re: Should we make the bar exam a whole lot harder? What else can be done?

What unaccredited law school is in South Carolina? I think you're confusing those that are for profit or not affiliated with a university, like Charleston, with schools that aren't ABA accredited. And, most states don't permit graduates of non-ABA accredited schools to sit for the bar, whether in state or not.

According to the LSAC, here is a list of non-accredited schools:LINK

That is a much smaller list than you seem to be implying. Did you go to law school?

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I like the idea of 4 years of law school, a harder bar, and 3 years apprenticeship/residency required.

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Absurdly over-the-top. Even three years of law school is pushing it considering most of the basics are taught within year one. By the time you hit year three you are doing purely electives and some law review/journal writing/editing if you're on one of the editorial boards.

Apprenticeship doesn't make sense, either. It already takes place in the form of summer clerkships. Conceivably the only people hurt by a glut of lawyers are other lawyers fighting for the same jobs/clients. And that solves itself by the better people rising to the top.

I agree that there should be a major change in law schools but not just a fourth year for the sake of having a fourth year. I would prefer to see the bar adopt true legal specialties, such as mineral law, successions, and family law, (fill in the blanks for others) and require additional time in some sort of resident type program for those particular fields before you are certified. Now, a license lets you do pretty much any type of law that you can convince a client you know something about, which is, I think, part of the problem with lawyers who seem to know nothing.

This isn't a new problem; people with some foresight saw the problem approaching 25 years ago, when the number of people in law school passed the number of bar admitted lawyers in America at the peak of the Law School Boom.

The real problem with it isn't that we have too many lawyers who aren't good at what they do-- its that we have too many lawyers who get other jobs, then try to practice law within those-- they regulate the life out of life, and turn processes that should be straightforward into contentious and deliberate snail crawls, that diminish both productivity and profitability.

Can you elaborate on the tort reform?

Too many law schools making too many new lawyers, combined with too many old lawyers refusing to retire.

I don’t have a solution.

Holy frick. 23 people have upvoted Helmut Head pic. Buncha damn horny arse mothereffers up in here .

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Make the law schools the holders of the students loans

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LOL that would fix it.

If you really want to reform the legal profession in a way that benefits everyone, a fourth year of classes does nothing. Law school classes aren't teaching you how to do all that much in a practical sense - it teaches you how to read and think like a lawyer. They don't even focus on writing as much as they really ought to. Apprenticeships are a reasonable idea, and most law students work summer clerkships to gain some practical experience.

There are tons of incompetent people in any field - including CPAs and doctors. The difference is with a doctor, you know exactly what they are supposed to specialize in. With an attorney anyone with a bar license can take any kind of case if the client wants to hire them. Kind of like asking your dermatologist to do heart surgery. You could just create separate exams for separate areas of the law and cure a lot of that. You would get a more in depth test of a person's knowledge in the area(s) they want to practice, and no needless shite like me studying family law for the bar exam with no intention of ever setting foot in a family courtroom.

My second big idea for the legal profession is to ban advertising. Have a website, that's it. No fricking banner ads either. TV, radio, and billboards are absurd and embarrassing for the rest of us.

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