Showing posts with label Professional Organizations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Professional Organizations. Show all posts

Monday, October 19, 2020

Monday Morning Repeats for the week of June 28, 2009. 1920, law, and the Geology Museum

 A repeat from over a decade ago that sounds like it could have been written now:

1920, law, and the Geology Museum

It's odd to see that eleven years ago I was then noting the near centennial, but not that near, of the law school's founding.  I also see that's when I learned of its age.

And the budget problems UW was then having. . . well they're worse now.

Indeed, frankly, everything about the this topic has grown worse over the past decade.  Wyoming's economy is showing real systemic problems, and its government by extension.  Politics has become more polarized.  The university is suffering from the problems of the pandemic. And the law school's purpose has become questionable in the wake of the UBE.

Monday, April 15, 2019

Monday at the Bar: Kim Kardashian to become a lawyer?


Kim Kardashian, known principally for her bust and rear end, has declared that she's reading the law and intends to take the bar exam in her state in 2022.

She's drawing skepticism on that, as in this headline:
Kim Kardashian's Bid to Become a Lawyer Faces Long Odds
The reality star has said she plans to take the bar exam in 2022 without attending law school, but few who go that route pass the test.
Well, skeptics aside, the more power to her.

Reading the law is basically self study for the bar exam.  Bar exams have been around for a lot longer than most law schools, and indeed early law schools were of a different nature than today's.  Originally it was widely assumed that nearly all lawyers had read the law.  Law schools started as largely private affairs where a lawyer offered his services to help those reading the law.  They then evolved into what we have today.  Over time, the ABA stepped into regulate them privately and, as they became common, the ABA pushed for state bars to require law school attendance in order to take the bar, arguing that this showed that a student was more prepared to become a lawyer.  Over time, they pushed for state bars to require ABA certification for such law schools.

But not all states have gone along, and some will still allow an applicant to sit for the exam with that applicant not having attended law school at all.  According to Wikipedia that number is down to California, Vermont, Virginia and Washington with, it's claimed, Wyoming, Maine and New York allowing it after the applicant has studied in a law office and have spent some time in law school. At least as to Wyoming, that's in error as Wyoming applicants can still sit by motion, which is effectively the same thing, but it requires permission of the state supreme court to take the exam.  Indeed, I knew one lawyer who had been a law school graduated by who was admitted by motion without passing the exam, which he'd failed a couple of times.

Okay, having said all of that, what's "reading the law".

Self study. That's what it is.

Or self study under the tutelage of a lawyer you are working for, which in the older days meant that you were apprenticed to that lawyer.

Plenty of famous lawyers became just that by reading the law.  

John Adams read the law.  


Abraham Lincoln read the law.


Locally, long serving and well known legal figure, the late Federal Judge Ewing T. Kerr read the law, and the local Federal Courthouse is named after him.


Now, this isn't to suggest this would be easy.  But at the same time it is to suggest that this may not be as hard for Ms. Kardashian than the skeptics may suppose.

First of all, while she's made a career so far by partially prostituting her image, in the form of selling photographs to fuel illicit dreams of juvenile males, there's no real reason to suppose that she's dumb.  Indeed somebody in her family pick up early on the fact that the Kardashian girls, with their exotic half Armenian features, were very good looking and could make money in their youths based on that.  The way it was done was not admirable at all, but it was cunning.

And signs of her further intelligence may be revealed by this proposed change in careers.  Her assets have a shelf life, and they will expire.

After all, you don't want to advance into middle age trying to look youthful and come out scary, a la Lisa Vanderpump or Cher.

And maybe you don't want to go to your grave remembered for your butt and chest.  

And recognizing that shows some real intelligence.  Not all who rose to fame in that manner survived that frightening realization.  Saying she wants to take the bar exam is a lot smarter than doing what Marilyn Monroe did, which was to face the whole thing badly.

And skeptics aside, her father was a lawyer.  Often the family members of lawyers get legal educations whether they want them or not.  They're reading the law, more or less, all the time.  Sit around the dinner table of most families in which their is a lawyer and you'll get some some sort of legal education, or at least an education in debating, whether you like it or not.  And by all accounts, her father was a good lawyer at that.

And, quite frankly, it doesn't take near the smarts to be a lawyer that the general public believes and that lawyers like to imagine.  I'd guess that the vast majority of lawyers measure no more than average in that department, including some hugely financially successful ones.

Indeed, that's been the dirty little secret of the modern practice of law for a long time.  Lawyers like to rely on their reputation as a "learned profession" to pose as a class of great intellects, and certainly there are lots of lawyers who are just that.  But there are a lot more who are not.  The entire ABA supported move towards requiring law schools in the first place was to combat the fact that a lot of lawyers just weren't all that professional, and in the 19th Century law was a very common American occupation filled by those who didn't want to be farmers but who had no other skills to fall back on.  Most weren't college graduates and indeed there were few colleges for anyone to attend. The entire American image of the crooked lawyer came up in that time, and indeed lawyers moving from town to town to evade their reputations and take advantage of frontier opportunities was pretty common.  

Bar exams meant to address that, but bar standards have been dropping like a rock for some time.  The Uniform Bar Exam has accelerated that.  I don't know if the UBE is the one that Kim Kardashian would be taking, but the fact that it is a uniform exam sort of speaks for itself in some ways, and at least by observation, the amount of knowledge that's required to pass it is considerably lower than the old NBE and local exam system that used to prevail.  You'd think the ABA would oppose such an evolution, but on the contrary they seem solidly behind it.

