If you want to go to law school, but can’t get into an ABA-accredited one, then there has to be something wrong with you. Maybe you cant read scantron sheets or brochures, but something is not right if you can’t get into law school but you really want to.
It doesn’t matter if you had some kind of culturally difficult upbringing or have some kind of trumped-up attention disorder or if you are a deaf-mute, because even intelligent abused orphaned deaf-mutes suffering from ADHD with daddy issues can easily get into accredited law schools, given the totally minimum barriers to entry into such programs. All you have to do is fill out some forms and take a multiple choice exam without scoring significantly worse than random chance, and then…you are in!
I’m not sure that most people understand that the barriers to entry, such as they are, aren’t just there to protect lawyer salaries. Lawyers are also trying to protect the consumers of legal services too.
Look, no one is saying that having a great LSAT score or a solid college GPA means that you will be a really good lawyer.
What they are saying is that doing the things you need to do in order to get into an accredited law school, and eventually become a practicing attorney is one important indication that you might not be a mouth-breathing idiot who should never be trusted with such a sensitive matter. This is not a foolproof system. People go and slip through the cracks all the time. But, the suggestion that there should not be anything standing in the way of a potential imbecile and a career in the law-talking business is just disgusting.
From the Economist:
”Three supply barriers bulk largest. The American Bar Association accredits law schools, and in most states you must be a graduate of one of them to practice law.
The second hurdle for a would-be-lawyer is the bar exam itself.
Finally, American states do not allow non-lawyers to manage or invest in law firms, nor can companies not run by lawyers practice law in any form.”
Now, let’s deal with the last thing first. Allowing banks to also provide some legal services wouldn’t have any effect on the supply of lawyers, though it may as well increase the demand for lawyers to work at these mythical bank firms that can steal your money, and then turn around tell you how to sue them to get it back.
And as for the second ”hurdle”, the bar exam, that is legitimate point. Certainty, the bar prevents some of the people, some people who would be great lawyers, from becoming lawyers. But, it definitely seems that the problem there isn’t that the test is too unreasonably difficult, the problem is that law schools have three but can’t seem to teach everybody enough to pass this entry exam.