Emergency “diploma privilege” has been a hot topic around the bar exam. Modified versions of the privilege have been cropping up. Utah’s, for instance, limits it to certain would-be attorneys, along with a condition of 360 hours’ supervised practice. I won’t rehash a lot of the debate for now.

The District of Columbia recently adopted a version of this. But the version is hardly “diploma privilege”—that is, upon receiving a law school diploma, you are eligible to practice law. Instead, DC’s rule requires recent graduates to have three years of supervised practice in the District of Columbia. Assuming 50, 40-hour weeks (or a 2000-ish-billable year), that’s 6000 hours of work. Yes, you can get paid, but there are strings attached to the practice, and it’s limited to practice within DC.

We’ve moved far afield from “diploma privilege” into, essentially, other alternatives to the bar exam. A three-year apprenticeship might be a good thing, but it’s also a very different kind of requirement from true diploma privilege. Indeed, tacking a three-year apprenticeship at the end of a three-year law degree feels onerous. Advocates for “diploma privilege” in DC have recognized this and pushed back against this new requirement.

To me, the bar exam would be a superior path for most law school graduates than this model. But it’s also worth considering the broader list of costs and benefits with all non-bar exam alternatives. Supervised practice might be better for some cohort—but it does offer a particular delay to the full practice of law. Maybe at the end of it, those under supervised practices are subject to less career discipline, or are more “competent” attorneys. All good things to measure. But, and I just note it here briefly, that it’s hardly the case that all replacements for the bar exam should be deemed “diploma privilege,” and it’s not sure that all alternatives are better than the bar exam.