Posted 1/01/2006 02:11:00 PM by Douglas

Sweeping changes are needed in the legal industry. Lawyers today, aside from there just not being enough of them, are far too intelligent, moral and principled. So I agree 100% with this guy that thinks the Texas Bar exam is just too durn difficult.

CLIFTON Eames moved to Houston with big plans. Having just finished law school in Washington, D.C., in 2002, he hoped to open a small practice here, specializing in civil rights and discrimination cases.

His dream of helping others right legal wrongs hit a snag, however, when he got the results from his Texas bar exam. Eames failed the test. Three subsequent attempts also have ended in failure, leaving him with a law school degree but no license to practice.

Now, Eames is in a quandary. The State Bar of Texas limits to five the number of times a would-be lawyer can take the bar exam. Worried he could find himself shut out from practicing law in Texas altogether, Eames has decided not to take the test again in February, the next time it is offered.

Instead, the 34-year-old, sounding like the attorney he wants to be, is making it his mission to get the Texas rule changed.

"It needs to be changed. It's not right," Eames said recently. "It has never been right, and it will never be right. There's no justification for it. I'm not going to stop until it's changed."

What a great quote. It will never be right, yet he won't stop until it's changed. Sounds like he's got his priorities straight.

The five-time limit has been in place for more than 20 years. Board records from the past 15 years indicate only 287 of 53,134 applicants who took the bar exam have been limited-out of future attempts.

So less than one percent of those taking the exam have been blocked out after five attempts? Sounds like discrimination to me. So who else is advocating changing the law?

Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, authored a bill during this year's regular legislative session that would have eliminated the five-time rule. Eames testified in support of the bill.

Van de Putte argued that the rule would result in many applicants opting to leave Texas for states with looser or no limits on taking the bar exam. The rule also could hurt working students who may not have time to dedicate exclusively to studying for the test, she said.

Dumb lawyers that can't pass the test are going to leave Texas if this rule stays in place? I'm sure there's a downside that I'm imagining right now. And what about those people that can't pass the exam because they don't have time to study for it? I think every qualifying exam should be simplified when its applicants can't pass it. Just think how that would improve other areas of life if qualifying exams for engineers, doctors, and cosmetologists were so incredibly easy that anyone could pass them?