So I hold out a lot more hope for her to pass the exam than others.

Indeed, I hope she passes it and frankly I hope she redeems her reputation.  

Armenians in the United States and around the world have a really well deserved reputation.  The Kardashian's are an embarrassment to it.  The culture is a really old one, and the country was the first Christian nation in the world.  The Armenian diaspora in the United States has untold numbers of members who have contributed greatly to American society.  The Kardashian girls cut against that hard working conservative set of values by rising to fame through what amounts to, at best, their appearance.  

One of the things that holds women back in real terms is that fame based on selling your appearance, let alone appearing on the cover of magazines naked, or in sex tapes, reinforces a pagan view of women. That's a lot to make up for.  I hope she does.

Indeed, I hope she does and that she actually practices, and in some future year that when people speak of Kim Kardashian, it's in that context, with few remembering when she was just a barely clad, or not clad at all, public figure.

John Wesley Hardin.  If Hardin could become a lawyer, why couldn't Kim Kardashian?

Monday, July 24, 2017

So. . . why doesn't the ABA oppose the Uniform Bar Exam?

From the ABA news article email:
The ABA is opposing two federal bills that would require states to allow individuals to carry concealed weapons within their borders if they have permits to carry concealed weapons in another state.
The bills pending in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives mandate national reciprocity for concealed carry permits issued under state law. ABA President Linda A. Klein calls the legislation “a dangerous proposal” that would tie states’ hands in setting concealed-carry standards.
All states allow some form of concealed carry, but standards vary, Klein said. The reciprocity requirement “offends deeply rooted principles of federalism where public safety is traditionally the concern of state and local government,” Klein says in the letters (PDFs) here and here.
If the proposal were to become law, “a state’s ability to consider safety factors—such as age, evidence of dangerousness, live firearm training, or criminal records—would give way to other states’ less stringent requirements,” Klein said. “Unlike some efforts of Congress to create minimum safety standards, this bill could lead to no safety standards as more states enact laws to allow persons to carry concealed firearms without a permit.”
The bills are H.R. 38, “Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017,” and S.446, “Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017.” Klein sent the letters to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Subcommitee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations.
It's hard not read something like this and feel that the American Bar Association is just some sort of liberal organization in which being a lawyer is just a prerequisite.   That the ABA has a position on a firearms related topic at all is hard to fathom.  Predictably, when they have one, its on the left side of the political isle.

Now, I'm not really commenting on this bill at all, and I'll note that there are people on the right side of that isle who are opposed to this bill as they view it as trampling on the rights of state's.  And no matter which way you feel about it, there's something to that view, just  as there's something to the view in favor of the bill. But the ABA?

Come on ABA, if you really cared about "a state’s ability to consider safety factors" you'd come out condemning that farce called the Uniform Bar Exam which Wyoming, and a host of other state, have adopted.

Wyoming has lost 25,000 workers over the past few years and quite frankly some of them are lawyers.  Up here in the state we see out of state lawyers, licensed under the UBE, all the time. The UBE is based on the absurd fiction that the law in one state is just like that of another, and we're seeing that up here, with lawyers from big cities in neighboring states who can't see their way around to Wyoming's law in some instances. That's not good for the state and its not good for the residents of the state either.  The ABA, with its expressed concern for Federalism and the rights of states, ought to now condemn the UBE.

I won't hold my breath.

On the topic of concealment, by the way, I've become increasingly surprised  by how many lawyers carry concealed pistols, and indeed I've become surprised by how many people in general do.  I'd have thought it fairly rare, but it isn't.  It's actually quite common, at least around here.  Firearms in general are so common in Wyoming that a common jesting bumper sticker states "Welcome To Wyoming--Consider Everyone Armed", but it isn't really that much of a joke.  Lots of people carry all the time, including a lot of lawyers, I've learned.  The stereotypes about packing heat are, quite frankly, way off the mark.  Professionals carry pretty commonly, I've come to learn.  And quite a few women do.  Quite a few younger people regard this as highly routine.  Indeed, most of the people I've come to learn carry concealed weapons are such a surprise to me that it actually gives me comfort about the arguments in favor of it, as they're such responsible people.

None of which gets to the actual law proposed above, which again you can argue either way.

Which takes me to another thing that surprised me.  Lawyers are generally more left leaning that other people but reading the reactions to this ABA stand by members of the ABA gives me some hope that lawyers themselves are less lock step than the ABA might suppose.

I've been unhappy with the ABA for some time, which seems to some degree to be attempting to occupy space that would otherwise be taken up by the ACLU, which itself seems to have forgotten its original purpose to me.  And its obsession with "Big Law" is over the top, in my view.  At any rate, ABA members, including ones who don't have any interest in firearms, have been published in reaction to this with some pretty negative comments.  A lot of ABA members feel that the ABA is way out of touch with its purpose.  And I'll note that the UBE connection stated above, while I thought was likely unique to me, isn't.  I saw at least one other comment to the same effect.

A common statement by lawyers, both current and former members of the ABA, is that they've had enough of the ABA and that they have, or are, dropping out. That includes me.  When the ABA goes back to a hard concentration on actual law rather than wasting its time with matters that are social and political policy, I'll reconsider.