Unholy Alliances of Bar Examiners and Clinicians: Perils & Reasons for Hope

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Session Type: Lightning Sessions

Session Capacity: N/A

Location: N/A

Room: Franciscan B

Floor: Ballroom Level

Criticisms of the bar exam, focused on the exam’s lack of validity and its disproportionate racial impact, have prompted the NCBE to create a NextGen bar exam that will attempt to assess many skills clinicians teach: fact investigation, interviewing, counseling, and negotiation. The critiques also prompted some states to explore pathways to licensure without bar exams. This lightning session will offer a crash course on changes coming to bar exams and on non-exam pathways being considered by some jurisdictions, focused on the implications of both for clinical legal education. Specific Goals and Learning Objectives for this session: 1. Provide information about how the Next Gen Bar Exam may impact clinical education – perils that lurk in the new test and the potential impact the test may have on the future of clinical education; 2. Provide information about alternative licensing pathways, their connection to diversifying the profession and increasing access to justice, and the perils and opportunities they present to clinical education; 3. Identify ways clinical faculty can bring our experience, values, and methodology to attorney licensing in this time of change. Methodology for achieving goals and objectives: Using slides and handouts, presenters will provide: (1) the latest information about changes to the bar exam and new alternative pathways; (2) insights about perils we have identified; and (3) ways that clinicians can participate in and influence the licensing changes that are afoot. The short presentations will be followed by discussion.