The Alabama Bar Exam-the Course on Alabama Law
| Jurisdiction | Alabama,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 76 No. 1 Pg. 0046 |
| Pages | 0046 |
| Publication year | 2015 |
In July 2011, the Supreme Court of Alabama began administering the Uniform Bar Exam (the "UBE") for candidates for law licensure, joining a growing number of states doing so. Alabama has long enjoyed membership in the National Conference of Bar Examiners (the "NCBE"), which created and developed the UBE. The UBE is nothing more than a single, common licensing test used jointly by several states. As of August 2014, 14 states have adopted the UBE.1
The UBE is a three-part test produced and regularly updated by the NCBE for its member states who choose to use it. It includes the Multistate Bar Examination (that gargantuan 200-question, multiple-choice test taken by almost every lawyer living today in Alabama and everywhere else in America), the Multistate Essay Examination (six essay questions developed for each bar exam to test basic knowledge of "entry-level" legal subject matters, e.g., contracts, torts, domestic relations, criminal law, etc., along with the ability to write and analyze) and the Multistate Performance Test (a pair of practical legal problems which test an applicant's ability in a mock setting to organize and write about real-life legal situations). The NCBE requires that each of the 14 "UBE states" administer all three of these test components for every bar exam. Of course, the UBE only serves as a complement to the rigorous character-and-fitness criteria long employed by the Alabama State Bar as part of its admissions process to make sure that the legal profession continues to be as honorable as possible.
Throughout the United States, two principles serve as the underpinnings of bar examination. First, and foremost, it is essential that the bar exam protect the public, i.e., the consumers of legal services, as it is designed to ensure that new attorneys will be minimally competent as they enter the practice of law, so as to professionally serve their clients. To that end, the UBE's three components are developed and perpetually refined by groups of professional test designers under the auspices of the NCBE. Moreover, the results of any given examination are uniformly and nationally scaled and calibrated by the NCBE to assure the reliability of bar exam results over time. The notion of the UBE is premised on the idea that such a professionally developed test is the best available resource to qualify persons for the life-long practice of law.
Second, the bar exam, like any good test, is intended to fairly and equally treat its takers. The bar exam is not supposed to be tricky or...
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