Congratulations to Those Who Passed the California Bar Exam!

Today is the day that those who took the July California Bar Exam learned whether they have passed.  For those who passed, congratulations!  For those who did not -- all is not lost.  The bar exam is a challenge like no other and those who passed this year are yet again in the minority of test-takers.

Queenan on the Coming "National Plague of Dumb Lawyers"

At the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan writes this column about how law schools' lowering their admissions standards will lead to a plague of dumb lawyers. Queenan describes the chaos that will result:

Dumb lawyers will lose clients huge amounts of money by confusing “escrow” with a salad. They will forget that they are not supposed to show the court the telltale coal scuttle or the bloodstained handkerchief or the strangled parakeet, and their clients will do hard time as a result. 

Procedurally, dumb lawyers will paralyze an already sclerotic legal system. They will misplace files, spill coffee all over the DNA samples, take the wrong exit on the expressway and end up defending the wrong conscienceless psychopath in the wrong court in the wrong state. They will forget that they are not supposed to call the jury a bunch of pathetic losers with bad perms like the one Melissa McCarthy has in “Spy.”

Terrifying as this prospect sounds, at least it is not a world without lawyers.