The Oct. 4 editorial, "Raise the bar at law schools," places the blame for the poor 40 percent bar-exam pass rate on law schools and implicitly on their students. In fact, the fault has little to do with the test-takers and everything to do with the test-makers.
Well in advance of the exam, the government decides the approximate number of people who will be allowed to pass. This relates not to competence but rather to the capacity of the Legal Training Institute, where future lawyers must undergo yet another year of training after the exam.
The 3,000 new-lawyers-a-year figure the editorial cites is a target number the government says it will allow by 2010. But not now. For the moment, the "bar" exam is used primarily to bar competent law school graduates from entering the profession. The nation can ill-afford to be deprived of thousands of its most talented human resources.
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