The Times They Are A-Changing [1]

For years the Bar Exam has been the last hurdle to becoming a lawyer[2]. It has varied in form from oral examinations to written  essays to multiple choice exams and these have been more or less formalized over the years. Sometimes the examinations were oral, sometimes written.

On March 15 of this year our Washington Supreme Court entered two orders addressing the recommendations of the Washington Bar Licensure Task Force.[3] Three of these recommendations created alternatives to the Bar Exam for admission to practice law. There were other recommendations which will also be discussed, but it was those three which provoked the most discussion. Before examining those and the other recommendations a brief review of what it takes to become a lawyer in Washington is in order.

Within recent memory, the Washington Bar Exam was a two and a half day set of essay questions written and graded by practicing attorneys. More recently it has become the Multi-state Bar Exam, then the Uniform Bar Exam with essay, multiple-choice questions and performance portions. In 2026 the NextGen Bar Exam will be rolled out—again with essays, multiple-choice and performance parts.

 

You can take the Bar Exam in Washington if you:

• Are a graduate of an ABA law school with a JD or an LLM (for some graduates of foreign law schools or non-accredited US law schools), or
• Are a graduate of a common law system law school with practice experience, or
• Have completed the Rule 64 Law Clerk Program, a four year program that requires full-time employment in a law office, legal department or a court, under the supervision of a lawyer-tutor.

 

In addition to the UBE a candidate must pass the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam and have the requisite good character and fitness to practice law. After passing, before being sworn in, the candidate must take and pass the Washington Law Component, an on-line test, and complete a four-hour course developed by the WSBA on the practice of law.

The Task Force reviewed the current state of knowledge with respect to licensing practices nationwide and noted that several other states were in the process of creating new methods of licensure. They then made seven recommendations that dealt with the existing Bar Examination, reciprocity and new methods of assessing the readiness of candidates to practice law.

The Bar Exam will be retained as one method of assessment. But three new methods of qualification will be available to candidates. Briefly, these are described below:

Law Graduate Apprenticeship—Law school graduates would follow some of the process of Rule 9 as to their supervisors and would engage in supervised practice for six months and would complete 6 months of the course work prescribed by Rule 6.[4]

Law School Experience Path—Law school graduates who have completed their degrees and who have completed 12 credits of qualifying skills credits and 500 hours of work as licensed legal interns under Rule 9 may opt out of the Bar Exam.[5]

Law Clerk Apprenticeship—The proposal requires some changes to the requirements for Rule 6, adding additional benchmarks and standardizing the materials. Further, the Clerk candidate must complete the same 500 hours required for law graduates under the Experience Path.

None of these methods will be immediately available. The court charged the WSBA with drafting rules and procedures to implement these recommendations.

The recommendations that the court adopted also included changes to the reciprocity rules (reducing the time required for reciprocity to one year) and the investigation and implementation of proactive measures to ensure continuing competence for lawyers throughout their careers.

In addition, the court ordered that the modified passing score for the UBE should continue until the NextGen Bar Examination is implemented. Further, the NextGen Bar Examination was adopted with its first administration to be in July 2026.[6] The Task Force also made recommendations to Character and Fitness Review. The court’s order does not deal with those recommendations.

All lawyers should look at the full report and the recommendations and if you have opinions (as I am sure you will), voice them to the committee that the WSBA will form.

 

[1]  Bob Dylan 1964

[2]  In Wisconsin, graduates of instate law schools (Marquette and the University of Wisconsin) are admitted without taking the Bar. Wisconsin is the last state with diploma privilege as a normal process, although, as we recall, Washington, three other states and the District of Columbia allowed it in 2020 because of the Covid Epidemic.

[3] The Task Force was created in November 2020 by another court order. The court’s latest orders and the accompanying recommendations can be found at courts.wa.gov (click the tab for courts then supreme court, then orders)

[4] Rule 6 is a rule of the court dealing with Admission to Practice, as is Rule 9 mentioned later.

[5] The ABA currently requires 6 credits of skills courses for graduation and most law schools have intern, extern and clinical courses, where a large portion, if not all, of the 500 required hours could be accomplished.

[6] The Task Force had recommended adopting the NextGen Bar Exam in 2027, but the court chose to adopt the exam when it would be rolled out in 2026.

 

John Weaver is a retired professor of law from Seattle University School of Law. He began teaching at UPS School of Law in 1972. He is a resident of Tacoma and serves as the Law School Liaison to the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association.