and much worse for that. ChatGPT does those well, but that means that the law should already have been re-considered to be clearer.
An anecdote to illustrate: the deed to my house is a text document. There's no reason for it to be. It's a receipt marking an event. It should be a form, not a text. I'm sure ChatGPT could have done a great job with it... but it shouldn't have to.
* The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is planning a nationwide overhaul of the bar exam, which they call the "NextGen" exam, planned to roll out in 2026.
* Certain topics, including family law and trusts and estates, won't be tested at all in the NextGen exam.
* The exam will introduce new client-interaction exercises, the details of which are currently unclear.
* The NCBE has outlined an agenda that includes advancing "diversity, fairness and inclusion" and working towards greater equity by eliminating any aspects of the exam that could contribute to performance disparities.
* The NCBE's efforts aim to promote greater diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.
* The NCBE's diversity workshop at the conference put emphasis on examinees' race, sex, gender identity, nationality and other identity-based characteristics.
* The NCBE is encouraging an approach where states minimize or overlook potential lawyers' criminal convictions in deciding whether to admit them to the bar.
* The first graduates to take the new exam will be students entering law school in the fall of the same year it comes online, 2026.
* If implemented, law schools would have to begin adjusting their curricula to match the subjects tested by the new evaluation.
* The NCBE is expected to disclose more information about the content, scope, and scoring of the NextGen exam before the start of the next academic year.
NCBE is, as part of this project, also jettisoning the existing software providers and procedures for taking a bar exam. Yes, 3/4 of them have had high profile flameouts, but overall the laptop bar exam has been a quiet success for 20+ years. All those details will be lost.
Complete overhaul of the bar exam — pedagogically, technologically, procedurally — in one go. What could be behind that decision?
Not that it would be a valid excuse, but the article never even explains what "DEI" is. In fact, the word "equity", which may be the "E" in DEI, only appears once in the article, and never as an expansion of the acronym.
The only thing in the article that could be construed to be an explanation of the acronym is the phrase, “diversity, fairness and inclusion”, which could presumably be abbreviated "DFI", not "DEI".
I don't know why unexplained acronyms have crept into daily usage, but the only way it improves communication is by telegraphing "I'm too cool for words". This tells me a lot more about the writer than the subject.
Ad maiorem DEI gloriam, please expand your acronyms the first time you use them!