Update (7/28): This week would have been bar exam week in the State of Florida, but the in-person Florida bar exam was officially cancelled. In place of an in-person exam, a new on-line bar exam is now scheduled for August 19. But I still don’t get it. You don’t need a license to sing opera or play baseball, you just need to be good at what you do, so why should you need a license to practice law? PS: Ilya Somin agrees with me.
Before I begin blogging about legal positivism, I want to go on the record and send the following succinct message to the Florida Board of Bar Examiners: it’s time to pull your heads out of the sand and cancel the in-person July bar exam. Students who graduated from an ABA-accredited law school should be awarded a provisional license to practice law, subject to good behavior. (Full disclosure: Although I am licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico 🇵🇷, I am a law professor in the State of Florida.)
Yes you do need a license and go through a screening process to ensure competency.
ok, zoomer, but how much more of a “screening process” than three years of law school do we really need?