California State Bar working group recommends cutting bar exam topics from 13 to 8

There’s an interesting draft report out from the California Attorney Practice Analysis Working Group, appointed to examine some recommendations about the content of the bar exam. Two recommendations (about the scope of “entry-level practice”; and relevant competencies, some of which might need to be reassessed in terms of the existing bar exam testing format) are worth a read. But more interesting to me was the call to reduce the number of legal topics tested on the bar exam. The goals included de-emphasizing memorization, and offering a core set of minimum competencies.

Seven existing topics—all of which are tested on the MBE—are recommended to remain: Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law, Contracts, Criminal Law and Procedure, Evidence, Real Property, and Torts. The eighth is a new topics, Administrative Law and Procedure. Topics to be removed are Business Associations, Community Property, Remedies, Trusts, and Wills and Succession. Professional Responsibility would also be removed, as it’s duplicative of the MPRE, mandated in law school, and a new mandatory training for entry-level attorneys.

It’s unclear where a working group proposal like this will lead, but other reforms of longstanding practices, like cutting the bar exam from three days to two, have occurred in California recently. We’ll see what comes of this proposal.

Other agenda items of note include expediting the scoring process so results come out earlier; improving grading and cheating concerns; and long-term considerations about the UBE and the cut score.