This post will not mark the first time I have questioned the American law school and bar admissions system. But today I got the latest issue of the ABA Journal and saw where a Richland, WA, lawyer had written in to complain about the Journal’s August cover story on minority women lawyers and how they’re generally not making partner at big firms. The Richland lawyer argued that just as many “young Euro-American men” are having the same experience and that the ABA should “start concentrating on real lawyer problems” like “the issue of mentoring and how lawyers right out of law school make the transition to practice, no matter what their sex or ethnicity.”

I went to a law school in the northwest US and, like just about every other American law student, I spent only 24 months actually in school, receiving academically-minded instruction in substantive areas of law. Then I submitted some information about my “character and fitness” and got to take a multi-day exam almost exclusively on substantive areas of law. Like about 80% of my fellow law students, I passed that exam. And then I was a lawyer, and that was that. Although I took advantage of summer and clinical practice opportunities, nobody made me. Some of my classmates had no lawyering experience at all going into the bar exam.

Just three hours away, though, fresh law grads in British Columbia have to follow a much different track. For them, there are two huge steps between law school and the bar exam (and then lawyerhood). First is at least nine months of “articles“—that is, full-time legal work under the supervision of a BC lawyer who’s been in active practice for at least seven years. As part of the required “articling agreement,” the supervising lawyer pledges to mentor the student throughout the nine months, including expressly to “maintain[] continued contact,” “provid[e] the Student with advice and direction on his or her development as a lawyer,” and ensure that the student gets “practical training and experience in a minimum of three Practice Areas” plus ethics and law practice management. (Also, articling positions are not handed out—each student has to find his own. This serves as a motivator to combat the “once I’m a lawyer, then I’ll be employable” mentality that US law students often slip into, which always reminds me of a big sign that once hung outside a seedy used car lot in south Austin: “If you have a car, you can get a job!”)

But articling isn’t even the end of it. Wannabe BC lawyers have to devote the other three months of their year after law school to the “PLTC,” an acronym I’m hearing all the time here in Vancouver, which stands for “Professional Legal Training Course.” This is an intensive, full-time, ten week course all about practical law and lawyering, designed and taught by seasoned lawyers. It is, as far as I can tell, a mandatory BarBri—except that (A) the teachers are not clowns, (B) you learn about real law (not the fake ajurisdictional system that US bar examiners have created for the sake of convenience), and (C) you are forced to practice things that lawyers actually do. At the end of this are the bar exams, which include live courtroom advocacy and client interviewing components.

What’s going on in America? I’d be interested to hear from anyone who knows how we lost our heritage of legal apprenticeship (or “reading the law“) and have gone to a drive-thru window bar admissions process. I’ve seen some talk of moving to an articling system in the US; in fact, Delaware has adopted a five-month post-J.D. clerkship requirement for bar admission and Vermont now requires a three-month law office apprenticeship. But all that the rest of us get is a quick and boring skills practicum, and some states don’t even do that (see this ABA-prepared chart (144 KB PDF) for more information).

It can’t be that BarBri is such a powerful lobbyist that the bar associations are scared to intensify and lengthen the process. And I know that law students and lawyers—including the fellow from Richland who I mentioned at the beginning—grumble about competency and professionalism shortfalls among young lawyers. Can someone, in the comments or by email, sincerely defend the US system?