Job search strategies: a uniform bar exam?

Aurora Donnelly is a solo practitioner always looking forward to the next exciting transition.

A new test developed by the National Conference of Bar Examiners is gaining traction. By 2011, 10 states are expected to adopt the Uniform Bar Exam.  Illinois is not one of them, but as many as 22 other states are considering adopting it.

I am hopeful that the test will become universal across the states.  Law school graduates taking this test would be able to transport their scores to other jurisdictions and not have to sit for bar exams everywhere they decided to practice.

Some attorneys considering a career transition choose to relocate to another state. Perhaps because they perceive professional opportunities there are better, or family needs require the move.  Others may simply wish to live elsewhere.

Under the current legal education system and the legal license granting structure, moving to another jurisdiction and being able to make a living in our chosen profession is a harrowing ordeal.

Few states have any kind of reciprocity regarding law licenses.  In order to practice law in another state we have to sit for another bar exam.  And, should you be unlucky enough to move again, you have to take yet another bar exam, ad nauseam.  The time, energy and expense involved in this process is disheartening.

I am convinced that several states with busy legal markets and high interstate immigration rates manipulate the exam scoring so as to keep the number of lawyers in their states below some predetermined number.

As the bar exams exist now, while states devote a portion of the exam to state law, the majority of the test material is the same from state to state, including the MPRE and the MBE.  Even if you have just taken and passed a bar exam in one jurisdiction, you have to take the whole thing again if you move.  This system is perplexing.

Along with working hard to obtain a professional degree, and paying large amounts of money, or owing large amounts of money, we all hope and expect to have the freedom to practice that profession where we want.  Part of that freedom involves being to able to move to another state to live and work to support our families.  Instituting a uniform bar exam would put lawyers on a par with other professions, who can choose to live and work where they please.