TITLE: Building a Better Legal Profession: Pathways to Bar Licensure
DATE: Friday, April 22, 2022
TIME: 9:30 am–4 pm (CDT)
FORMAT: Remote via Zoom
HOST: Mitchell Hamline School of Law
Co-Sponsors: The IP Institute at Mitchell Hamline School of Law
The University of Minnesota Law School
The University of St. Thomas School of Law
Event information
It should not have taken a pandemic to make the legal profession aware that the bar licensing system is broken. The bar exam is an ordeal that fails to test for many of the skills required of new lawyers, and it has worked to exclude individuals along race, class, and gender lines. But the pandemic made the problems salient for many, moved by the experiences and advocacy of recent law graduates who faced taking the bar exam amid disruptions caused by both health restrictions and demands for racial justice. As a result, jurisdictions across the nation are looking critically at the bar exam and considering instituting new pathways to attorney licensing.
This conference will start with the premise that we can and should build a better and more inclusive legal profession. It will bring together academics, attorneys, recent graduates, and bar examiners and administrators to share information and ideas to help improve and expand the pathways to licensure. The conference sessions will highlight the problems with current licensing and focus on exploring and sharing solutions to those problems.
To build on the information base we create in April, a second in-person conference will take place in summer or fall 2022 focused on advocating for change in licensing around the country.
Speakers and Participants
The program for the conference is being finalized and will be announced in the next several weeks.
The planning committee for the event is (in alphabetical order): Octavia Carson, Robert Chang, Carliss Chatman, Carol Chomsky, Danielle Conway, Gloria Contreras Edin, Pilar Escontrias, Leanne Fuith, Elizabeth Gil, Marsha Griggs, Victoria Haneman, Joan Howarth, Lynn LeMoine, Deborah Merritt, Caitlin Moon, Daniel Rodriguez, and Sharon Sandeen.