EDITORIAL: Easier tests won't make better lawyers

It was with considerable interest that we read in Thursday’s Inter Lake that the dean of the University of Montana Law School is asking the state Supreme Court to lower the minimum passing score on the state’s bar exam to 266.

What was so strange is that it was just three years ago when the passing score was raised from 260 to 270. According to an Associated Press story, the Montana Board of Bar Examiners had requested the tougher score because they “didn’t want Montana to have a reputation as being an easy place to pass the bar.”

Are we to assume that the dean of the law school does want the state to have the reputation of being an easy place to pass the bar exam? Maybe so. After all, the dean, Paul Kirgis, has pointed out that the percentage of UM law school grads passing the bar on the first try “fell from 88 percent prior to 2013 to below 70 percent in the past two years.”

We can see how that concerns the law school, which might see a drop-off in applicants if word gets out that it’s relatively hard to pass the bar after attending the school. But the state’s interest in giving bar credentials only to qualified applicants should outweigh the school’s narrow interest.

According to Erica Moser, the president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners, “the reduction in the pass rate of the bar exam reflects a lower number of qualified candidates applying to attend law school.”

Well, we certainly don’t want (more?) unqualified lawyers practicing law in Montana, so maybe keeping the score just where it is makes sense. Remember, we are only talking about scoring 270 points out of a possible 400. That seems pretty generous already.

As for Moser’s assertion that there are fewer qualified applicants overall, perhaps the reason could be found in another story in Thursday’s paper. According to the Nation’s Report Card, high school seniors are “slipping math and failing to make progress in reading, with just one-third of the 12th graders ready for the academic challenges of college.”

That’s truly concerning when you consider that nearly two-thirds of high school graduates enroll in college the next year. We are pretty confident that many of those attending college are among those judged not ready to do so.

Is it any wonder that a few years later, some of those students have a hard time passing the bar exam? The solution is not to lower standards, but to increase accountability. Dean Kirgis should probably be demanding more from his professors rather than expecting less from his students.