Bar Examination - United States

United States

See also: Admission to the bar in the United States

Bar examinations in the United States are administered by agencies of individual states. In 1763, Delaware created the first bar exam with other American colonies soon following suit. A state bar licensing agency is invariably associated with the judicial branch of government, because American attorneys are all officers of the court of the bar(s) to which they belong.

Sometimes the agency is an office or committee of the state's highest court or intermediate appellate court. In some states which have a unified or integrated bar association (meaning that formal membership in a public corporation controlled by the judiciary is required to practice law therein), the agency is either the state bar association or a subunit thereof. Other states split the integrated bar membership and the admissions agency into different bodies within the judiciary; in Texas, the Board of Law Examiners is appointed by the Texas Supreme Court and is independent from the integrated State Bar of Texas.

The bar examination in most U.S. states and territories is at least two days long (a few states have three-day exams) and usually consists of:

  • Essay questions:
    • Essentially all jurisdictions administer several such questions that test knowledge of general legal principles, and may also test knowledge of the state's own law (usually subjects such as wills, trusts and community property, which always vary from one state to another). Some jurisdictions choose to use the Multistate Essay Examination (MEE), drafted by the NCBE since 1988, for this purpose. Others may draft their own questions with this goal in mind, while some states both draft their own questions and use the MEE.
    • Some jurisdictions administer complicated questions that specifically test knowledge of that state's law.
  • Multistate standardized examinations (below)

Read more about this topic:  Bar Examination

Famous quotes related to united states:

    “We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
    —Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)

    “... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freest country on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.”
    —Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    “The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.”
    —Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

    “We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
    —John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)

    “Steal away and stay away.
    Don’t join too many gangs. Join few if any.
    Join the United States and join the family
    But not much in between unless a college.”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)